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Playing over annotated master games is a practice valued by many, and one that is often recommended for the developing chess player.  C.J.S. Purdy once described this "best practice" with great warmth and charm:

…Any master will gladly play you at any time of the day or night, and, moreover, bring along two other masters to help you out.  They don’t ask for fees or even refreshments; as a matter of fact, they may all be ghosts from the last century, but they will play none the worse for that.  The masters who are there to help you do not interfere much.  They leave you to study the position for yourself.  When you make your move, however, one of them says, to your great delight, "Yes, just what I’d have done."  Or – more often than not if you are a beginner – he will say politely, "No doubt an excellent move – I had in mind Rook to e2, but still…"  That is all this man will ever say, but you must immediately retract your own move and play his; these chaps are very touchy, underneath their old-world courtesy.  You are allowed to ask what is wrong with your move, but you must ask the third man.  Sometimes he will merely give an enigmatic smile and suggest that your evident skill is quite equal to the task of working out the answer.  At other times he will be much more helpful, and give you quite a lecture on the position.  Sometimes he will say in a whisper, so that his crony will not hear, "As a matter of fact, old chap, your move is just as good" – or even, "Well to be quite candid, my highly talented friend has made an oversight."

And so the game proceeds.  Your man will never lose the game for you, though he may be held to a draw.  At the game’s conclusion your benefactors will vanish, but you can instantly summon three more by the simple process of turning a page.  I have described exactly what happens when you play over a game between a couple of champions, covering the winner’s moves with a card until you have worked out what you would play at each point… Your third visitor – the one who is alternately garrulous and enigmatically silent – is of course, the annotator.

Purdy probably would have enjoyed playing over master games with the help of modern computer software such as ChessBase or Chess Assistant; and he likely would not have minded the presence at the table of a fourth "master" – the always-with-an-opinion chess playing programs like Crafty, Fritz, Junior, Ruffian or Shredder.

I admit that I was intrigued by the idea of a chess e-book, and I was happy to review Chess Lessons for Beginners, by Edward E. Cunnington, from Chess Central -- especially when I learned that it contained a selection of 22 annotated games.

Sid Pickard, of Chess Central, identified the target of the e-book:

I was not familiar with the Rev. Cunnington, but a little research showed he was England’s Fred Reinfeld at the turn of the century – the 19th - with book titles to his name such as The Modern Chess Primer, Chess Traps and Stratagems, Chess Openings for Beginners, Lessons in Pawn Play, Selected Chess Endings, Half-hours with Morphy, How to Play Chess, and How to Play Chess Well.  He also revised Staunton’s The Chess Player’s Textbook.

Chess Lessons for Beginners was first published in London in 1900, and went at least as far as a 23rd edition.  It was published in the United States, as Chess for Beginners, at least until 1944.  (The uncertainty is due to the fact that not all of the editions bore a publication or copyright date.)  The ChessCentral e-book is based upon the 23rd edition (date not given).

This brings up the issue of the games that are included in the Lessons.  They seem to range from one by Greco in 1620, to a more "recent" Janowsky correspondence game from 1896.  It is hard to know for sure about all of the games, as Cunnington only identifies the players in three of the games.  Perhaps he didn’t want to distract or intimidate his readers.  (Sid Pickard was able to identify 15 of the 22 games, and he included the list in the e-book; although my Fritz8 couldn’t get the link to work.)

Lessons from old games?  Well, many a beginner has been encouraged to start by studying the games of the early masters, from the time of Morphy and before, to learn about open games, rapid development and tactics, before moving on to Steinitz, Capablanca, the Hypermoderns, Alekhine, the Soviets, etc.  It is the old ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny argument, that the development of a chess player from beginner to master follows (or should follow) the historical development of chess play itself, from, say, Philidor to Kasparov.  Not everyone agrees with that perspective, but it is a reasonable one for a beginner to adopt as a guide.

As for the openings presented in Lessons, the games feature mostly 1.e4 e5 – which modern chess teachers often recommend that their students start out with, anyway.  While Cunnington’s selections may not match up with the latest finesses in Nunn’s Chess Openings or Modern Chess Openings 14, that was not his intention.  As explained in the Preface:

No attempt has been made to vary the Openings here illustrated.  The "Openings", as the "Endings", are a study in themselves.  See Chess Openings for Beginners, and Chess Endings for Beginners, in this series.

It is simple to go to the Chess Central website, look under the "Chess by Format" title and click on "Chess E-Books".  I discovered a whole list of chess e-books available for purchase, including such classics as Capablanca’s Chess Fundamentals and My Chess Career; Mr. Blackburne’s Games at Chess and Morphy’s Games of Chess (those two would be fun to look at with Fritz!); Reti’s Modern Ideas in Chess, Lasker’s Common Sense in Chess and his tournament book on St. Petersburg 1909 – as well as some recent e-books, including Tim Sawyer’s Grob’s Attack, Dan Heisman’s The Computer Analyzes the Fried Liver and Lolli, and Sid Pickard’s own The Bozo-Indian Defense [Ed. - No, that's not a misprint.  The title really is Bozo-Indian!]

