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The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings, Algebraic Edition
The novice chess player faces a huge hurdle when confronted with the quantity of theory available on the openings. Reuben Fine explains the essential concepts and plans for each opening, so that the beginner can learn and understand the openings without being confused by a host of variations. Reuben Fine is an American Grandmaster, several times winner of the US Championship and a candidate for the World Championship in his prime.
216 pages, Paperback
First published June 1, 1989
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About the author
Reuben Fine
92 books6 followersReuben C. Fine (1914 – 1993) was an American chess player, psychologist, university professor, and author of many books on both chess and psychology. He was one of the strongest chess players in the world from the mid 1930s until his retirement from chess in 1951. He was granted the title of International Grandmaster by FIDE in 1950, when titles were introduced.
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Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews
September 8, 2010
There's been a long discussing thread this week on my review of Scott Pilgrim vs The World. I started off by complaining that I found the movie hard to appreciate, since I'm not part of the video game generation and the references aren't natural for me. Many younger people countered by saying that they've hardly played video games at all, and they completely got it.
Well... my belief here is that you often soak up far more of the surrounding cultural ethos than you realise. A striking recent example: when I spent a couple of weeks on Hawaii in 2008, one of the first things I did was to buy a book on Hawaiian grammar. I read it every spare moment I had, and by the time I left I had picked up the basics of the language and at least two or three hundred words of vocabulary. Wow! It was so interesting, and, amazingly, it made sense! But as soon as I'd left, and was no longer in the only country in the world where Hawaiian is spoken, I had trouble remembering why I'd been so fascinated. The odd thing is that, consciously, I have hardly any memory of hearing anyone speaking Hawaiian. I suspect that people born after 1980 are in a similar position with regard to video games. Even if they don't play themselves, they're immersed in a culture where many of the people they hang out with are players, and they pick things up without realising it.
Which brings me to The Ideas Behind The Chess Openings, the first serious chess book I ever read. It was 1971, and the whole world was captured by Fischer-mania. Bobby had powered his way through the elimination stages of the world championship leaving several shell-shocked wrecks behind him (this is barely an exaggeration); now everyone was wondering if he would stay sane long enough to take the title. Meanwhile, lots of 13 year old kids like me decided they would study chess properly.
My father gave me this book. It was written by Reuben Fine, one of the greatest players of the 1930s, and it had a good reputation. Fine walks you through the most important openings, explaining the strategic concepts. Your basic goal is to do this, you want your pawns here and here, your queen should go to this square, you need to transfer your knight to the king-side. But I found it very unsatisfying. I didn't want all this strategic advice. Sure, ideally White wants to put the pieces where he says. But supposes Black crosses his plans by doing this, or maybe this? Then what? He hardly ever told you.
When Fine wrote the book he was a top Grandmaster, and when I read it I was a beginner. He knew a thousand times more about chess than I did. Having now read Kasparov's fantastic My Great Predecessors, I think I can explain both why Fine's book was so good, and why I was so dissatisfied with it. Fine grew up influenced by Capablanca, who played positions in a harmonious, strategic way, and tried to avoid complex tactical calculations wherever possible. Fine explains Capablanca-style play very well. But, since then, things had become more and more concrete. Of course strategic principles were still important, but tactics were more important. I somehow knew that, even though I'm sure no one had ever told me. Within a couple more years I was playing 1970s chess, and often using concrete tactics to run rings around older players who still thought primarily in terms of abstract positional categories. But it wasn't until much later that I could have described any of it in those terms. I just knew the old guys were behind the times and didn't get it.
Human thought patterns are changing faster than we want to believe; I've been discussing with my psychologist friend whether it's possible to use chess to investigate that change quantitatively. Looking at books like this one, I have a tantalising feeling of something there that's almost within our grasp. Excuse me for thinking out loud at you.
Well... my belief here is that you often soak up far more of the surrounding cultural ethos than you realise. A striking recent example: when I spent a couple of weeks on Hawaii in 2008, one of the first things I did was to buy a book on Hawaiian grammar. I read it every spare moment I had, and by the time I left I had picked up the basics of the language and at least two or three hundred words of vocabulary. Wow! It was so interesting, and, amazingly, it made sense! But as soon as I'd left, and was no longer in the only country in the world where Hawaiian is spoken, I had trouble remembering why I'd been so fascinated. The odd thing is that, consciously, I have hardly any memory of hearing anyone speaking Hawaiian. I suspect that people born after 1980 are in a similar position with regard to video games. Even if they don't play themselves, they're immersed in a culture where many of the people they hang out with are players, and they pick things up without realising it.
Which brings me to The Ideas Behind The Chess Openings, the first serious chess book I ever read. It was 1971, and the whole world was captured by Fischer-mania. Bobby had powered his way through the elimination stages of the world championship leaving several shell-shocked wrecks behind him (this is barely an exaggeration); now everyone was wondering if he would stay sane long enough to take the title. Meanwhile, lots of 13 year old kids like me decided they would study chess properly.
My father gave me this book. It was written by Reuben Fine, one of the greatest players of the 1930s, and it had a good reputation. Fine walks you through the most important openings, explaining the strategic concepts. Your basic goal is to do this, you want your pawns here and here, your queen should go to this square, you need to transfer your knight to the king-side. But I found it very unsatisfying. I didn't want all this strategic advice. Sure, ideally White wants to put the pieces where he says. But supposes Black crosses his plans by doing this, or maybe this? Then what? He hardly ever told you.
