How to Be a Winner at Chess Read online

  How to Be a Winner at Chess

  by

  Fred Reinfeld

  Forword by Bruce Pandolfini

  21st-Century Edition

  Fred Reinfeld Chess Classics

  Bruce Alberston, General Editor

  2013

  Russell Enterprises, Inc.

  Milford, CT USA

  How to Be a Winner at Chess

  by Fred Reinfeld

  21st-Century Edition

  The Fred Reinfeld Chess Series

  Bruce Alberston, General Editor

  ISBN: 978-1-936490-61-5 (print)

  © Copyright 2013

  Don Reinfeld, Judith Reinfeld and Bruce Alberston

  All Rights Reserved

  No part of this book may be used, reproduced, stored in a retrieval system or transmitted in any manner or form whatsoever or by any means, electronic, electrostatic, magnetic tape, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the express written permission from the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles or reviews.

  Published by:

  Russell Enterprises, Inc.

  P.O. Box 3131

  Milford, CT 06460 USA

  http://www.russell-enterprises.com

  [email protected]

  Cover design by Janel Lowrance

  Table of Contents

  Preface

  Foreword

  Editor’s Introduction

  Introduction

  Chapter 1. How to End It All

  Checkmating

  Three Tests for Checkmate

  Checkmate

  More Checkmates

  Chapter 2. Don’t Give Up the Ship

  Resigning

  When to Resign

  When Not to Resign

  Ripe for Resigning

  Chapter 3. What’s It Worth?

  The Values of the Pieces

  Even Exchanges

  Relative Values

  Cruising Range

  The “Lowly” Pawn

  More Comparative Values

  Bishop vs. Knight

  Winning Material

  Chapter 4. The Three Strongest Moves

  1. Checks

  Priority of Check

  Forking Check

  Removing the Defender

  The “Discovered” Check

  Double Check

  Chapter 5. The Three Strongest Moves

  2. Capturing Threats

  How to Win Material

  Removing the Defender

  The “Double Attack”

  Pinning Attacks

  Chapter 6. The Three Strongest Moves

  3. Pawn Promotion

  The Power of Pawn Promotion

  A Pawn Gives Checkmate!

  Promotion by Capture

  Remove the Blockader!

  How Pawn Promotion Wins Material

  Watch for Passed Pawns

  Pawn Promotion Wins Many a Game

  Looking Ahead

  Chapter 7. “How Do I Get Started?”

  Five Rules for Opening Play

  Simple Plans Are Best

  Five Basic Rules

  Control the Center

  Develop Quickly

  Develop Effectively

  Protect Your King

  Avoid Premature Queen Moves

  Summary

  Chapter 8. “What Do I Do Now?”

  Two Basic Rules for the Middlegame

  Give Your Pieces Mobility

  Make Your Piece Cooperate

  Chapter 9. The Endgame Is the Payoff

  Five Basic Rules for Endgame Play

  Know the Elementary Checkmates

  Have Your King Play an Active Role

  Utilize Passed Pawns

  Post Rooks on the Seventh Rank

  Simplify When You Have a Material Advantage

  Chapter 10. “You Can’t Move That Piece!”

  Winning by Pinning

  The Irritating Pin

  How Pins Work

  Double Play

  Chapter 11. “Give Till It Hurts!”

  Winning by Sacrificing

  How Sacrifices Work

  Sacrificing the Queen

  A Chess Refresher

  The Basic Rules of Chess

  How the Pieces Move

  How the Pawn Moves

  How the Pieces Capture

  More about the Pawn

  More about the King

  How to Record Moves

  Standard Chess Symbols

  For my wife, who asked for a chess book that she could read

  Preface

  Many of today’s players, now the grandparents of chessplaying teenagers, fondly recall growing up with the Reinfeld books, which covered all aspects of chess, from the openings to the endgame, and included generous helpings of chess lore and the lives of the greatest chess masters.

  Reprinting chess books by our father, Fred Reinfeld (1910-1964), ended in the 1980s as descriptive notation was phased out in favor of the more popular algebraic notation. We are extremely grateful to Bruce Alberston, who has taken up the task of converting Reinfeld’s notations to algebraic.

  Thanks also to Russell Enterprises for publishing a 21st-century version of this, and, hopefully more, Reinfeld chess classics, thereby introducing Fred Reinfeld’s teaching genius to new generations of chess enthusiasts, especially to beginners and mid-level players eager to sharpen their skills at the chessboard.

  Don and Judith Reinfeld

  Foreword

  Mention the name Fred Reinfeld to different chessplayers and you get different reactions, not all supported by the facts. There are those who claim he wrote books mainly for beginners. True, but he also produced a number of quality volumes for more experienced competitors as well. Those more involved tomes will always have value to aficionados and others wanting nicely gathered material, while not being too far beyond the reach of the newcomer. I’m especially thinking of various outstanding works he did on tactics, endgames, and the collected games of particular players.

