Bobby Fischer Comes Home by GM Helgi Olafsson

          This book is not the usual psychoanalysis of Fischer but attempts to show Fischer in a more pleasant light and is the story of Olafsson’s friendship with Fischer. The review describes Fischer as a complicated person, funny and good-natured at times, bitter and unbearable at times, suspicious, but fun to be with.

       Olafsson was a member of the committee that successfully worked to free Fischer from a Japanese detention center. He first met Fischer shortly after Fischer returned to Iceland in 2005 and they spent a lot of time together making trips, watching movies, playing games and spoke on the phone almost every day.
       Olafsson doesn’t give us any new “dirt” on Fischer.  Instead he remembers Fischer as a friend and at the same time explains, or tries to explain, why Fischer acted the way he did. At the end of a dinner out with Anand as they drove away, Fischer made a statement to Olafsson that seems both curious and interesting.  He told Olafsson , “Yes. I think Anand got a better upbringing than I did.”
       Olafsson described a series of blitz games he played against Fischer in the latter’s apartment in 2005 claiming, “It almost felt like the game of chess was too easy for him. His calculating abilities were great. It is difficult to describe this but it seemed that he somehow had a different calculating method than most chessplayers. As if he was visualizing the geography on the chessboard, and every square was somehow within his grasp. As if he had created an internal spatial map in his brain. The main thing, however, was that he was happy playing chess, as if he was finally speaking his native language.”
       A fascinating book on a side of Fischer we don’t hear much about these days.

Bobby Fischer traveling to Iceland Part 1

 

Part 2    Part 3

Chess Assassin's Business Manual by Bob Long

      A book combining chess and business! According to Long the book is “peppered with stories, business trips and chess information.”  After 35 years running four of his own businesses and 40 years of playing chess, the author explains how these two activities complement each other.  To be successful at both requires disciplines such as patience, awareness, and perseverance. The book is a collection of games, stories, advice and complaints by the owner of Thinker’s Press.

      Long is an interesting character.  He doesn’t like, and has strong opinions about, a lot of things. Long opines that having an MBA or being a business school grad does not prepare someone to be a business owner.  Of course the same is true of any professional because things in the “real world” are seldom like they teach you in school.  It seems we live in an imperfect world and quite often things go wrong or just aren’t done by the book.  When things do go wrong they situations that are never covered in school and businesses frequently don’t operate by the book.

      There isn’t a lot of games in the book and it mostly is about Long’s career in the chess publishing and chess sales business. One reason for Long’s success is apparently that, at least to my knowledge, everybody who has done business with him has never had a bad experience…these days it seems take the money and run is the norm and customer service is often lacking but that doesn’t seem to be the case with Long.

      This book offers valuable advice if you are thinking about getting into any business on your own.  Even if you aren’t, it’s an interesting read…at least I thought so, but then I’ll read a biography of just about anybody. Although it isn’t a bio as such, it’s pretty close.

      If you are interested in purchasing the book, don’t buy it from Amazon, buy it direct from Thinker’s press.  In fact while you are there take a look at all Long’s material; it’s good stuff.  Thinker’s Press

MonRoi Personal Chess Manager

      This is a hand-held, wireless device for recording, storing and reviewing of chess games that carries a  $359 price tag.

      The Mon-Roi enables players to electronically record, store and view their games and relay moves to the Professional Tournament Manager (PTM) if one is being used at the tournament.

       Part of their advertising asks, “…ever discover you’ve made a ridiculous mistake on your paper scoresheet, and have to consult your opponent’s? Then, after looking at it, you find you’re unable to decipher his or her distinct scrawl? Perhaps, your own penmanship leaves something to be desired. Maybe you get so engrossed in your games that you forget to notate 3 or 4 consecutive moves somewhere in the middle, or simply write the wrong move when under stress due to time pressure, nerves, etc. If so, you’re certainly not alone.”

