Board Games Books

I've played over a dozen murder mystery titles (mainly from this company, Decipher). This is one of their best for two reasons:

1. Mainly because the theme is so much fun. I'm not a child of the 60's, but come on, this is a GREAT opporunity to get a bit crazy.

2. The mystery is very solid. Difficult to figure out but not "out there"/no-way-you-could've-figured-that-out, either.

If your primary concern is the actual mystery component and you don't really care about the 'party' component, you may want to go with "The Duke's Descent" or "The Grapes of Frath" instead. But if you're looking for Good Times, this is the ticket.

RULES OF THE ROAD:

1. Make sure everyone dresses up. This theme is TOO good to waste on people wearing normal clothes.

2. Invite people who like to laugh. This should be a party, not a re-enactment of a CSI episode.

3. Block out several hours to play. This isn't a two hour affair. You should budget (ballpark) 3 to 4 hours for the actual game, not counting any time you might take for food, etc.

The age description on this is for 16 and up althought the character descriptions are very sexually suggestive and the behavior of the characters does not seem appropriate for a party given for a 16-year-old. I would strongly caution the purchase of this product for a teen party.

Let me tell you, I did this game for my 18th birthday two years ago, and it could not have been more of a hit! It was created so well that no one got lost or confused at all! I would recommend this to ANYONE and EVERYONE! We are even thinking of doing it again this year!

This was the first game I have bought of Host a Murder. I threw it as a halloween party. It worked out great. There were 8 adults. My partner agreed to handle dinner and the dishes while 8 of us played the game. This worked out really well. It was arkward to play the game while eating though. I would play a round, serve dinner, then pick it pick it back up. Between the third and fourth round, we served dessert. Allow atleast 4 hours to play the game. I also received a cd instead of a cassette for the game. This was a lot of fun.

This was the first mystery game that I ever hosted. We had so much fun with it that I really was looking forward to doing another. This was an evening of laughter and everyone just cut loose. We enjoyed the period and the characters. I would not recomend this to younger people because of the sexual suggestive
language but if you can over look that and just set out to have a good time this is a great way to spend the evening.

This is the most innovative game on the market for developing self understanding. I have been playing this game for years and now can laugh at the issues that come up whilst playing this wonderful game.
A quick solution for extremely difficult situations if one really wants answers!

Excellent board game, very creative and really assertive. It helps you in your personal growth.

My sister gave us this game-- I had never heard of it before. My husband and I played it last night and it was fabulous. I don't think I would play this game with people I did not know well or who were not open to this concept as the strucuture of the game is terrific, but the experience you have depends largely on your personal involvement. If you stand back and expect the game to "do its magic" on you-- you will likely be disappointed. Instead, it is all about the interaction and participation-- reflecting and responding and sharing insights.

I can't wait to play it again and really want to try it with 4 people next time. Highly recommended.

It's become a tradition with a friend of mine to meet on our birthdays each year. We read each others (tarot and other) cards and it gives us a chance reflect on the past year - our experiences, lessons learned, future plans. The cards often provide additional insight. I thought the Transformation Game might provide the same kind of feedback and give us both more a chance to participate; but the game was tedious, the directions unclear and some of the game feedback was not very positive. (One feedback was along the lines of "you haven't handled anger well, take 5 pain cards). I can see the intentions of the game and how it might work under some circumstances. But I think we'll stick with cards from now on. They are more specific, insightful and positive. Also cheaper.

Finally a board game, that is not based on owerpowering/winning over/undercutting others. The whole game is based on generating more connection between players, on all levels of depth. Spiritual (some could say New Age-y or Buddhist) in setup, the game leads each player through being born, and existence in the physical, Emotional, Mental and Spiritual realms until the player (the first one or each) blasts out through the final transformation. All this happens not before everyone needs to answer questions, act under certain circumstances, make decisions and express support towards others participating. The game includes hundreds of cards accompanying the movements on the board and describing what needs to be done at each step. I really liked how the game also helped to integrate the different world-view and the newly learned insights into my life by encouraging to write them down or follow them up after the game. Both good and bad events in life are handled with a nonjudgmental atmosphere encouraging equanimity in life and in our choices, overseen and supported by angels of different quality from the included angel card deck.

