Why I buy this one ?
- Grandmaster Susan Polgar takes you through 8 easy to follow lessons with highly instructive games covering the basic principles of chess
- Increase your understanding of chess, and Susan is guaranteed to improve your chess game
- Susan will show you how to avoid the most common mistakes and give your chess game a fundamental foundation
- Grandmaster Susan Polgar: 4 time Women's World Champion. Only World Triple Crown Winner (World Blitz, Rapid, and Classical World Champion) and 5 time Olympic Champion (5 Gold, 4 Solver, 1 Bronze)
- So sit back and let one of the Worlds best player train you in the basic principles of chess

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What our customer's say!

"Critical DVD for beginners", This is one of the most important instructional DVDs for beginners and novices. I recommended this for all new players. It's high quality, easy to understand and simple to remember.

"Mixed Bag", I bought 4 of these videos and recently received the 5th as a gift. I had high expectations, but was disappointed in a few of these videos.

So I want to give you a quality review that says something about the videos other than, "My kids watched these and think they're great" or "These videos are soooo boring." types of reviews.

My bias is against the presentation style in the 1st video, the content in the 2nd, but I really do like the 5th one. You can read about my reviews of the 3rd and 4th videos, which I don't recommend, not because of anything in the videos, but just because chess students should not buy videos on tactics and traps, you can learn all about these for free on Chessgames dot com. In fact, a lot of chess information you could read at Chessville dot com, for example. It is run by national master Dan Heisman, and contains a lot of valueable information.

So what is it about this first video that I don't like? One is the teaching style, because it certainly does not stem from GM Polgar's enthusiasm of chess, but rather a straightforward no-frills approach that simply designed to tell you stuff you need to know. Some may like this approach. Personally, I don't. I like enthusiastic teachers in beginning videos. For example, Andrew Martin's two videos for the beginning/intermediate chessplayer are recommended in lieu of the first two videos in this series for that simple reason. You can read a review of his two DVDs by going to the chessbase website and selecting "support" which you will see at the top of the page, when you get to the support page, scroll down to the title that says, "Two DVDs by Andrew Martin". Really, Martin is an entertaining and enthusiastic chess teacher.

But it's difficult for some teachers to be entertaining, and most are dry. This is because of the technical nature of chess. Nonetheless, if you have the patience, Susan Polgar's advice for chessplaying is as valued as any advice a medical doctor can give you. Still, there are times when a doctor's advice won't help you. Such as when the patient sees the doctor and says, "Doctor, my throat hurts when I talk..." and the doctor says, "Then don't talk...". That's really not such good advice to help your sore throat. So in this review, I will be comparing the advice that Susan gives, to the advice that a doctor gives, and hope that you can understand the tone of the videos.

Let's start with Video #1: Opening principles. This is for the absolute novice who knows nothing about openings. Be warned, she is dry, and she works here with Paul Truong in a call and answer type of BINGO delivery. I timed this. The median waiting length is 5 seconds (which can double). This is the time after Paul calls, "Pawn to e4" and the moment Susan moves the piece, and answers with an analysis on the new position. I think 16 minutes are wasted by including Paul Truong in this style, which really slows down the dry and formal procession.

Therefore, watching this video #1 is like watching your doctor collaborate with a nurse about your sore throat. You know you shouldn't yell or talk, but perhaps you didn't know you could whisper. So they are going to tell you that you can whisper, but you've got to wait a long time before learning that so...yeah, this video is for the absolute beginner who is very 'patient'. But it contains a lot of good information.

Unfortunately for chess, there are a lot of boring videos and this is one of them. It is boring because there are two people chatting about one game. It could improve if Susan did the chatting and the moving....Not recommended, but a luke-warm 1/3 OK, JUST WATCH IN SHORT BITS AND PIECES.

Video#2:How to make a Plan, is just strange. It promises to let you know "How to Make a Plan" but then never does tell you this. It does show you plans, but not how they were created, or how to make your own.