       I guess everybody has done this at some time, but when I was an OTB player the problem never reached such proportions that I felt the need to spend $350 to overcome it.  The device is also touted as “a great timesaver when it comes to preserving one’s games on the computer for later analysis and training purposes.”  It has no chess engine.

       If you play in a tournament that uses the Monroi Tournament Manager Hub device, then your device transmits your game wirelessly in real time to the hub, which can publish it to the Internet or just keep a record of all the tournament games played in range. If there's no hub being used by the TDs, you're not being recorded. 

      Short version...it is a $350 replacement for a pen or pencil. On the other hand if you just like gadgets and have some money to micturate away, this is a great way to do it.

Excelling at Chess Calculation by Jacob Aagaard

Looking for an easy way to improve?  If so, move on…there’s nothing to see here.

      I’ve heard a lot of pros and cons about this book. Mostly though complaints seem to center around Aagaard’s taking potshots at John Watson and Josef Dorfman in his books.

      The standard back cover hype reads, “The art of chess calculation is the absolute key to the success of a player. Master this discipline and you can surely expect your results to improve dramatically.” One reviewer warned though, Aagaard advocates hard work and this book has a ton of analysis. So, if you’re looking for a book where everything is explained concisely using words and 3-4 move variations to illustrate the point, read no further.

      The thing is, you can’t study tactics without a lot of analysis. Aagaard writes, “For my other books I have generally refrained from long variations and tried to explain everything with words. But here it was the variations themselves that needed to be explained. Also, for those interested in working with this book seriously, it will be an advantage to be able to follow the author’s reasoning more closely.” Threading your way through all this is where using an engine would be very helpful.  I’d recommend saving the games to their own database as you go through the.  If you take this approach be prepared to end up with a ton of analysis on each game which, when you think about it, probably isn’t all that bad.

The chapters are:

1. Before you can think, you need to learn how to see
2. Candidate Moves
3. When is the right time to Calculate?
4. Important Thinking Techniques
5. Visualization and Stepping Stones
6. When it is time to calculate
7. Creativity and Combinational Vision
8. How to Train Calculation
9. Exercises
10. Solutions

      Aagaard makes the point that it makes little sense to investigate how to develop a tree of analysis based on the candidate moves if the player doesn’t know how to properly arrive at those candidates in the first place. So, he claims that the most important thing is not so much how many moves ahead you can see, but to first check out what possibilities there might be.  When calculating, one ought to first calculate wide, not deep.  I once heard a 2300+ otb player who also happens to be correspondence IM advising this is the correct approach when using an engine.  He said you have to look at a lot of moves before you start weeding out the ones that appear to be unplayable.

      Purdy, Soltis, Silman and others have touched on the subject of knowing when calculation is not necessary.  So does Aagaard but he also covers in detail when you should start calculating.

       In the first eight chapters there are about 80 positions or games and the reader is reminded about making assumptions and examples of desperados, vision, comparison, elimination and prophylaxis prove the point. He warns that sometimes you have to force yourself to calculate sometimes to the point of checking out every legal move in a position. To help with this process Aagaard also recommends some books like Jonathan Tisdall’s Improve Your Chess Now! And Paata Gaprindashvili’s Imagination in Chess as well as some of his own books (imagine that!). 

      As usual with books of this type, the last two chapters include a selection of 100 exercises. What’s really cool is he has a grading system for the exercises.

      One 2300+ player described this book as interesting, useful and practical. But he also warned that you have to be willing to put in some serious work. I think GM Alex Yermolinsky said that, too, in one of his books.  Not very comforting is it?  OK, so a 2300+ found it helpful, but most of us are a tad short of having that many rating points, so what about us?  He opined that for anyone below IM strength, IF they pay close attention and IF they are willing to think and IF they are willing to seriously attempt the exercises at the end of the book, then he thinks their play will improve.

