This is a combined work, taking five separate books and combining them into one volume, but then re-dividing them into two volumes. The books included in this volume are: Pictorial Guide for Beginners, How to Win in the Chess Openings, Modern Ideas in the Chess Openings. This may well be the nearest approach to the complete chess book yet devised. It brings together four books previously written by the author under these titles: How to Win in the Chess Openings, Modern Ideas in the Chess Openings, How to Win in the Middle Game of Chess, and How to Win in the Chess Endings. These four books constitute a Short Course in Chess Play particularly adapted to the beginner who has learned how to make the moves and how to read chess notation but is groping for signposts in the vast range of chess knowledge and literature. In the first two books the most popular openings are classified by their individual moves and by their grand strategy. Each opening discussion is followed by a "Chess Movie," a game so profusely illustrated with Diagrams as to reveal clearly the effect of the plan on the opening. The third book deals with middle game complexities - thrust and riposte, sacrificial brilliance, tactical surprise, masterly combination, attack against the King, and over-all strategy. Here, as in the final book, the writer has foremost in mind the learner, who must take one step at a time. The Chess Endings book shows the player working under a time limit how to reduce the most complex position to an easy ending in a fraction of the time that an over-the-board analysis takes. It abounds with time-saving devices, ways of projecting and planning, tricks, traps, and combinations, all designed to give immediate control. For the player who is sitting down at a chessboard for the first time, this volume starts out with a "Picture Guide for Beginners." Fifty-five years of playing experience and thirty-six years of teaching have gone into this monumental work.