To begin with, let me state that the greatest book on chess ever written is How to think ahead in Chess by Horowitz. That book truely taught me the basic ideas of a strong opening for beginner, namely, the Stonewall Attack. Before that, I was clueless about handling 1 d4 as white.

Now that I have become more comfortable with Stonewall Attack, I have begun to recognize early moves that do not allow me to play Stonewall Attack. In fact, I am clueless on how to handle Kings Indian Defence. I clearly needed to learn a few basic strategies of dealing with early deviations from Stonewall Attack formations, So I started hunting for books. I have browsed through hundreds of books in Borders or B&N or local libraries and read reviews on Amazon.com for many more. I finally decided that A killer Chess Opening Repertoire would be a good book for me, and I did indeed order it from Amazon.com.

It has been a couple of weeks now, and I can say confidently that the joy of playing chess has increased marvelously for me. The best two chapters are the ones on Barry Attack, and Colle Zukertort system. They both provide excellent kingside attacking chances for white - I always go for kingside attack ... I understand the goal much more clearly than the subtle maneuvers involved in QGD. Since I do not make mistakes in the opening with this repertoire, I end up in games that are 70+ moves long and most of the time, I am attacking the king !!! It is really fun !

An added benefit has been to adopt the same repertoire in the reversed manner when playing as black. Whenever white fianchettoes is king bishop, I play for Barry attack reversed and the game looks fantastic.

One of the good things about the book is that it includes games on early deviation that are not strong and shows how the attack crushed opponents. It is really useful because most of the time at my level, opponents do deviate from the mainline very early and I can look up how to deal with them - While I am not very good at finding the key tactics in a time crunch situation, I am good at copying the tactics - so if I already have a demonstration of the tactics involved in the situation, I can reproduce them over the board.

I have read online that Barry Attack and 150 Attack (when Black avoids d5 altogether) are covered only in this book ... I still haven't got around to learning about 150 Attack ... but at my level, almost everyone plays d5 or fianchettoes ... To me, this book fills the critical gap created by the How to Think Ahead in Chess. These are the only two books you will ever need for opening as white.


To summarize: If you love to play Stonewall Attack, and are looking for creating a repertoire around that, this book is for you. Stop looking around, I have done all the hardwork, save your time and just buy this one. Note: this book does not actually cover stonewall attack ... for that I recommend the classic - How to Think Ahead in Chess: The Methods and Techniques of Planning Your Entire Game (Fireside Chess Library)

Opening repertoire books for white are a tricky proposition for a chess author. It is more common to find repertoire books for the black pieces - often based around a particular first move which thereby ensures that whatever white's continuation, the game will be channelled for at least a few more moves in the system of black's choosing. I am thinking, for example, of Yrjola & Tella's excellent 'Explosive Opening Repertoire for Black' in which 1 ... d6 is played against any white opening move. The difficultly is that a white repertoire must be able to cope with a vast variety of black responses - from the Nimzovitch (1 ... Nc6) to the Modern (1 ... g6) and everything in between - yet must not overwhelm the reader by presenting endless variations. Yet there are some successes in presenting a repertoire for the white player - Kosten's 'Dynamic English', Palliser's 'Play 1.d4!' and this book by Summerscale.

In many ways, for the average player, I would opine that this book is the better choice. Summerscale presents a queen pawn repertoire with an emphasis on quick development and an attacking set up. Kosten's book, while very well written, advocates quite a sophisticated set up requiring reasonable positional knowledge. Palliser's book is very good, and he presents a solid repertoire using the theoretical best move for white 2.c4, but it is also very comprehensive and thus requires a lot of time to study.

By not playing 2.c4 white, in theory, is not pressuring black quite as much - but there are compensating advantages. The most obvious is that the amount of study required is drastically reduced. Another is that white tends to remain in the system of their choosing. Less obviously, these systems lend themselves well to a style of play based on attacking, straightforward chess which is simply quite fun to play. I would recommend - in fact I would say it is essential - reading Vukovic's classic 'Art of Attack in Chess' if you wish to adopt this repertoire in order to get the most out of the aggressive setups you will (hopefully) obtain.