Tarrasch

One of my earliest game collections was Tarrasch’s Best Games of Chess by Fred Reinfeld and I loved it!  Reinfeld was a great writer when he wanted to be and this book of Tarrasch’s games was superb…positional masterpieces.  Unfortunately, nowadays the book is rather pricey if you buy it off Amazon, but if you find it in a book store at a good price, buy it and play over the games.

      Dr. Siegbert Tarrasch was the first to formulate and express the rule that “If one piece is badly placed, your whole game is bad.” Properly applied, it is a significant addition to Stenitz’s theory. On the basis of this single axiom, various types of positions can be studied where the difference in force between the two sides is defined only by the difference in location between corresponding pieces.

       Co-authors GM Sam Palatnik and Master Mark Ishee have produced a valuable instructional book for all levels of players in their book, The Tarrasch Formula. 

       In the forward, as the authors so colorfully put it, “In searching for meat, the lion does not attack the whole herd of enemy prey, but instead instinctively takes advantage of seeking one weak or sick animal that becomes badly placed, separated from the herd. And so it is with the player, who should seek out the sick or weak piece in the enemy camp and steadily reduce the power of that enemy piece to render it helpless.”  They then proceed to attempt to show how this is done.

       The book is divided into seven chapters, the first five show how this is done with individual pieces:  Knight, Bishop, Opposite-Colored Bishops, Heavy Pieces, and Zugzwang. I like this approach.  In his classic, Modern Chess Analysis, Ludek Pachman took a similar approach of showing examples of the individual pieces at their best as he discussed each one.  The last two chapters deal with opening analysis on Philidor's Defense Revisited and the Neo-Philidor Defense which I personally was not interested in.

       Each chapter, except the Neo-Philidor Defense, has a selection of heavily annotated games with a lot of diagrams. The first five chapters have useful exercises of moderate to difficult endgame studies and there is a total of 57 annotated games.

       Palatnik's annotations are rather colorful: "The white pieces lined up along the c1-h6 diagonal are like a 12-inch sub sandwich: the only problem is ... where to take the first bite?"  Personally I don't quite understand that one.  When I eat a sub I take a bite off one end or the other, always assuming they are pretty much the same on both ends.  Does anybody take a bite out of the middle of a foot long Subway sandwich?

       In addition to games by  Palatnik and Ishee there are games like Saemisch-Nimzovich, Copenhagen 1923; Nimzovich -Capablanca, New York 1927; Alekhine- Nimzovich, San Remo 1930.

      One thing I did notice was, beside the usual typographical errors that seem to infest a lot of books these days, were a few other errors. Right off the bat, Game 1 is given as Marshall-Ragozin which is incorrect.  It was not the Soviet GM Vlacheslav Ragozin but Hyman Ragosin, a NY Master of the period. Spelling of players names is not consistent and many are misspelled…but I nitpick.

       I also didn’t like the fact that for the openings they used ECO codes rather than opening names. How many players know, for example, that E7 is the Classical King’s Indian Main Line? Another obvious problem is that the diagrams are such that there is a lot of white space on the bottom or top of the page with the diagram on the following page…not to mention that the diagram size is inconsistent… but again, I nitpick.

       It’s not the layout from which you will learn anything (unless you are publishing a book), but the instructional value of the games and annotations.  They are excellent and anybody up to Expert will learn something

Aquarium 2011 - Beating a Dead Horse

 Whenever I have had a spare moment I have still been messing around with ChessOK’s Aquarium 2011.  Aside from the fact that it’s a really clumsy program, I have somewhat gotten the hang of using the database function but much to my dismay I have discovered that there does not seem to be any way to delete a game from the database!  What a crappy program!  I am deleting it off my computer; it’s unfortunate they don’t have a money back guarantee because I’d sure be applying for it.

Chessbase

ChessBase has been around a long time and is a database that allows you to enter, annotate and save games, including variations, text commentary, spoken comments, embedded pictures, soundtracks and even video sequences; analyze, generate a comprehensive openings report with main and critical lines, plans and most important games; search for material distribution, and more.

