Good strategy book for beginners and intermediates as well
923864
I own numerous cribbage books and this one is one of the better ones.  Good examples, good strategies, and good explanations.  I feel that after reading this book and using some of its tips and tricks I've improved my game.  Highly recommended.
327730
I'm an intermediate player with around 200 master points, and this is the best book I've ever read on card play.  Mr. Lawrence gives tips on both declarer and defensive play.  It's well written and well organized.  He presents the problems with only the information that you have available from the bidding, from your hand, and from the exposed dummy (assuming dummy has come down.). This requires the reader to think the problem through before seeing all four hands. To me this book is perfect for an intermediate player: not too easy and not too difficult.  Just right!
2055865
I bought this off Amazon and read it in a day.  At first,  I was finding strategy suggestions that I already was doing but then I found some really neat ones about working your opponent into awkward positions while you tire him out and wait for the score.  If you even walk away with just a few stategies that you want to use like I did then it is worth the low price, I think.
907617
As a beginning player (< 1000), this book has some challenging puzzles to solve and I like how they are organized by theme so you get good repetition. I'm not giving it a full 5 stars because for someone at my level these puzzles are a bit beyond my skill level; I have found Chess Tactics for Students by John Bain to have easier problems to just get the hang of the tactics whereas this book really stretches your analytic abilities as a beginner.
1459665
This is a great compact book, covering important middlegame concepts.  Mostly of the tactical nature, such things as double blow, double attack etc.  The book is broken into lots of small chapters so looking things up is pretty easy.  What is important is that you learn basic concepts that you can expand on.  He shows examples from games and other sources, teaching the idea as well as showing.  This is almost a crib notes book to help you in the middlegame.  If your over 2000 this book might not really be much use to you.  I figure anyone U1800 can least learn something from this book.  Just about anyone should be able to follow along and understand it.  The book might only be 100 pages about, yet the content is better than most books that size.  The Endgame Book in this series is also worth picking up.  I think everyone should own a copy of this book.  The price isn't really that bad for what you get in return.  Not sure there is a better general idea middlegame book on market.  If there is one, I really can't think of it.  I have Art of Middlegame as well, which is a bit more advanced.  This book is one of best gifts that I ever got to be honest.
1586675
This book is a great book whether you are a newbie player, intermediate, or even an expert.  It has everything from how to take over the seas to which unit combinations work best in certain situations.  It has  civilization-specific strategies, and even a behind-the-scenes look at  Ensemble!  For all you single players, it has extensive campaign  walkthroughs.
Not a single page of strategy? Lol!  I own this strategy  guide and Prima's, and this one is BY FAR better.  There are only three  explanations for the people who wrote those phony, one-star reviews; they  are complete newbies, they have never played the game before and have no  clue what they are talking about, or they are authors of a rival strategy  guide.
Need the best strats for AOK?  Take it from an experienced zone  player...THIS IS THE ONE!  =)
799378
As there's no reviews for this as of yet, let me be the first to say that strategy guide is fantastic. It arrived in perfect condition. The book itself is nice in design, the pages were written out and done professionally. You even get a voucher for the e-guide version off of PrimaGames' website! You also get two artworks to go along with it. If you're looking for a strategy guide for this game, I highly recommend this one
839945
I just want to start off by saying I didn't purchase this book from amazon.com but I don't think that should make any difference.  This book has been around for a while but nobody really has reviewed it yet and I'm surprised on that because it's a really good book as insofar.  I haven't completed it yet but it seems to be very good and it's exactly what beginners need to improve their game.  This book was clearly written for children but don't let that fool you.  I don't know about you but I learned Chess later on in life,as an adult.  I am self taught,never had a coach or anything like that,so pretty much everything I learned was out of books.  I started to study but like most of us I slacked off but now I am rediscovering this great little book here.

Chess is 99% tactics or so we have been told over and over again.  This book has tons and tons of very basic but very fundamental and essential Chess "patterns", a chess pattern is a configuration of pieces that usually form some type of advantage for you (in most cases),the most basic "patterns" are that of Checkmate but there are tactical patterns and even patterns that pertain to strategy as well.  In this book there are tons of checkmate patterns and some tactical patterns as well,such as "forks","pins" and "discovered attacks",3 tactics that recur over and over again in the games of amateurs.  For those of you who don't know,a Chess amateur is a player who is rated under 1800 and that's at least most of us,even still,if you're rated 1800+,it wouldn't hurt to take a look at some of these.

I haven't finished the book yet but I definitely recommend it for newcomers to the game,you can learn how to play Chess as well with this book as it goes over all the basic rules and even covers some of the more advanced rules of the the game, and then after that it explains "algebraic notation" the Chess language used to record games,and then finally it goes into the puzzles.  This book focuses on "Pattern recognition" in which Chess patterns recur quite often,helping to seal them into your memory better.  The book isn't that expensive (I think it's under 20 bucks) and you get alot for your money here.  I'd definitely recommend a purchase and shoot me a message if you ever want to get in a game of Chess.  I'm no expert but I'd probably give you a run for your money so to speak.  Thanks for taking the time to read this review and I hope you have a great day.
566842
Great book. I implemented the strategy and it makes sense and works. I've also been listening to the podcast "The Profit First".

