Chess Fundamentals

The greatest chess player of his era wrote almost nothing about the game. What he did write matters. José Raúl Capablanca, the Cuban genius who dominated chess from 1914 to 1927 with an almost supernatural intuitive gift, produced this single instructional volume in 1921, and it remains essential reading over a century later. Chess Fundamentals distills the eternal principles of the game: opening axioms, the art of the endgame, piece valuation, the cultivation of passed pawns, and the elusive concept of initiative. Capablanca writes not about variations or theory, but about the underlying truths that transcend any particular opening fad or tactical fashion. His method is crystalline, stripped to essence, the way he played. The book claims to be for beginners, but masters have returned to it for decades because the fundamentals never change. This is for the player ready to stop memorizing moves and start understanding chess.