Chessbase 10 comments:

I got mine this morning... is it worth it…after a couple of hours playing with it I do not think so!!
…a lot of useless functions.
The version Chessbase 10 that I have been using until now is, in my opinion, an excellent chess program (especially with the new update): the player has practically everything that is needed for tournament preparation as well as for abstract preparation. The options are simple and a user has no problems to use them.

Chessbase 11 comments:
Modern programs, like Chessbase 11 have such a large number of options that it is practically very difficult to know all them.
Chessbase 11 is based on the new Microsoft Office based interface just as Fritz 12 and I can say that it is very easy to manage with the new environment. I had no problems when using it for the first time.
ChessBase 11 is rife with bugs…Terrible…I cannot activate it…I hate this mess…they are telling me that my activation number is already in use.
Get CB9 if you can. CB11 crashes, is bloatware, and has nothing, zero the earlier version will not do.
Games won't save, crashes do not show versions in history, and history does not work like it did.
CB 11 is wrecked.
…think ChessBase, the database program, is garbage.
It is highly unstable…activation locks up, indices become corrupted, games are lost, crashes, you get a "Disable" message when opening games.
It is a sea of bugs and problems…

Chessbase Lite
You cannot play against the engine and it has a limit of about 32,000 games in the database. You can open any database of course, but it will only read the first 32,000. It comes with the Fritz 6 engine and you cannot add other engines in the lite version. If you are looking for a free database program with reasonably strong engine this is an excellent program.  Good for doing opening research but if you want to analyze a game, you’ll have to do it move by move and hit the spacebar to enter the engine move.
      An excellent program if you are looking for free and you can live with the limitations and an annoying nag screen that pops up once in a while asking you to buy Fritz 13. Its main use that I can see would be for doing opening research.  Especially helpful is the “Opening Report.”  This report tells you how many games with the variation are in the DB, highest rated players who used the line, other strong players using it and statistics.  A random example:

Statistics
Black scores below average (41%).
Black performs Elo 2307 against an opposition of Elo 2370 (-63).
White performs Elo 2410 against an opposition of Elo 2347 (+63).
White wins: 600 (=38%), Draws: 653 (=42%), Black wins: 306 (=20%)
The drawing quote is higher than average. (4% quick draws, < 20 Moves)

The report also gives you the most successful moves against each reply:

Moves and Plans
a) 12.a4

586 Games, 1975-2010, Ø=2001
White scores above average (59%).
Elo-Ø: 2324, 566 Games. Performance = Elo 2373
played by: Kasparov, 2744, 8.5/12; Topalov, 2731, 3/3; Anand, 2720, 5/10; Grischuk, 2717, 0/1; Shirov, 2704, 1/1;

You should play: 12...h6  Click for Games

Free Download: ChessBase Lite 2009

Deep Shredder 12



     Shredder's playing style is more positional  than tactical and it plays with positional threats and can squeeze the most out of a position.

      Supposedly when practicing against Shredder at lower settings it simulates a human player at any playing strength by making typical human mistakes.  It also has a variety of pieces and boards both in 2D and 3D, a built in coach, direct access to huge online endgame and game databases, etc, etc…all the things we have come to expect in any program.
      Of course any engine will beat you up pretty bad tactically, but if you want to evaluate a game from the positional aspect, some of them give quite different evaluations.  I’ve heard Komodo is well ahead of most engines when it comes to positional evaluations but personally I’ve found my free version to be unreliable.
      If you are playing against other engines or engine-assisted games against other players then Houdini, Rybka or one of my favourites, Deep Saros, are the engines of choice. On the CCRL rating list Deep Shredder is ranked tenth behind such staples as Houdini, Stockfish, Rybka and Critter, etc.
      On the other hand if you are using an engine to analyze your games with the idea of improving your play, then Shredder is an excellent choice.
      I should add that when some time back I had a minor problem with Shredder I e-mailed for help and received a reply the next day, so their service is excellent.