But let's not get carried away here. These systems, while easy to learn, can certainly be countered by black. Black can equalise without too much difficultly if they know what they are doing. On the other hand, even the theoretically best openings played in master games usually end up with only a small advantage to white.

In my opinion, a more serious defect is in the presentation of the repertoire. The 'complete game' format - while often touted as enabling better comprehension of an opening - also makes it far more difficult to spot holes in the system. For example, I compared the system that Summerscale advocates against the Pirc (150 Attack) with the lines given in the Yrjola & Tella book, which uses the Pirc (in Summerscale's book, you reach the 150 attack by 1.d4 d6 2.e4). In the main line, around move 5, the move given by Yrjola & Tella is simply not considered. Nothing, no mention and its a good move (which I won't disclose - in case you ever use the 150 attack against me in internet chess!). As black, I certainly would not fear the 150 attack based on what I have seen in the Summerscale book. However, this only confirms the point I made above - black can equalise if they know what to do. I guess using this book is about trade offs - you study less, and your games are probably more fun if you find attacking fun, but you have less chance of a lasting advantage against a good player.

Physically, this an attractive book. High quality paper, nice typesetting and I like the graphic design on the cover.

Overall then Summerscale presents a repertoire that is easy to learn and fun to use, with a few holes which you may be able to plug using other sources. A parting thought - as other reviewers have noted, some of Summerscales lines are less effective against black's indian systems. Have you considered the Trompowsky (1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5)? It is also an attacking line that is fun to play, and in conjunction with Summerscale's book will broaden your repertoire.

I am an expert on the Colle-Zukertort system. It is the only system on White I play [unless I am giving lessons to students]. In fact, I am currently writing a book on this opening.

"A Killer Chess Opening Repertoire" is a high-quality book. Only 144 pages long, but it makes great use of those 144 pages. On the other hand, with so little space, there are some limitations of coverage. One advantage of this book is that it does NOT attempt to cover both the Colle-Koltanowski AND the Colle-Zukertort. Why should a white repertoire book attempt to do both? This saves Summerscale much space to focus on what is important.

The book is written with the supposition that you are playing resonably high-level players. This means that you will often be in a situation where your opponent has made a lackluster move not covered in the text, and you will then need to understand how to exploit that. On the other hand, the same could be said of almost any opening book.

This book has a very different philosophy than either "The Ultimate Colle" or "Winning with the Colle System." Lane, author of "The Ultimate Colle," is content with certain simplifications that Summerscale is not. Smith and Hall's book, "Winning with the Colle System," is aimed at lower-level players and tends to be too rosey in its evaluations. Summerscale's book is both more ambitious and more honest than either of these. Summerscale wants a real attacking iniative or some other concrete advantage. If a line does not work well enough, Summerscale is willing to transpose out of the Colle to something more appropriate. Lane and Smith/Hall are less willing to play something substantially different.

Summerscale also covers some lines that the other books simply do not. For example, the extremely important 1.df d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.e6 Bf5 line, quite possibly the most powerful response to the Zukertort, is completely ignored by Lane and Hall!! Summerscale covers it, though he does not spend enough time on it.

Another example where Summerscale covers lots of lines others miss are the various early c5 options for black [1.d4 d5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.e3 c5 for example].

The common theme here is that Summerscale covers a lot of early deviations and options, but does not go very far down most of those trees. This is more useful than it sounds; trying to track down all the variations in all the anti-colle systems would take hundreds of pages.

One problem with the book is that the options it gives [150 attack and barry] for dealing with Gruenfeld/Indian options are systems for which other manuals are not available. It would be good to have separate books on these to bolster the repertoire given. This is a serious issue because those defenses are very common ones.

Still, as a extremely fun, slim repertoire book, it is hard to do much better than this!

The home work was not done 100% for this book.

The main theme of the book is the 150 attack and the Barry Attack. Now the Barry Attack is a facinating idea vs Grunfeld and Kings Indian Players.

The problem of the book it does not mention the main line of the Barry I feel. 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 g6 3.Nc3 d5 4.Bf4 Bg7 5.e3 0-0
6.Be2 c5 7.d:c Qa5 8.Nd2 Now why this book does not mention this line of the Barry is just beyond me. I feel this is by far whites best way of getting an advantage. Not the Ne5 stuff the book suggests.

