And just when you thought they couldn’t think up of a better name than “Chessmaster: 11th edition”, they did. Introducing “The Art of Learning – Chessmaster: Grandmaster Edition”, with a stronger Chessmaster (around 2773 ELO), stronger personality opponents and 14 detailed games annotated by IM Josh Waitzkin teaching you about “The Art of Learning”.

There’s a greater emphasis on having fun while you play as when you load into the game for the first time (and after putting in your name, age and chess experience), you’ll be asked whether you’d like to LEARN, PLAY or (have) FUN. And if you by chance decide to have fun, then you’ll be asked whether you’d like to have fun playing, solving a puzzle or learning the basics.

Clicking on the play link in the fun section will redirect you to a board with animated bunnies on a grassy board. Clearly, a Chessmaster attempt with being fun(ny). But, then again you could say that Chessmaster is being kid-friendly, since clicking on the puzzle link of the fun section will bring up some incredibly challenging … beginner puzzles e.g. White to win, Mate in 1, Use the white queen and move it diagonally to … You get the point right?

Of course, I was only kidding above – but not about the animated bunnies. As a matter of fact, clicking on the mini games link of the fun section will allow to see fruit on a chessboard. Yes, that’s right, actual fruit! And you thought animated bunnies was fruity!

But on a more serious note, the 14 annotated games by Josh Waitzkin is really helpful – especially for those players wanting to get past the intermediate stage – since he asks what move you should make in a certain position then proceeds to explain why different moves would be better or worse than what was actually played in the game.

There’s also an 800,000 game database, full of master games and extremely useful for analysing your games against the masters. Another handy Chessmaster feature is the openings section where you’ll be able to train, build and expand your opening repertoire – especially useful to take your opponents by surprise. Although I don’t recommend you surprising yourself by playing something you’ve never, ever played in your life.

With a very decent price (under $10 at the time of writing), The Art of Learning – Chessmaster: Grandmaster Edition is perfect for any aspiring chess player to learn, play and have fun.

If you just came off from the street wondering how to play chess, then The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Chess, Third Edition by Patrick Wolff is your answer. Written by a 2-time US Chess Champion, International Chess Grandmaster and long time instructor, Wolff ensures that the transition from nobody to newbie will be effortless.

The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Chess, Third Edition has over 400 illustrations, including chess explanations and real-life photos and over 20 pages of detailed answer key notes.

It’s well organised with 21 easy-to-follow chapters covering the rules, history, tactical motives, weak squares and computers. And within each chapter are plenty of diagrams with plenty of chess puzzles to keep your brain relatively active. If you’re already familiar with some the things in the book, like the rules, then you can skip it and go on to more challenging themes.

Wolff’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Chess, Third Edition understands that starting out a game like chess can be profoundly difficult and so the language has been appropriately toned down to your level. Mind you, don’t expect expletives to be carefully scattered in this 3rd edition. Surely, an idiot’s vocabulary can’t be that limited!

Although The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Chess is user friendly, well organised and thorough, there aren’t many clear references to the diagrams and sometimes the explanations are hard to follow through. Also, there aren’t any complete games to go through.

But in any case, The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Chess, Third Edition by Patrick Wolff has made sure to keep you wanting for more with these inadequacies but at the same time has made sure you can beat anyone who hasn’t read this book!

NB: Patrick Wolff has beaten Garry Kasparov in a simultaneous exhibition.

No doubt, chess is a very complex game. We sit at the board trying to think of the best continuation and sometimes we succeed, and sometimes we drastically don’t succeed. There are many concepts in chess including zugzwang, en passant, fianchetto, tabiya and prophylaxis that are designed to help us find the right moves but it seems as if it’s making chess harder than it already is.

And so, Ray Cheng decided to come up with a solution, entitled “Practical Chess Exercises”. As the title suggests, this book doesn’t focus on just one aspect of chess – it tries to help us out in all aspects. If you’d buy an endgame book, then you wouldn’t really expect any tactical sacrifices and vice versa.

Cheng, on the other hand, presents us with 600 different scenarios ranging from endgames, tactics, defense and even opening surprises. The lack of ordering or labelling of such categories invokes a sense of uncertainty, which is what you pretty much expect in a game of chess anyway.

If in case you ever get stuck on a problem, there are solutions to them on the opposite page. Not only are the problems of good quality, since the solutions are so close, this also saves you time from flipping back and forth to see if you were right.

But it goes without saying that winning in chess is about finding the tough (right) moves in tough positions and no doubt Ray Cheng has produced an instructive guide in helping us chess players find the ultimatum of our battles.

Recommended for players below USCF 2200.