Fritz 13

     Fritz 13, according to the advertisements, has an array of exciting new features. I have used Fritz 12 for several years ever since I found it in Office Max for $20.  Like most chessplayers though I find it hard to resist the newest stuff so considered upgrading to Fritz 13.  So, what’s the difference?
      For most of us these days being without a chess playing program is unthinkable because they help us prepare for tournament games, train in tactics, study openings and analyze our own games.  Then there are databases and game collections that are a big help in keeping up with the latest developments.  Gone are the days of buying Informants every six months and searching through hundreds of games to find examples of our favorite openings or trying to discover how GM's played the positions arising from them.  Now you can do it in a couple of mouse clicks.  Today we have multimedia training and lessons and the possibility of playing online chess from the comfort of our home.
      One new feature of Fritz 13 is called 'Let's Check'. This feature allows the world-wide chess community to build a huge database.  Whenever you analyze a position long enough and deep enough Fritz 13 allows you to send the main line and evaluation to a central chess server to be shared by all users. This feature also allows you to search for positions that have been analyzed to a substantial depth by others.  Supposedly this feature will save you time. You can also see the analysis of different engines.  One “hook” they use to get people to use this feature is that you can automatically get registered as discoverer of a position if you submit analysis of a hitherto unknown position. You are also able to add comments to your analysis.  This feature allows you to have the latest opening statistics at your disposal and the results of the most powerful engines.
      Fritz 13 features an improved engine, board graphics in 2D and 3D (if anybody actually uses the 3D views), coaching functions and adjustable playing strength, automatic analysis of games.  Also included is a database of 1.5 million games and ten hours of GM video instruction and free six months premium membership to the world's largest chess server, Playchessdotcom.
      So from what I can discover, Fritz 13's only new features are a stronger engine and the “Let’s Check” function.  There are better engines than Fritz available for free and all can be used with Fritz 12, so there is no incentive to upgrade just for the sake of a better engine.  The “Let’s Check” functions sounds like something that might be fun to play with but personally it doesn’t hold any interest for me. 
      Conclusion: As a user of Fritz 12, I did not see any enhancements or changes that warrant purchasing Fritz 13.

Endgame by Frank Brady

What do you think of Bobby Fischer?  Despicable lout?  Schizophrenic?  A tortured soul? A man to be pitied? Or, like many of those who knew him best, do you think he was a sensitive, caring person? Whatever your opinion of Fischer is, there is no question that he was one intriguing fellow.  Frank Brady knew Fischer quite well and the overall tone of this book is one that puts Fischer in the best possible light and it is extremely well-researched and well-written.  I don’t know that it will change anyone’s mind about the man, but it at least gives you an understanding of where Fischer “came from” and gives you some insights as to what made him the kind of person he was.  No games, just 403 pages detailing Fischer’s life.  HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.

Book:

Kindle:

The King by Jan Donner

      Donner was one of the top players in the Netherlands for years and for a while was one of the world’s top ranked players.

      I don’t own this book but did read it some time back in the hardback edition.  It has been reprinted in a paperback edition which, fortunately, is longer than the original. The book is mostly a collection of articles covering just about anything on chess you can think of.    
      Donner wasn’t shy about voicing his (sometimes radical) political views and he had, like everybody, his views on Bobby Fischer. Donner admitted Fischer’s behavior was bad and his decisions often were wrong, but for the most part he was right in his fights with FIDE.
      The book was enjoyable, but I have to admit that sometimes Donner tended to be wordy…no, call it a printed version of, “he never shuts up.”  On occasion he spends forever saying something that he could have said in a lot fewer words, but I never doubted his enthusiasm.  Sometimes he got a little nasty in commenting on certain individuals too and on occasion he doesn’t give you enough information to know what he was writing about.  In the style of Purdy’s book, The Search for Chess Perfection, Donner’s book is actually a series of articles in chronological order but there wasn’t an index.
      You won’t learn anything about how to play better chess from this book, but it is a great read if you enjoy reading about chess and chess players.