Another benefit of ChessCentral’s e-books is that you can buy them online and download them right away – no waiting anxiously for the mail each day.  Lessons arrived as an executable file that, when clicked on, produced a ChessBase file in .cbv format.

As the web site indicates, "All you need to enjoy your e-book is ChessBase 6.0 & higher, Junior 7, Fritz 5 & higher or the FREE software ChessBase Light" (which can be downloaded from the Chess Central site).

Using my Fritz8 to open the Lessons file, I reached the following screen.  To select a "lesson" you need only click on a game, play over the moves, and pay attention to the annotations.

I’ve picked a short game to illustrate Cunnington’s style, although, as you can see, above, the games in Lessons average about 30 moves in length, and are somewhat more deeply annotated (more comments, more lines).  The author does not favor miniatures, and his explanation is a lesson in itself on what it takes to win a game:

(Algebraic notation is used in the e-book, the result of the translation to the ChessBase format - Cunnington used descriptive notation in print.  I have inserted 2 diagrams in this game; with an e-book, of course, there is a diagram after every move.)

1.e4 b6

Not in much repute for Black.  The point is not that the Bishop is badly placed; but this method of developing him, frees him only; while freeing him by the advance of d-pawn, frees Queen also.

Plainly he must provide against 7.g7 mate. 6...Bg7 7.gxh7+ Kf8 8.hxg8Q+ Kxg8 9.Qg4 Bxh1 10.f3 shutting in the Bishop, is preferable; but White should still win.

It was impossible for me to play through the game and ignore Fritz-8’s evaluation function, even for 8 moves, so I put it to work on Cunnington’s suggestion for Black at move six.  After 6...Bg7 7.gxh7+ Kf8, Fritz8 (14 ply) preferred 8.Nf3, with what it saw as a two-pawn advantage for White, over 8.hxg8Q+, which it said led, after 8…Kxg8 9.Qg4 Bxh1 10.f3 Rxh2, to an advantage for Black.

(For another example lesson / annotated game, you can check out the game Chess Central provides at its website: Click here.)

It is important not to go overboard using your chess engine to check out a chess book - print or e-format - unless and until you are prepared to fill in all the margins with the corrections that you find.  As has been shown too many times, computers can make hash out of human evaluations.  In this, Chess Lessons for Beginners fares no worse than scores of newer and more advanced books.

Besides, Cunnington is trying to avoid overwhelming the beginner with Timman-style or Huebner-ish analysis that could quickly become an impenetrable forest of variations.  He is giving guidance and instruction, not trying to have the last word.  As Pickard wrote in the Foreword: "The timeless principles formulated in these pages are useful guides for any player, whether beginner or veteran."

And there is always the possibility that the electronic beast might be wrong, or at least take too much time, while you’re waiting around, to arrive at the "truth." Look at the following screen capture, from another of the games in Lessons.

You can get the idea that Fritz8 is not impressed with the move 13…h5, as played in the game.  In fact, although you can’t see it in the picture, at 13 ply Fritz8 sees 13…h5 as the 42nd best out of 47 possible moves, and it evaluates White as having a winning game.

Play the two captures at move 14 in the game, however, and let Fritz8 think some more, and after 15.Nxe5 Nd4 16.Qe1 it finds "the beautiful move" 16…Ne4! and with it, Black’s advantage. (I still think 13…Bxf3 was better than 13…h5, however.)

I’ve had fun playing around with Lessons, and although I see myself as more than a "beginner" at chess, I’ve learned from the experience.  I’ve also decided that Purdy would have quickly put the Fritz8’s evaluation function off limits for me, as I am too inclined to let Fritz8 do the thinking for me, instead of working things out for myself, move by move…

Is Chess Lessons for Beginners for you?  It could very well be worth a look, if:

• You are a beginner. You know how to play chess, you’ve played a number of games, you have at least a basic understanding of chess notation (remember though, you don’t have to be proficient, because to play through a game in an e-book you need only click on an arrow) and now you want some instruction in how to play better.  Or, you’ve been playing for a while, but gotten into a rut.

• You want instruction, but you don’t want to be overwhelmed.  There are some astonishingly deep annotators and annotated games out there – but you’ve looked at a few and they’re too much for you right now.

• You are interested in the e-book format.  You enjoy chess software, or are adventurous and willing to give it a try.  (If you stick with books, you can always check the library for classics like Logical Chess Move by Move by Chernev or Chess Master vs Chess Amateur by Euwe & Meiden.  You could tackle Nunn’s Understanding Chess Move by Move, but you may need someone to hold your hand.)

• You are looking for annotated games.  You’ve downloaded a few million games from the Internet, or you’ve got one of those monster databases, but you’re not sure what to do with them.  Your chess software is willing to analyze games, but the results are confusing and hard to understand.

• You don’t absolutely, positively have to have the newest resource on the block.  You just want to get better at chess.

• You don’t have a ton of money to spend.  If you’re "all of the above," it’s nice to know that the e-book format isn’t any more expensive than a paperback book – and often much less expensive.

Sid Pickard and the folks at Chess Central are to be commended for their work in expanding the selection of e-books available, and for making a growing list of chess classics available in that format.  For the right group of chess players, Cunnington’s Chess Lessons for Beginners is a pleasant addition.

Published by Chess Central

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