So this is like getting information from your optometrist about your sore throat. They'll give you some shallow information about reading glasses, but it's not the kind of information you are seeking.

Likewise, this video doesn't help you learn 'how to make a plan', it simply tells you that there are plans that exist in chess. I don't believe the opening or endgame plans are useful, she goes to move 8 and then tells you the plans that exist in variations. Like what beginner players will have the exact opening moves in a game? If you can do this, then you should already know why you're playing this type of opening (you'll know the plan and this video won't help).

I do believe that there is some advantage to running through the middlegame plans, because this is annotation of the games from a GM perspective. However, this video is Not recommended if you want to learn 'how to make a plan', because you will still need to learn about how to plan. However, if you are seeking a GM's middlegame analysis, and a review of several opening moves, then this would be ok to buy.

Improvements for the Marketers/Producers to consider: The style of these videos is patterned after the Roman videos, with Susan sitting by a board facing you, while a Chessbase type of graphic takes up half the screen. Sometimes she will move her hand to show attacking lines, etc., but you won't be able to see what she's motioning to. They need to integrate graphic pointers on the Chessbase graphic at the same time Susan motions with her hand, so that the viewers can understand what she is doing. Take a look at some of the Chessbase Trainer programs for ideas on how to do this and it will improve the impact and quality of future videos.

Bottom line:
I recommend NOT getting the first two videos. If you REALLY NEED TO OWN A CHESS VIDEO then I do recommend: ProChess DVD Yas Seirawann.

I also highly recommend the two videos by Andrew Martin titled: "Basics of Winning Chess" and "The ABC's of Chess Openings", the reviews of which can be found at the Chessbase/support. And I will leave you with this to consider:

"Andrew Martin is a chess teacher of some renown, possessed of excellent communication skills and a flair for the metaphorical...Teachers like that are (regrettably) few and far between. Chess teachers are no exception; in fact, it's harder for someone to be an entertaining chess teacher because of the technical nature of the subject matter. Chess is a fun game but the technical aspects can often be as dry as dust. That's what makes two new ChessBase DVDs by Andrew Martin, The Basics of Winning Chess and The ABC of Chess Openings, so remarkable -- they're entertaining as well as instructive." Steve Lopez -Chessbase product reviewer

If you need to learn more, I invite you to read my other reviews on the videos #3, #4 and #5 on their respective amazon listings.

While I say "stay away from the introductory videos #1,#2, and especially #3 and #4, I do think #5 and #6 videos would be a welcomed addition to any chess library.

"The best", I bought these DVDs for my 3 kids who are rated between 600 - 1200. They are glued to them and have learned a lot from the series. I also enjoy these DVDs as well. I can't wait for the next volume.

"She's not Dumb", I think there is truth in the middle. Maybe some of these videos are bad and some are good. Like take that 1800 reviewer as an instance, they must be smarter than the other one who called her dumb, because look. If it was dumb to try to review a beginner's video as an 1800 player, then a GM must be unqualified to make a beginner's video, right? Well I don't think so, so that's just dumb.

"Excellent Instruction", The last reviewer wrote the dumbest thing. The title says: Basic Principles of Chess. An 1800 is NOT a player who needs basic principles. And if he's under 13 and 1800 then he's very intelligent but can't read the title? The point of having a GM explaining in details is meant for beginners and novice. This is the same reason why people pay to take chess lessons with GMs. There're are millions of chess players who don't understand the basic principles of chess. This is where videos like this come in. Ms. Polgar goes through all the details and explain everything in a very easy to understand manner. Many beginners don't play chess properly. In this video, Ms. Polgar explained the must do in chess principles. No one has ever done this before. This is not for advanced players. It's for beginners and novice players. The quality of the video is fantastic.

Read this reviews before You buy...