But the book has some awesome ideas in it! But you need to study them on your own from other sources.

I found this book from Mr.Summerscale while searching for something more aggressive as white with respect to the Queen's Gambit (I know this seems strange, but let me explain). I used to play the QG simply for 2. c4 ... is generally considered the best follow-up to 1. d4 .... The most of the times I exited the opening phase with an advantage (I have a good memory :-) but at the very beginning of the middlegame ... well ... I simply didn't know what to do! My opponents defended very calmly and very well, waiting for the right moment to counterattack and eventually win the game.
"A killer Chess Opening Repertoire" doesn't contain a killer chess opening repertoire at all! Neither of the lines suggested by Mr.Summerscale will promise you an advantage in the opening, and if black knows what he is doing he is able to equalize without problems. But this is not a problem! The greatness of this book is simple: you are armed with a solid, reliable, difficult to crack opening system for white. You are unlikely to get caught into an opening trap, and if black doesn't exactly know what he is doing (which is the most of the cases in Club/Tournament play) he is likely to equalize and ... eventually lose the game.
Yes, through this book I learned the most important thing of chess (for me): the relation among the opening and the middlegame, and how to understand an opening THROUGH the middlegame positions it produces.
Now I hardly get an advantage in the opening against good opponents, but after the opening I know what to do very well, and I enjoy my games more.

A few remarks about the opening lines the book suggests:

a) after 1. d4 d5 2. Nf3 Nf6 3. e3 e6 4. Bd3 c4 Summerscale suggest 5. b3 ..., the Colle-Zukertort System. Don't underestimate this opening! It is played quite frequently by GM Artur Yusupov, and if a player of this calibre play the opening, well ... I can definely trust in it!

b) after 1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 g6 Summerscale suggest 3. Nc3 d5 4. Bf4 ..., the Barry Attack. This is a very exciting opening system, likely to caught the "unaware but always thrustfull" KID player in obscure territory. Even the line suggested by (the great) Joe Gallagher in his "Beating the Anti King's Indian" maybe let black to almost equalize, but brought the game on a positional ground which is certainly not what the KID player wants. And if the KID aficionado don't know the line really well... the white fun will start!

c) against the Pirc/Modern (What? The Pirc? But I play 1. d4 ...! Ok, but after 1. d4 g6 or 1. d4 d6 you MUST play 2. e4 ...!) Summerscale suggest the "150 Attack". I don't like the name, but the name is the only thing I don't like, and since Peter Leko agrees :-) I'm convinced as well! Learn to play well the "150 Attack" and you will find your opponents to change their repertoire! (BTW even Alburt and Chernin, in their "Pirc Alert!", the bibble of the Pirc, treat the "150" setup with great respect)

d) against the Benoni Summerscale suggest a line with d5, stating the Colle-Zukertort to be not quite good since black can delay ...d5! I prefer to stick to the Colle, even if this time I prefer the Koltanowski variation, which is not covered in the Summerscale book (if you are interested, I can suggest "The Ultimate Colle" by Gary Lane)

e) against the Dutch, Summerscale suggests 2. Bg5.... Leaving apart that this line can be completely ruled out by the move order 1. d4 e6! (the exclamation mark assumes black wants to follow-up with 2. ... f5, being ready for a French after 2. e4 ...), I'm sorry but I don't know very well this chapter because I play the Dutch myself as black and when faced with it as white I prefer one of the main lines. If you have no time to spend on the main line Dutch, then I think 2. Bg5... is a good choice, but you have to find something after 1. d4 e6 2. Nf3 f5.

f) against the Queen's Indian, again Summerscale opts to leave apart the Colle-Zukertort since black can avoid ...d5 for as long as he wishes. Ok, but I don't want to learn a new line, and following a suggestion from Mr.Lane's book (see above) I stick to the Colle-Zukertort nevertheless.

To summarize, five starts for a great book which teaches you how to study openings, and give you a very good system to start.

I've used this with my son since he was 5 months old and he loves it!

This book was wonderful for my son when he was a baby! I would stand the book up in a circle around him, lay him on his belly and he would scoot around looking at the book. He just loved it! I've given this book to all new mommies and their children love it. He even loved it as he was learnign to walk. We would lay it on the ground and he would "walk" to his favorite page. It is a must have for all

My child liked the book and its colors but it ripped the first day we had it!! He is only 1 and ripped it along the page fold, so nice book, poorly constructed

This is a fun toddler book with surround entertainment as it opens around the child!