  There’s an implication in some criticisms that Reinfeld wasn’t a good player. But the reality is that he was a very good player. On the 1950 rating list, the first one put out by the USCF, he was rated sixth in the country. In 1933, as another example of his playing prowess, Reinfeld won the New York State Championship ahead of Denker and Fine. Furthermore, in individual encounters over the years, he was able to beat Fine, Reshevsky (twice – certainly, no mean feat), Marshall and Denker. Not too many “weak” players could boast of vanquishing members of that group. Nor is it likely that an ordinary player could draw with world chess champion Alexander Alekhine (when Alekhine was truly Alekhine), as Fred Reinfeld once did.

  To be sure, Reinfeld was prolific. He may have authored as many as 200 books, if we count those he did for other people. And he wrote not solely about chess, but on an array of other disciplines, and as nimbly. Medicine, coin collecting, physics, checkers, law, geology, and stamp collecting are just a sampling of the fields Reinfeld tackled and conquered, rendering their substance in beautifully clear texts. In a way, he came from the same mold as Isaac Asimov. He loved ideas and was able to write with power and clarity on practically anything.

  Reinfeld, no question, had an uncanny facility for language. He could take abstract concepts, often expressed in numbers and symbols, and somehow convert all of that obfuscation to cogent utility. Fraught with wonderful metaphors and delightful anecdotes, Reinfeld was always a great read. That expertise – all of that mastery – can be found in the offerings in this series. How to be a Winner at Chess and How to Play Chess Like a Champio
n are among the very best introductory chess books ever produced, bar none. In both offerings, Reinfeld manages to capture the essence of good chess in a most readable, enjoyable, easy to grasp format. Indeed, he dedicates the first book to his wife, who he states “asked for a chess book that she could read.” And now these two volumes have suddenly become even more accessible, thanks to the efforts of master teacher/writer Bruce Alberston, who has changed everything from the obsolescent descriptive notation to the more popular algebraic notation. Another nice feature instituted by Alberston is the two-column format, making the material much easier to read and follow.

  But those two excellent manuals are not alone. Alberston has also put into algebraic notation Reinfeld’s two classic texts on tactics: 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate and 1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations (both scheduled to appear late 2013 or early 2014). That’s more than 2000 problems to work on and from which the overwhelming majority of chess enthusiasts can benefit. Hey, even if I hadn’t written what I have here, I’d still buy a bunch of all four titles every year, as long as I had students who loved the game of chess, just like the great Fred Reinfeld.

  Bruce Pandolfini

  New York

  January 2013

  Editor’s Introduction

  This is a book for beginners, but not starting beginners. It’s designed for folks who already know how the pieces move and the main rules of the game, although they may not know a whole lot more. It’s a description of your average chessplayer.

  The assumption is that the average chessplayer wants to know more, wants to get better, wants to become a Winner, or why else pick up the book. Well, as the title suggests, How to be a Winner at Chess will help you do just that. One word of caution: It’s written in adult language, so it’s not for the little kiddies. But any teenager who can read can handle it.

  As an aside, we mention that should a total beginner happen onto this book, there’s a quick refresher course in the back that will introduce the pieces and the rules. Author Reinfeld covered all his bases.

  But what does a chessplayer need to know to get better? That’s the tricky part. Many authors, afraid of giving too little, often go off in the opposite direction, overwhelming their readers by giving too much or too advanced. Reinfeld is well aware of the trap and the beauty of his approach in the present work is that he keeps everything simple.

  He got all the basic concepts down and as you can see from the table of contents, there are not all that many. Moreover, there is nothing abstract here; everything is geared for practical play and so all the basic concepts are illustrated with concrete examples.

  In the world of chess, Fred Reinfeld is considered the supreme wordsmith. There’s no point rendering what he says in different language as Reinfeld can speak perfectly well for himself.

  So I’ll confine myself to the task of the editor, which was to read the book, and prepare the modern manuscript. Along the way, many new diagrams were added and the old English descriptive method of explaining moves was converted to modern algebraic notation.

  Notation is something every chess reader has to deal with. It can be a pain untill you get the hang of it, after which everything moves along nicely. I suppose you could do a chess book with figurine pieces and arrows but it would be a pretty simple book, not quite what we have here.

  And Reinfeld has made the process of following notation as easy as possible, using verbal explanations to suplement the moves. The editor also has done his bit by making diagrams with letters and numbers to ease the learning process. Just don’t expect letters and numbers in advanced works. You’re expected to have graduated by then.

  Bruce Alberston

  Astoria, New York

  March 2013

  Introduction

  This book is the result of more than twenty years’ thought about the problems of the average chessplayer and what he needs to learn to improve his game.

