Rating: 
Summary: Good book for beginners getting killed in the opening
Review: This is a great book for drilling opening tactics. Just flip it open, look at the diagram, and figure out the best move. Typically, the opponent has just played a horrible move which allows you to decimate his forces immediately.Why is this useful? Can you use these ideas to ensnare your own opponents? Probably not, and that's not smart chess anyway. This book is useful primarily for improving your pattern recognition of the various attacking motifs in the opening -- SO THAT YOU CAN AVOID THEM! Sure, if you play another novice, it can be fun to look for ways to induce him into one of these blunders, but eventually, as your opposition improves, you will become frustrated at falling into these same traps yourself. After you spend some time on this book, you will begin to notice when your opponent can fork your pieces, or win material with a sudden check by his Queen, etc. Pandolfini's commentary is sometimes helpful as advice on avoiding the traps, and it is always enthusiastic. Though the others are good too, this book is the best of Pandolfini's trap books for beginners. These are all dual-king pawn openings (1.e4 e5) which typically produce the highly tactical games that beginners can learn the most from. The traps are comprehensible but not obvious for beginners. And the format here is somehow the most pleasing. Only 4 stars b/c of errata, but the errors do not really get in the way.
Rating:
Summary: A useful guide of traps to watch out for.
Review: This is an excellent book for learning to watch for the traps in the various 1. e4 openings. Obviously, one can't expect to become a good chess player just by learning opening traps, but it certainly should come in handy in helping you to avoid being sucked into the same.
Rating: 
Summary: Cool title...that's all
Review: This was one of the first books I purchased just after joining the Army many years ago. It will show you a few tricky openings but will do nothing to improve your understanding of the game. If you want a book that has the potential to advance your knowledge of the game then this is not what you are looking for. At least 90% of chess books don't teach you anything and were just thrown together to make money. This book was published by Fireside Chess Library. Fireside published many terrible chess books so buyer beware.
If you click on my name you will get my personal information and see a recommended study list. I put together this list of books and software with only one thing in mind...to improve your game without wasting your money. If you want to get better at chess this list will give you the most bang for your buck.
Rating:
Summary: Cool title...that's all
Review: This was one of the first books I purchased just after joining the Army many years ago. It will show you a few tricky openings but will do nothing to improve your understanding of the game. If you want a book that has the potential to advance your knowledge of the game then this is not what you are looking for. At least 90% of chess books don't teach you anything and were just thrown together to make money. This book was published by Fireside Chess Library. Fireside published many terrible chess books so buyer beware.
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