I bought this book in kindle format and audiobook. I started with the kindle and finished with the audiobook. Sometimes it drags a little bit so the audiobook it great for that (thanks x1.25 speed). But the kindle book is great for illustrations and spreadsheets (but you can get them on his website). I'd love to get on his podcast one day, they're a fun team.
3934013
While my rating is over 2000, my play suffers from what a GM friend calls "approximate tactics."  Yeah, I may already recognize the mating patterns at a glance, but there's often only one precise path. So one has to follow intuition with calculation, then expand the search if the first candidate moves fail.  This book is probably not for players under 1400...but it's a brilliantly-organized book in that the combinations are not too hard.
4705958
Chess is a very complicated game and requires a lot of brain works. This book contains useful and effective strategies on how to win in this game. I find it really helpful that each technique was properly illustrated in the book. I highly recommend this book to everyone who wants to learn and play Chess. The book is well written, informative and reader friendly. What I like about the book is that the author included pictures of each piece so that you can identify them from one another and their specific move. Overall I can say it's a great book!
3982615
ecellent if you don't know how to load your game on to your system.. First half of book will tell you how! Excellent strategy as well.. ie.. Basic..Don't stay close to enimes to long ,, they will kill you! Excellent strategy in any gamer book!
2612216
This book helped me when I was learning. This book gives 3 basic openings and encourages the user to focus on just these. This is good advise for someone who knows how to play, but not well. These openings will get you into a sound middle game, and if your opponent is not careful they will make a mistake you'll be ready to capitalize on. I now follow a similar line of reasoning but I now use a differnt opening, the King's Indian...partly because it can be used for white or black, and it is more difficult to disrrupt. My favorite book for that is "The Ultimate King's Indian Attack" by Angus Dunnington.
3863495
I have been attempting to build up my chess tactics for sometime now, and I've examined several of the basic tactics books out there. There are several books that discuss tactics, for example, explaining what a pin is, what a fork is, yadda yadda yadda, and yet those "basic" books (i.e. Beginning Chess Players Bible, for example) don't really have many practice problems. Sierwan's popular book "Winning Chess Tactics" had a similar problem for me.

  From there you have hard-hitting, heavy books on tactics that were simply too advanced for me. Combination Challenge was one of those books, too complicated for me at times, too difficult. It took me a long time to find that kind middle-ground books for relative beginners trying to work on their tactics.

  In the end, I've been working out of two main puzzle books to practice my tactics: Polgar's monstrous CHESS (5355ish problems...) and then this little gem of a book. When I discuss Winning Chess Tactics for Juniors, understand then that I've seen a few of the harder books but the other book I've mostly worked with is Polgar.

  For starters, Winning Chess Tactics for Juniors is a derivative work. Hays took some problems from Combination Challenge and put them together in this book. For me, that's not a complaint because the full fledged CC was too difficult for me. One immediate plus when I got this book was that it is TINY. Tiny is not a bad thing -- it's fantastic! 128 pages of mostly diagrams is a solid chunk of problems, and it fits anywhere!

  I admit, I was concerned how long it would take to get through the book. I've plowed through about 700 of Polgar's problems in only a few weeks, so I was concerned that Winning Chess Tactics would be silly.

  No. Don't let "For Juniors" fool you. For beginners, this book will kick your face in. It is an EXCELLENT tactical workout. There's a few reasons for this. For one, the diagrams are relatively complicated, so you have to consider a variety of potential moves. Secondly, you are only given the clue of who's turn it is to move. That means you might be winning a piece with a tactical strike, or you may be playing for mate. The only clue aside from who's turn it is would be the section grouping (i.e. "discovered attacks" section will contain many variations of a discovered check, discovered attack, double dhecks, etc).

  This lack of hints makes it an extremely useful workout. In Polgar, and several other books I looked at, you're given "White to play, Mate in 3", or "Find the Fork", etc. That kind of mental prompting is very nice, actually, but in some ways it is illusory. During a game you will not know there is mate in two, unless you yourself can SEE, in fact, there is a threat of mate in two. Winning Chess Tactics for Juniors is an excellent book because it makes a much more realistic simulation of what you might find glancing at the board in your own games.

  Out of the puzzle books I've worked with (Sierwan's being the other prominent one), this book strikes a nice balance of difficulty and variety, and it's format makes it very useful. Though this is technically a derivative product, it is a very useful product and the fact that it is derivative doesn't really matter to me. If you're advanced enough to be taking on the full Combination Challenge, of course, you don't want this book, but if you're relatively new to club / tournament chess and you want to practice your tactics, I highly recommend this book.
710049
This book is well written and covers basic through advanced play in a way that should be easy for any level of player to follow.  Especially insightful and useful are the charts on strategy.  Some people argue some  of the concepts in this book are out of date; however, if studied and  mastered you should find they still hold true depending on the rules of the  particular casino your are playing.  It is a worthy complement to other  books on the subject written more recently.  The more you know and the more  you have mastered different stategies the better you play will be.  This is  a great resource.
1428855
well i will not write so much here, the book is realy nice, packed with many nice tactics.
every page you get a setup and you have to figure it out how to win.
i use this book in the morning before go work to wake up my thinking muscles.

great book period.
1270989
I assumed previously that strategy is all tedious and my little 1600 brain would never be able to get "it". But Silman's articles warmed me up to the subject by showing connections between strategy and tactics and I started looking for a good book. I had to reject most candidates, Dvoretsky went over my head, most of the others did not reach the middle level to my mind.
But here is a different solid approach combining elements of positional theory with some practical and realistic positions on the board. I don't know if I understand Aagaard fully yet, but it is certainly fun trying and applying the ideas to my own games. Even during blitz, which happens to be my weakest spot, I found myself playing more solid moves, the kind that doesn't lose right away as a I tend to do under the pressure of time. If you want in on the fun, this is probably one of the best guides on strategy for mid levels you are going to find, well, anywhere!