  I have tried in every way I know to make this book an effective tool for becoming a much better chessplayer. The emphasis has been on those basic problems that turn up in every game. My hope has been to give the reader the goal, the purpose, the incentive which he may not previously have seen in the game of chess.

  My aim has been to preserve the light touch. The technical approach and the grim forbidding attitude have been ruled out. I have tried to present complicated subjects in the simplest language that has ever appeared in a chess book. The chess notation, the traditional stumbling block of most chess readers, has been made as painless as possible.

  Players of any degree of strength can benefit by studying this book. Those already familiar with the rules of chess will find it useful to read the refresher material at the back of the book. Even complete beginners, who know nothing at all about chess, will be able to read this book profitably after first learning the basic rules which are explained in the refresher section.

  I want to thank Harold Kuebler, my editor, for his invaluable aid in helping me show the reader “how to be a winner at chess.”

  Fred Reinfeld

  Chapter One

  How to End It All

  Checkmating

  When I first learned to play chess as a youngster of twelve, I thought it was a wonderful game. I still do – after more than thirty years of playing, studying, talking, teaching, writing. What makes chess so fascinating and so tantalizing, I suppose, is that it’s an unbeatable mixture of the complicated and the simple, the difficult and the easy.

  Yes, it’s a wonderful game even though there are 169,518,829,100,544,000,000, 000,000,000 ways to play the first ten moves! Check the figures or take my word for it – either way we’re on safe ground if we say there are zillions of possibilities in a game of chess.

  Does that make chess a complicated game? Yes...and no. True, it’s complicated in the number of possibilities involved. But – and most of us tend to forget this – chess has a very simple and clear-cut objective.

  You win by checkmating your opponent’s king – by attacking the king in such a way that no matter how he plays, his king will still remain under attack. This clear-cut objective makes chess an easy game.

  Three tests for checkmate

  There’s an old saying among chessplayers: “Always check, it might be mate!” Usually made jokingly, this remark points up the most important feature of chess: you win by checkmating your opponent’s king.

  Obvious as this sounds, all too many players forget about it in the heat of battle. Others play aimlessly, at a loss for a guiding idea, content to play from move to move.

  More than once I have come into a chess club and watched a game between two inexperienced players who had checkmated each other without knowing it! Such unawareness makes a farce out of the game. Let’s be clear, then, at the very outset, just what we mean by “check” and “checkmate.”

  When you give check, you are attacking your opponent’s king. When you give checkmate, you are attacking your opponent’s king in such a way that the king cannot escape.

  Every checkmate is a check; but not every check is a checkmate! To grasp the difference, you have to follow through every check to one of its three possible conclusions: (D)

  1. The checking piece is captured

  White has just played his queen to check Black’s king by queen to h8 (Qh8+). Black disposes of the check by capturing White’s queen with his bishop ...bishop takes queen (...Bc3×h8). (D)

  After ...Bc3×h8

  With the disappearance of the white queen, Black’s king is no longer in check. This was a check, but not a checkmate. (D)

  2. A piece is interposed between the checking piece and the checked king

  In this position too, White has just played his queen to check Black’s king at h8 (Qh8+). Black cannot capture the checking queen.

  He has a different way of getting out of check: he interposes his rook to shield his king from attack.

  Black’s move in the diagram then is ...rook to d8 (...Rd8). (D)

  After
...Rd1-d8

  This cuts off the attack on the king, which is no longer in check. Again, this was a check, but not a checkmate. (D)

  3. The checked king moves out of the line of attack

  Once more White has played queen to h8 check (Qh8+). Black cannot capture the queen, not can he interpose a piece to ward off the attack. Luckily, his king can save himself on the principle of “the gods help those who help themselves.” Let’s see...Black’s king can move, but where? To play one square directly to the right – king to c8 (...Kc8) – would be no help; the king would still be in check.

  To play one square diagonally to the left – king to a7 (...Ka7) – would not do either, as Black cannot play his king to a square controlled by White’s king.

  Playing one square down – king to b7 (...Kb7 – is impossible for the same reason.

  But Black does have a way out – one square diagonally to the right – king to c7 (...Kc7). (D)

  After ...Kb8-c7

  This “flight square” is not commanded by White’s king or queen, and thus the black king is out of check. Again, this was a check, but not a checkmate.

  Checkmate

  So far the checked king has had a way out each time. But if these defensive methods are not available, then we have a case of checkmate, as in our next diagram. Some checkmates are planned far ahead; others come as a terrible surprise, as in the case of the heavily bearded player who lifts his beard at the critical moment – only to disclose a rook that gives checkmate on the spot!

  As you will see later on, whiskers are not the only way to hide a coming checkmate. When we say that a checkmate comes as a surprise, what we really mean is that the victim had has his mind on other things and completely missed the danger that was threatening his king.