This book is pretty good. It goes along with the Baby Galileo DVD. It opens up to form a circle that your baby can sit in the middle of. One side has Baby Einstein pictures and a story, and the other side has real photos of planets and other things in the sky and universe. My daughter already had the Baby Neptune - Oceans book similar to this and liked that one much better, the pictures were more colorful and there was more to look at. She hasn't seemed too interested in this one though. I don't think there's enough pictures and interesting things to look at in this book. She's already 2 so maybe it's a better book for a 1-yr old.

I have purchased 2 of these doll houses. I have one at my house for my grandchildren to play with when they come over and I bought one for my oldest granddaughter we love it and it is easy to keep because it becomes a book when you are finished playing with it. I store it on my bookshelf.

I purchased this item for both my Granddaughter and Goddaughter since I am very much into the doll's house world, hoping to create a love for this from an early age. Both of them absolutely love their dollhouse with the family and have endless hours of real enjoyment. This is a purchase well worth the money spent.

I bought this as a gift for my granddaughter,but couldn't resist a peek, its great!

My daughter loves pop-up books and this one is beautiful! She is at an age where she has quite an imagination and this book helps her to live out some dreams. It is a treasure.

This is nicely made, pretty sturdy, and perfect to take along for traveling to relatives houses or on any vacation. Folded up it takes up almost no space, but provides for fun pretend play when opened up.

My 20 month old son loves all of the I Spy books. He will find the objects on the pages and will say the name out loud. It keeps him busy on long car rides.

Very easy for younger kids - maybe a little too easy for older kids, this one doesn't get much use anymore. We've had to buy other books in the genre that were more advanced.

This was a gift for my 2 year old grandson. He finds it almost too easy, so I would suggest giving it to even younger children. It is good for interactive visual reading activity.

My daugher received this as a gift when she turned 1. I was surprised to see how quickly she picked up on the game and how much she enjoyed the book. I personally like the simple rhymes and I agree with the other reviewers that it's a great way to teach patience.

Now, at 20 months, she still enjoys it. We use it to point out different colors and different objects. I can see how we can alter this game to keep challenging her through her toddler years. We also read/play this book when we need a quiet game.

my twin 2yr 9mo boys like this book, but they quickly grew bored because it was just a tad bit too easy. it's still a fun book for them to read, but with very short longevity because we got this book for christmas.

I am not a Mahjong playe. My wife is. I wanted her to have a reference book on American version. I thought this would be good. Little information available on books contents and objectives except the usual hype about how we cannot get along without it. The book was very difficult to figure out. I still don't know whether or not it can be used for the american version of the game. It was poorly written and organized. I sent it back and paid for the return shipping. I will want more details when I buy another. Maynard

The Mah Jong Handbook presents an amazingly clear method for approaching the game. The book is easy-to-read, but deals with every aspect of the game in detail.

To get the most out of the book, I recommend taking the time to work through the example exercises yourself (before going on to the analysis discussion.) Once you've gone through the book this way, you'll pretty much know everything that an expert player knows. The only thing left is to get in enough playing time to put the theory into practice.

In addition to the game aspects, the book discusses the accompanying rituals and etiquette, as well as many variations on the rules.

This book covers all the questions anybody would have about this complex game. I've searched all over the internet for answers but most rules and gameplay written on line seemed like poorly translated rules from Chinese or whatever with many mysteries left unturned. This book is great and with minimal reading gets you playing in no time.

Well writen and easy to understand. Particularly for a novice at Mah-Jongg.

A good introduction to the game for beginners, with strategy advice that will be useful to more experienced players as well.

Whitney explains clearly and concisely, using easy to understand diagrams. She even manages to explain Mah Jong's rather complex scoring system, which can be a bit off-putting for beginners.

Her inclusion of the differences between Japanese and American rules is also quite helpful, although I've found that as with any game, some of the rules and terminology vary from region to region.

All in all a good book for those looking to begin playing Mah Jong, particularly those in Japan or with Japanese friends.

