Infact the best advice that you might receive is to throw away your chess engine, stomp on it, poke it with a big stick and make sure its dead. F2/7 pawn particularly vulnerable because protected only by king, compare to d2/7 and e2/7 each defended by 3 pieces. Primarily because I have to play it out on an actual board (even though every couple of moves or so, Chernev includes a diagram), so there was decently high activation energy to read it. It would be nice to have this as an e-book with annotated pgns, but apparently his widow has not been very receptive to publishing deals. When you "look inside" a book and see algebraic notation, what you expect is to get a book with algebraic notation.

The games in part three have lessons more subtle than the first two part, I think the theme is that good positional development naturally leads to tactical opportunities.In that respect, again flaws and all, showing the moves and some of the simple ideas behind the moves, even the repetition of some bits of advice, was perfect for me. None of us were particularly good, playing without tactics or logic, but rather just throwing pieces here and there, hoping for the best. The author does explain chess notation at the start of the book, in case you are not familiar with it. This is no dry theoretical tome (it's a regular sized paperback) that makes you feel like you're back at university wishing you hadn't chosen this elective.

Analyze moves as much by where the pawn has moved as by what space it has left empty: pawn moving out-of-step leave a diagonal for B to infiltrate, and has left its post of defending the knight. Chernev was extremely well-read in chess literature, and shares insights of many grandmasters, as these insights are illustrated in the games in this book. That h3 move is an example of how your game could go wrong if you weaken the defence in front of a castled king (Edit: or indeed, how to take advantage of when your opponent does it). I had heard of games leaving impressions on people before, but after playing chess more than 40 years, it had never happened to me.Chernev does not repeat himself, but drums up new insight and wit every time the first move is repeated. So I would ultimately recommend playing out the variations at least on your second time thru the book.

Chernev presents classic games by players such as Capablanca, Tarrasch, and Alekhine to repeatedly demonstrate the advantages gained by efficient development and strong positional play.

At least then I would not have had such an ego problem and there were no chess engines to argue with. I've been playing Chess casually for years online(not many people I know play it), and I realized that my rating hadn't gotten better in years. This makes it easy to follow along and reap the rewards of his wisdom, assimilating what makes a bad move, a good move, or a winning move.