"Videos Chug and Sputter", Dear Chess Consumer:

The review by Thal Ajoni is an honest and thoughtful criticism of this set of Chess videos. Unfortunately it caught the attention of one or two people to falsly write 5-star reviews for this product (wrongly) thinking that they were championing the name of Polgar or women in Chess (as they did with Jennifer Shahade's very good first effort). By making this mistake, the few people in question merely succeeded in supporting a bad set of videos.

The user,"Danita", wrote a review to support this video on or about Dec 8. It turns out, she is probably the same person as Ludmila, as they both used the term "Internet Stalker" in reference to some kind of smear campaign either against Polgar or Women's chess in general. Here is an example:

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This is from a review of an excellent book written by Susan polgar called Breaking Through which has excellent annotations and a good story on Kasparov cheating against Judit. In her review, Danita uses the term "Internet Stalker":

Breaking Through : How the Polgar Sisters Changed the Game of Chess (Everyman Chess) (Hardcover)

Reviewer: Danita (Jacksonville, FL) - See all my reviews

"Too bad internet stalkers are allowed to write false reviews for any popular author.
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Notice also, the term "Internet Stalker" in the review written by "Ludmila" for volume 3:

Winning Chess the Easy Way with Susan Polagar Vol 3: Essential Chess Tactics and Combinations

Reviewer: Ludmila Konov (Brooklyn, NY) - See all my reviews

"...It's unfortunate that there's an internet stalker going around giving bogus reviews."

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It's "unfortunate" that I don't know how many other reviews this person wrote under pseudonymns in response to Thal Ajoni's open criticism, the original of which came out 1 week prior to Jennifer's book appearing on Amazon.

But the real 'Unfornate' problem is that Chess is difficult to learn, and the beginning videos are very boring in general. They become extremely bad when mixed with low budget film making. A lot of these videos are termed "Basement videos". Some of the older Roman videos are really bad, Edmar Mednis makes me fall asleep, but I generally try to stay awake. Danny Kopec's are pretty boring, he uses the term "Exspanation point" instead of "exclamation point" to denote a very good move. And some of the bad bishop videos are very, very bad. So there are a lot of bad videos, and I would have to characterize this set of videos as bad as well, even though the producers had deep pocket books.

And the ironic thing, re:women championing "women in Chess", is that it is not Susan Polgar who makes these videos boring, but the inclusion of Paul Truong, a man. With two people, the discussion does not skip along, it chugs and it sputters. It is very formal and very rigid. This is because there is a pause as the moves are translated from the mouth of Paul Truong, who reads: "Pawn to e4" ...

(pause)

...to the hand of Susan Polgar who then moves the piece to e4 . She then pauses again before saying...

(pause)

..."This is a good move, the pawn attacks a central square."

It would be quicker and better to omit Paul Truong, and just have Susan move the pawn to e4, while she starts explaning why this is a good move.

The Polgar videos could also become good videos if they would simply cast the spotlight on Susan and allow her some freedom in casual presentation, rather than to keep her so controlled. It's a very formal video.

Good Chess videos include but are not limited to the ones by Danny King, Andrew Martin, and Yasser Seirawan. If you are looking for videos to get your child interested, start with these three authors.

And read the review by Thal Ajoni, it's real, and will help you get started playing better chess.


"Highest quality DVD - Very helpful", This is an excellent DVD for beginners. It's well explained by GM Polgar. It's broken down to many chapters. She's an excellent teacher. I like it very much.

"Real All Reviews", I recommend to everyone interested to read Thal Ajoni's review before they make a decision to buy any of these videos. It's awesome, but these video's sure aren't!!!

"Very practical DVD", I didn't know what to expect with this DVD. I must say that I'm very happy with it. My son is glued to this DVD. It helped him a lot. A lot of details are discussed and she explained in a very clear and precise way.

"I love this set of DVDs", Exciting, fun, easy to learn from, just simply perfect. My sister and I learned so much from it. Ms. Polgar is the coolest teacher ever!