I bought this set along with Arcane Corrridors Dungeon Tiles, Set 2 (Dungeons & Dragons Supplement) and Hidden Crypts Dungeon Tiles, Set 3 (Dungeons & Dragons Accessory)and I love them! While they are useful for playing D&D they are very fun to just arrange on the floor. The artwork is fantastic and they are very durable. I have always wanted tiles where you can build your own rooms and hallways; now I can! I can't wait for more sets to come out.

Nice to use, but not absolutely necessary. Helps to design your dungeons.

If you can find any set of tiles for under $10 (including shipping), it's a deal hands down. I was expecting 6 sheets of glossy like tag-board about half the size of a sheet of paper each. What I received really blew me away for the value. Each tile sheet is the full size of a standard hardback D&D book. They're printed on very durable cardboard like you find in a kid's floor puzzle. And while they're glossy, they're also textured slightly with a kind of subtly raised crosshatch pattern that "zings" when you run the sharp part of your finger nail over it quickly. This keeps whatever markers you use from sliding all around on it. Now instead of each tile being the same size as the full piece of cardboard it's printed on, (other than 2 of the 6) each card is comprised of various sized individual tiles that you punch out of the cardboard, so when you're all done you have a stack of 38 separate tiles. 2 of the 38 tiles (a tavern and a house) are the full size of the sheet (8x10 squares), but all the rest range from 4x8 squares down to a 1x1. They all are double sided with various features on one side and mostly all blank dungeon floors on the reverse.

I was really surprised to find such a nice product, I'm looking forward to acquiring the rest of the set (up to 6 now!).

The tactical nature of 3.5 D&D combat begs for miniatures. A gridded surface to put those miniatures on is almost essential. Dungeon Tiles provide that surface in an attractive and durable package.

You get 6 full sheets of cardboard tiles. Each tile is protected with a finish that has a bit of 'tooth' to keep it from slding around on the tabletop. The art on the tiles is excellent and the first set strikes a good compromise between generic tiles and speciality bits.

I really do think these tiles give the best 'bang for the buck' of any D&D product out there. I don't know of a single DM that wouldn't benefit from a set or two of these in his/her collection.

These are high-quality, well produced and very helpful aids to the D & D game. Almost indestructible and in a variety of formations, these can be readily used in most dungeon delving situations. The only drawback noted is that there are no cave/cavern tiles. I have been told that further editions will remedy this. These tiles make miniature use a hundred times easier than it was before. Being that miniatures are being pushed heavily by the 3.5 game, this tile release makes perfect sense and it is nice that "perfect sense" actually meant something to someone at WOTC.

After watching the show "Hikaru no Go", i found the game of Go to be quite interesting. This book is very detailed and i enjoyed the history. It is just unfortunate that many people dont know about Go, and i would probably never have a chance to actually play it in the U.S.

This book contains a wealth of information for the Go player that's just beginning to play. It doesn't pull its punches but it also doesn't go into great depth on a lot of the concepts. There is a reason that most Go books come in series' of 5-6 books, there's just a lot to talk about.

If you're looking to start grab this book or just find a club in your area. There is a certain use for literature at the beginner level but playing one game a week with a shodan would take you much further than this book could ever hope.

There are two games of Go, the forest-and-trees welter of confusion that a beginner sees, and the game within the game that everyone else comes to terms with. Shotwell's book can bring you past the boulders of confusion and leave you standing beside the deep water. Whether you swim or not... :) He's also a geisha, in the well-known Reischauer/Culture of Japan academic style, so much of the book is full of reverent Taoist and Kung Fu mysticism which may be fun, but should be transcended as soon as you "see" the inner game. It's beside the point. Bottom line, I like this book. It nudged my game forward. That said, if you want to learn Go, you should get a good computer Go game, like Go4++ (Windows, commercial) or Sente Goban (Mac OS X, freeware), dumb it down and play until you win. Then come back to this book. There's a lot of satisfaction in that first win against a computer, and it helps the book make sense.

