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Chessville
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The books went through many editions and printings, and at least three of them outlasted the author, himself. Rev. Cunnington died in 1942, while Chess Lessons for Beginners went at least to the 22nd edition in1947; and the subject of this review, Chess Openings for Beginners (1900) saw a 20th edition in 1951. (The uncertainty in dates is due to the fact that not all of the editions bore a publication or copyright date.) How to Play Chess, revised and rewritten by J. DuMont, was published in 1958. Timothy Sawyer has brought Chess Lessons for Beginners and Chess Openings for Beginners back to life in 2004 by translating them to the ChessBase format for the computer. Pickard & Son has published them as e-books ("electronic books") and added them to ChessCentral’s expanding list of e-book titles, including classics such as Capablanca’s Chess Fundamentals and My Chess Career, Reti’s Modern Ideas in Chess, and Lasker’s Common Sense in Chess; and game collections like Nizzola’s Discart-Bonetti Match, 1863, Bird’s Chess Masterpieces, Graham’s Mr. Blackburne’s Games at Chess, and Sergeant’s Morphy’s Games of Chess. Using an e-book is as easy as using the database program, ChessBase (version 6.0 or higher is required), or chess-playing programs like Fritz (version 5 or higher) or those chess engines using the Fritz interface -Junior, Shredder or Hiarcs. For those like my friend the parsimonious Penny-Pinching Pawnpusher, an inexpensive alternative is to download the free software ChessBase Light from the Chess Central site or the ChessBase site.
Getting the e-book is just as simple, and takes minutes, not days: you download it from the ChessCentral website. Go to Chess Central, look under the "Chess by Format" title, click on "Chess E-Books," search through the offerings to find the title you want, and then follow the directions. Chess Openings for Beginners arrived in my computer as an executable file that, when clicked on, produced a ChessBase file in .cbv format. I opened it with Fritz8.
To select an opening you need only click on a file, play over the moves, and pay attention to the annotations. Alternately, you can start by looking at any of the instructional and explanatory text documents: the Chess Openings for Beginners (including "The Best Ways to Start a Game"), Part 1, Part 2 or Part 3. The first of these is hyperlinked to Part 1, and the three "Parts" contain hyperlinks to related files, grouped by opening. For example, the first thing I did with my copy of Chess Openings for Beginners was check out Part 1: The King’s Knight’s Openings, where I read as far as the heart-warming "By this, though it is quite unsound, you may snatch a game from an inexperienced player" and clicked on the link to my favorite Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+) … The Jerome Gambit reference, by the way (an opening whose heyday was over a century ago), should raise a few questions for the reader (including one about an apparent lack of good sense on the part of the Reviewer), starting with Is this e-book – with analysis 50-100 years old – something I really need? As with Chess Lessons for Beginners, the answer is dependent upon both what you get from the e-book, and what you need as a chessplayer. Since the screen shot, above, only touches on a fraction of the openings covered by Cunnington, let me quote from the ChessCentral website (or you can peek at the screenshot below): Here's what you get with Chess Openings for Beginners.
Note that most of the openings in the e-book start 1.e4 e5 with a focus on the open game, and modern (or hypermodern) systems like the Nimzo-, King’s and Queen’s Indian defenses are absent. Is this a problem? Maybe. Remember, though, the book is titled Chess Openings for Beginners (emphasis mine). Many beginners (and developing chess players) have been encouraged to start by playing the double King Pawn Openings, to learn about open games, rapid development and tactics. When they are comfortable enough, they are sometimes encouraged to add gambits to their play. In the Preface, Cunnington writes:
If you check out the following (or previous) screen shot, you can see that Cunnington sold himself a bit short – the next-to-last column on the right hand side features the number of moves given in the main line in each opening file. For what it’s worth, the average is about 9 moves.
Consider Cunnington’s coverage, for example, of the Philidor Defense. Like Goldilocks, is the amount too much, not enough, or just right for you?
2...d5 gives the Queen's Pawn Counter Gambit, with a continuation such as 3.exd5 (in this, if 3.Nxe5 then 3...dxe4 4.d4 Be6 5.Bc4 Bxc4 6.Nxc4 f5 etc.) 3...Qxd5 4.Nc3 Qe6 and Black is playing the Center Game with a move behind; the first player has a slight advantage. This opening is a good one for Black when he is receiving the odds of Queen's Knight, as the Queen cannot well be dislodged from d5. 3.d4 White may also play 3.Bc4 Be7 4.d4 exd4 5.Nxd4 Nf6 6.Nc3 (to stop 6...d5) 6...0-0 (if 6...Nxe4 then 7.Bxf7+ Kxf7 8.Qh5+ Kf8 9.Nxe4 etc., with a better developed game). 3...exd4 If 3...f5 we might get this interesting play: 4.Nc3 Nf6 5.dxe5 Nxe4 6.Nxe4 fxe4 7.Ng5 d5 (not 7...dxe5 8.Qxd8+ Kxd8 9.Nf7+) 8.e6 Bc5 9.Nxe4 (not 9.Nf7 because of 9...Qf6) 9...Be7 (for if 9...dxe4 then 10.Qh5+ etc.) 10.Qh5+ g6 11.Qe5 Rf8 This is risky for Black; 3...Nf6 is good, e.g. 4.dxe5 Nxe4 5.Bc4 c6 4.Qxd4 Or 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 Be7 (5...Bg4 6.Be2 develops White's game) 6.Be2 0-0 7.0-0 Bd7 Black's position is one of defense. 4...Bd7 Or 4...Nc6 5.Bb5 Bd7 6.Bxc6 Bxc6 7.Nc3 Nf6 8.0-0 Be7 etc. 5.Be3 Nc6 6.Qd2 Nf6 7.Nc3 Be7 8.0-0-0 0-0 = Remember, too, if you’re viewing this e-book with software that has a chess engine – like Fritz – in it, you can always turn on its analysis function and get some analysis to extend Cunnington’s work a good bit further. If you’re looking for opening resources for a motivated beginner, or a developing player, with words as well as lines of play, and you’re willing to put up with an old-fashioned paper & ink book, there has always been the classic book, Fine’s The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings, that delivers the goods. For that matter, older classics like Tarrasch’s The Game of Chess (among others) cover the openings in as much, or more, detail as does Cunnington (or, for a less stuffy version, try a bit of Reinfeld - perhaps The Complete Chessplayer) with a lot of middlegame and endgame instruction as well. Or, another favorite, if the title doesn’t frighten, is Tartakower and du Mont’s 500 Master Games of Chess – an annotated games collection arranged by opening. All of these have somewhat outdated analyses – but no worse than Cunnington. More modern sources would include Seirawan's charming Winning Chess Openings and Kallai’s recent Basic Chess Openings and More Basic Chess Openings. Each likely costs more than the e-book, if that’s a factor, so, as always, it might be a good idea to check with your library first and see if it has a copy. Should you find yourself searching for something to get for your brilliant nephew who just started playing chess and "who knows more about computers than any old person," and you want to encourage the kid in both pawn-pushing and mouse-clicking, but you don’t want to drop a bundle on a gift, only to see soccer replace the royal game as the new passion the next week – what to do, what to do, what to do? You could do far worse than dropping a double sawbuck on the Chess Lessons for Beginners and Chess Openings for Beginners combo.
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