Mammoth Book of Chess by Graham Burgess

      In his introduction, author FM Graham Burgess writes, "I have written this book in such a way that it provides inspiration and useful information for everyone with an interest in chess, from total beginners to grandmasters."  I seriously doubt GM's will find this book useful or for that matter, anyone except maybe new players.
      The book is divided into three parts:  Part One: Mastering Chess in which the author covers delivering mate, tactics, combinations, endgames, openings, open and semi-open games, d-Pawn openings, flank and miscellaneous openings, attack and defense.  The Delivering Mate chapter is aimed at beginners and the tactics chapter intoduces things like forks, pins, discovered attacks, skewers, and deflections, etc.  The Endgames chapter is a basic review and is only about 20 pages long. Then comes chapters devoted to an overview of various openings.  The balance of Part One, titled Attack and Defense, consists of  annotated games illustrating basic strategy.
      Part Two is a bunch of boring chapters on the chess clock, tournament play, computer & internet chess, puzzles, women's veterans, junior and correspondence chess, and finally, endgame studies and chess in the media.
      Part Three consists of a  Glossary of Chess Terms, A Brief History of the World Chess Championship and other miscellaneous stuff for people new to chess and the indexes.
     Unless you are an absolute beginner and new to the world of chess, pass on this one.

How To Beat Bobby Fischer by Edmar Mednis

      Edmar Mednis (March 22, 1937–February 13, 2002), an American GM born in Latvia, moved to the US with his family at the end of WW2 where he trained as a chemical engineer but worked as a stockbroker and chess writer.

      I had the pleasure of meeting Mednis at the US Championship in 1971.  I say pleasure because that’s what it was.  I remember one day before the start of one of the rounds how a group of us were standing outside the tournament hall when Mednis, his wife and young daughter along with, if I remember correctly, Robert Byrne were entering the building.  Mednis and Byrne stopped to greet us and while his daughter, perhaps 5 or 6, busied herself swinging on the step railings and his wife and Byrne stood by patiently, Mednis gladly engaged in conversation that ended up with him telling anecdotes of some of the players he had known. 
       Somehow the conversation turned to Latvian master Vladimirs Petrov (27 September 1907 – 26 August 1943). When Nazi Germany invaded the Soviet Union in 1941, Petrov was unable to return to his wife and daughter at home in Latvia and remained in Russia where he was arrested on 31 August 1942 under Article 58 for criticizing decreased living standards in Latvia after the Soviet annexation of 1940. As a result Petrov was sentenced to ten years in a corrective labor camp. In 1989 it became known that he had died at Kotlas in 1943 from pneumonia.  At least that’s what the history books say.  When somebody asked Mednis whatever happened to Petrov, Mednis’ terse reply was, “The Russians shot him.”  Take your pick which version you believe.  On to the book…
       In this book he annotates 61 games that Fischer lost between 1958 and 1972. The annotations are mostly in the form of words with just enough variations give to illustrate the point.  The focus is mostly on the critical point where Fischer played what Mednis considered to be the losing move. Mednis calls it "The Losing Moment" and explains why the move cost Fischer the game usually by concentrating on general principles which helps all us non-masters understand things a little better.
       Mednis also includes interesting tables that show Fischer’s wins and losses with the colors, who had the best records against Fischer, which countries had plus scores against him, categories on why Fischer lost and what opening he had the most problems against. Mednis also includes some anecdotes about Fischer which make interesting reading.
       There are two editions of this book.  I have the edition written right after Fischer retired and Dover put out a second edition which includes games from the 1992 match with Spassky. 
       This book was apparently good enough that in My Great Predecessors Kasparov quoted it on several occasions when discussing Fischer’s losses. Of course Kasparov, being a far better player than Mednis, punched some holes in Mednis’ analysis, but that doesn’t detract the book in the least in my opinion. I thoroughly enjoyed this book and can recommend it to anybody who is interested in Fischermania or just wants to play over games that are well-annotated without being bothered with slogging through line after line of analysis.