I was disappointed to read the last comment since I know the author and what he was trying to do and, as a go teacher, have seen his technique work on many people. As he stated on the first page ("How to Use This Book"), he was not trying to write a book that would just be thrown away after its contents were learned. That is for laundry list books and there are several hundred of them available in English for various stages of one's go career. What he wanted to do was to introduce readers to the dynamics of go playing--go is a game, after all, and not a course in school. What he advised the reader to do was to go as far as possible through the games in the book until they were stuck, then play alot (and, yes, also look at the laundry list books!), then come back, play some more and etc. That way, say over a period of time (and not just with one reading, as it looks like some commentators have done), one would get the feel for playing on, first simple 9 x 9 boards, then 13 x 13 and finally the full, complex, 19 x 19 size. By the time one finished, one would be completely conversant with any go player, and know much of go's 4,000 year-old culture and history. That doesn't mean you would *know* all of the techniques--only by playing and studying can you do that--but you would *know about* most of them and, you would also know what you *didn't know* and needed to. In other words, because of the immense amount of ground and the different levels it covers, the book is meant to be a launching pad into the world of go, and that it does admirably and certainly far better than any other beginner's book!

As a new Go player, I read this book hoping it would help me figure out what I was supposed to be doing. It covers the basics of the game but I found it not that clear or systematic. I had to pick up another book to really get a grasp of some of the basic strategies, and how to put them together.

The history of the game section, which takes up 1/3 or so of the book on the other hand, was very well written and quite engaging.

In short, if you want to learn basic strategy, there are many better books out there.

As a long-time fan of the Strat-o-Matic baseball game, I found this book to be an enjoyable trip through the history of the company and the personal endeavors of its creator, Hal Richman. It won't make you a better SOM player, but it will help you appreciate how it came to survive through the decades.

Guzzo's book brought back great memories when I played Strat-O-Matic baseball with my high school friends 40 years ago. After reading the book, I went back to my old strat-o-matic cards, bought some new ones and enjoy playing as a hobby away from my professional bookkeeping and tax work. Whenever the chance comes I show the game to young sons of our friends. They love it! Even my teenage daughter finds it interesting. I am amazed the game after 40+ years is not as well known as other board games like Monopoly. I think an effective marketing campaign would turn on many more baseball fans and increase the number of "fanatics"!

Edward Bubnys, Ph.D.
The Money Numberer

if you've ever caught the strat bug, this book is for you. a behind the scenes look at the history of the game and the story of the man behind it.

Strat-O-Matic Fanatics would, at first glance, seem to be of interest only to the small group of die hard enthusiasts who play, and are passionate about, Strat-O-Matic Baseball and want to know how it came to be.

Readers are treated to a riveting story, however, about a very shy boy who found solace from his chaotic household surroundings by inventing a game with dice and cards that replicated baseball. Not only is the creator's (Hal Richman) story vividly told, it is done so with a great deal of sensitivity and insight. In addition to being a very personal story, it is also a fascinating tale of the formation of a beloeved small business that has managed to survive despite the entry bigger, better funded competitors, due to careful attention to and understanding of the marketplace and its customers.

Sadly, few people who don't play Strat will give this book a chance, but anyone could find something to enjoy in this book (for those who DO play the game, its really a must read).

NB: The book is well written, despite what a few other reviews state. I'm already looking forward to Guzzo's next book on baseball statistics.

Quite simply, Guzzo has written a masterpiece capturing, in eye-opening detail, the complete history and progression of the venerable Strat-O-Matic family of sports board games. Not only does this book lay out, with great relish, how this game company grew from nothing in 1961 to competing with and fighting off challenges from big dudes like Sports Illustrated, EA Games, et al, during the past 30 years.

This book doesn't just mechanically spit out dates, etc. but rather it delves into the very personal reasons *why* Hal Richman started this fine company. I found myself cheering for Hal while reading of each of his struggles and roadblocks encountered in trying to get this company off the ground in the beginning, and also really feeling for the man and realizing that this game is indeed a part of him and not just a product that he is marketing & selling for $$$.

The book also goes over a lengthy treatise on current and past fans of Strat-O-Matic and really does a fine job of capturing the passion that all Strat gamers feel in their very guts when they play this game. There are tributes to infamous current and past Strat players (Chris Rosen, Tom Swank, etc.)

If you love Strat, or have played it at one time in your life, you need to own this book. I'm serious. If you've played any kind of sports simulation in your life, you still need to own this book.

Bravo, Glenn, bravo.