Book Review: Chess Made Simple

Hi everybody. I haven't had any tournaments in a while, and thus have pretty much nothing to write about. So I just finished another book and will review it for you. If you want another video post before the next tournament I play in (Probably late April), then I would encourage you to help me out a bit. You can send me a game or position to annotate, and I will post a video analysis of it. Anyway, on with the show.

This review is for the book Chess Made Simple: A Comprehensive Guide for Self-Study and Review by Milton L. Hanauer. I am not going to bother trying to find a link to buy this book, because this one is legitimately from 1957, and is not a reprint.

I came in with lowered expectations because the book is well out of date, and intends to be a book for beginners. The basics given in the book are just as good as those today, with how the pieces move, what defines a good and bad move, etc. The drawback in this book, however, is that some of the analysis later on is just plain wrong. This is to be expected a little bit because of our computer age, but I could spot some holes in analysis right away without plugging the positions into an engine. Another confusing point was a bit of terminology. This author calls skewers "hurdles", which is not really that confusing, but when the term is used before it is defined, it can be a little difficult to grasp at first.

Verdict: 2.5/5

Some nice analysis offset by some bad analysis. Nothing that couldn't be found elsewhere. Given a rather lenient judgment due to the book being over 50 years old. I am sure in its time, it would have been a pretty good guide for beginners.