"LOGICAL CHESS, MOVE BY MOVE" by Erving Chernev is was the first book (to my knowledge) that uses complete games with every move analyzed. It has remained a well read and one of the top selling chess books for good reasons:

#1. The explainations are undersandable for the advanced novice.
#2. This way of teaching covers all important parts of the game, with the opening always being covered (of coarse!), almost always the middlegame and on occassion an endgame.

Other than the openings needing of updating, perhaps some more modern games being included and the book can get tedious when repeating itself to excess, these minor complaints are not too significant. In most cases the advanced novice is not going to be overly concerned about the openings being out of date, though a little more coverage and updating would improve the book a little. Good companion books using a move by move analysis at the same level are "Unbeatable Chess Lessons", "Chess, Art of Logical Thinking" and at a more advanced level "Understanding Chess" and "More Unbeatable Chess" - all good, all recommended depending on your playing level. "Logical Chess: Move by Move" stands out as being the first book of its type and is still going strong!

I've been buying and reading chess books for a year now, and I have to say that this is the book I read more than any other and feel I have learned the most from. It's relaxing to sit down with a board, pieces and a book and go through a game played between two great players, with move by move commentary included. You might think you're learning very little, but you'll be amazed at what sticks with you, and how you will start thinking more about what your opponents are planning when they make their moves, and how you will start calculating more deeply when it comes to your own.

I think that this kind of method of study is not only entertaining (Chernev is wonderful at drawing you into the game's "story," and by that I mean how the game develops and moves inexorably toward its decisive moment), but it teaches a beginner/low intermediate player a lot about openings (without going into all that dull and intimidating depth regarding variations etc. that you see in books on openings) and strategy (Chernev really stresses the importance in the games he chooses of players' efforts to either control or free up space, and squeeze out small advantages so that a decisive attack can be mounted). Chernev's commentaries are also very helpful when it comes to learning how to maximize the each piece's unique offensive and defensive capabilities. You'll begin to really understand where each piece belongs on the board and the difficulties you'll encounter if they're not in the right place.

The games that look at the Giuoco Piano and Ruy Lopez openings are very instructive, but I have enjoyed and learned a great deal from the excellent queen pawn openings games, since these games have offered a kind of template for me to experiment with the queen's gambit in my own games, and I've had some pleasing results. Two drawbacks for me are the fact that Chernev really seems to like the Colle system opening and it's over-represented (4 games), and that every game in which black responds with the French defense (e4 e6) has black being thoroughly trounced. You're left with the impression that the French defense has nothing to recommend it, but if that is indeed the case, why have so many top-flight players used it? I also would have liked some games in which black successfully plays the Sicilian (e4 c5), since it's such a popular, effective and interesting black response to e4. Still, these are minor reservations when I take the entire book into account.

Some reviewers have criticized the book for being so old and out of date, especially when it comes to the openings and black's defenses. These critics, though, are obviously more advanced players, so their criticism has no merit. If you're a beginner or even an intermediate player, you need to master the traditional openings that Chernev concentrates on in this book before you can start properly playing the modern openings and modern defenses. In my experience playing, it's so easy to knock over an opponent who tries a modern opening or modern defense, because it soon becomes clear they don't know what they're doing and it's not long before they make a blunder. I would however say that I have recently purchased Neil McDonald's "Chess: The Art of Logical Thinking," which follows the dame kind of format as Chervnev, but is different in that it draws exclusively on post-1975 games and therefore examines all the modern openings and modern defenses that have come into currency in the last thirty or so years. Taken together, these books will give you over sixty absorbing, instructive and beautifully annontated games that will teach you so much, and in such an enjoyable way.

"Logical Chess" is a logical way to teach chess. Games taken from play by strong players are used to provide neat lessons. To make sure everything that is important is covered one or more comments (and sometimes other move suggestions and comments) is made on all of the moves. This teaching method has become very popular among some of the top authors such as in "Unbeatable Chess Lessons" and "Understanding Chess" which are other good books using this same structure and also are recommeded that don't have the drawback of repeating themselves on same opening moves found in "Logical Chess" and are more up to date on the opening analysis. But that doesn't change the fact that "Logical Chess" is a classic and very good book to consider once beyond the beginner stage.