When Fine wrote the book he was a top Grandmaster, and when I read it I was a beginner. He knew a thousand times more about chess than I did. Having now read Kasparov's fantastic My Great Predecessors, I think I can explain both why Fine's book was so good, and why I was so dissatisfied with it. Fine grew up influenced by Capablanca, who played positions in a harmonious, strategic way, and tried to avoid complex tactical calculations wherever possible. Fine explains Capablanca-style play very well. But, since then, things had become more and more concrete. Of course strategic principles were still important, but tactics were more important. I somehow knew that, even though I'm sure no one had ever told me. Within a couple more years I was playing 1970s chess, and often using concrete tactics to run rings around older players who still thought primarily in terms of abstract positional categories. But it wasn't until much later that I could have described any of it in those terms. I just knew the old guys were behind the times and didn't get it.
Human thought patterns are changing faster than we want to believe; I've been discussing with my psychologist friend whether it's possible to use chess to investigate that change quantitatively. Looking at books like this one, I have a tantalising feeling of something there that's almost within our grasp. Excuse me for thinking out loud at you.
March 10, 2011
Fine can be a little dogmatic in his advice, and some of the book is now dated, but this is still one of the best books for understanding what openings are all about-- not just memorizing variations.
November 16, 2012
A good one-volume short intro to the wide world of chess openings. Rueben Fine does a great job of putting the most vital info into a pocket-sized book. This is a classic book in the chess lexicon. I have the old second edition in the Descriptive Notation and one of the newer editions in Algebraic to give my well-worn paperback a permanent and well-deserved resting place on my bookshelf.
February 13, 2008
I imagine I'd have liked it better if I was any good at chess. I guess I can add that to the list of things I thought I was good at as a kid. Like skiing and skipping class. I enjoyed the author's name more than anything. You can start calling me that if you want. Reuben Fine, indeed.
September 27, 2012
This is a classic for a reason. Fine gives great insight into the openings, giving the beginner and intermediate player, the knowledge needed to understand the opening of their choice. A bit dated, but overall still relevant.
October 25, 2019
Chess is a storied game with plenty of expert-level and master-level players weighing in on how to best play the game. With the three major stages of the game being the Opening, the Middle Game, and the End Game respectively, there is a lot of fertile ground to cover on how to play.
One such player is Reuben Fine, a Chess Grandmaster who was active during the Twentieth Century. His book on the chess openings is called Ideas Behind The Chess Openings. It proceeds as expected from a book on chess.
The book organizes the openings into the first moves made which is an obvious thing to do. I own a much longer book on the Chess Openings called Modern Chess Openings, but that book has some issues that I can’t remember. Ideas Behind The Chess Openings is shorter than that book, and it explains the choices and main ideas utilized in each opening. The problem I have with the Opening of the game is that I tend to memorize things. I like the idea behind this book since it tells you why you should do this particular move.
The book begins with General Principles and moves on to the King’s Pawn Openings. Following that it goes over the Queen’s Pawn Openings. Some of the Openings are skipped since I don’t see why anyone would make a move like that. I suppose that Mr. Fine would agree with me since he doesn’t cover weird openings with any depth.
So the only other problem I have with this book is that it was written in older notation. I know I harp on this a lot, but reading older notation is annoying to me. Thankfully, the book has images showing checkpoints of the game. So I could play along on a physical board if I needed to.
One such player is Reuben Fine, a Chess Grandmaster who was active during the Twentieth Century. His book on the chess openings is called Ideas Behind The Chess Openings. It proceeds as expected from a book on chess.
The book organizes the openings into the first moves made which is an obvious thing to do. I own a much longer book on the Chess Openings called Modern Chess Openings, but that book has some issues that I can’t remember. Ideas Behind The Chess Openings is shorter than that book, and it explains the choices and main ideas utilized in each opening. The problem I have with the Opening of the game is that I tend to memorize things. I like the idea behind this book since it tells you why you should do this particular move.
The book begins with General Principles and moves on to the King’s Pawn Openings. Following that it goes over the Queen’s Pawn Openings. Some of the Openings are skipped since I don’t see why anyone would make a move like that. I suppose that Mr. Fine would agree with me since he doesn’t cover weird openings with any depth.
So the only other problem I have with this book is that it was written in older notation. I know I harp on this a lot, but reading older notation is annoying to me. Thankfully, the book has images showing checkpoints of the game. So I could play along on a physical board if I needed to.
September 16, 2024
I tend to side with the negative reviews on this one. The advice is somewhat dated, although one could argue at a beginner level that might not matter. I also think the title and introduction exaggerate the extent to which this is about the "ideas" behind the openings, you still end up quite in the weeds about particular move orders at points. While I don't doubt that this title was quite groundbreaking and influential in its time, to my mind it has been surpassed. I'd argue you will get more out of reading about particular openings you want to play in Paul van der Sterren's Fundamental Chess Openings, which probably has about the same balance between ideas and theory tables as this book but with more sound and modern advice as well as better coverage of the space of possible openings.
Did not finish.
Did not finish.
October 25, 2016
Read 50%. Focused on the sound openings, especially the ones I play or encounter. Skimmed passed the others. I got limited insight into how to follow up certain openings and a few specific tricks, but not much more than that. Occasional use of colourful language helped to liven up this inherently dry topic.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 reviews