Win Like Kasparov! - Learn to Play Chess Like Garry Kasparov by GM Ron Henley

      Although this book is usually listed under tactics, it is appropriately sub-titled “Learn to Play Chess Like Garry Kasparov” because the book is really about the middlegame. Henley’s annotations are done mostly with words and just enough variations to illustrate the point…not reams of engine generated variations. The many diagrams also use arrows to illustrate themes…a great help in visualizing what’s going on. At the end of the book there are exercises from Kasparov’s games.

      The book begins with a biography and a very brief outline of Kasparov’s openings. The opening section adds very little of value to the book and can be ignored. What I like is Henley’s approach to commenting on the middlegames. He lists the significant features of the position in clear and simple language and that is a BIG plus because the thoughts of super-GM’s are not easily understood by average players. Henley has a knack for making things clear though. What you actually get is 228 tactical puzzles to solve and all or part of 40 of Kasparov's games.
      A real gem and highly recommended for all players, especially for those rated 1400-2200, who want to learn something from a player whose games are generally way too complicated for mortals to understand!

e+books - Chess Books for the i-Pad

e+books is an app for the iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch. From the site you can download the free app for your i-Pad and read chess books anywhere, without a set and follow the moves on the built-in board. The classic Chess Fundamentals by Capablanca is included free and the “Bookshop” has other books available...for a fee of course.  So far there are only 8 books available ranging in price from $10 - $15, but more are planned.  Looks interesting.  LINK

The Art of Learning by Josh Waitzkin

      
      International Master Joshua Waitzkin was the highest ranked player for his age in the US for over ten years and eight-times National Champion in his youth. In 1998 at the age of 21, he took up Tai Chi Chuan. Within four years he was competing in Taiwan in the semi-finals of the World Championships. Two years later, in 2004, Waitzkin became World Champion in Tai Chi Chuan Push Hands competition. This achievement in such a short period of time is truly remarkable.
      Waitzkin also did excellent lectures in the old Chessmaster  program and had an amazing ability to explain the nuances of the position as well as the psychological side of things.  In 1999 he retired from competitive chess.
       The average rating of this book on Amazon was 4.5 (out of 5) stars.  He writes about pivotal moments in his chess career such as at the US Junior Championship final and the final round of the World Tai Chi Championship.   The World Tai Chi Championship was held in Taiwan, where many of his opponents were trained in martial arts from early childhood. The odds of successfully competing against them were overwhelming.
       For various reasons his main focus became martial arts and he recognized many similarities about the learning process involved in both chess and martial arts.  At the same time he believed what he learned could be applied to many disciplines in life.
       His descriptions of the process of learning and adopting the right attitude could be used in any area.   He discusses learning theories, intimidation and conditioning.
       I would place this book in the ‘self-help’ category and it could be helpful for some because a positive attitude never hurts.

     

Invisible Chess Moves by Emmanuel Neiman & Yochanan Afek

 Subtitled:  Discover Your Blind Spots and Stop Overlooking Simple Wins
       We’ve all done it…missed simple wins; sometimes our own and it seems like more often, for the opponent.  Why is that?  Even GM’s suffer from blind spots but that’s little consolation when you’ve just blown the game by missing a simple win.
       Invisible Chess Moves tries to address this problem by categorizing hard-to-see moves and explaining the psychological, positional and geometric factors that are involved.
       In the introduction they write: How can it be that players who are capable of calculating ten moves ahead for hours on end, fail to see a one-move win? More remarkably, in many cases both players make these oversights…Our hypothesis is as follows: in chess, certain moves are harder to spot for human beings than other moves. For a beginning human player, clearly knight moves are more difficult to envisage than rook moves…A lot of elements in the games of experienced players are mechanical.
       This book won the 2011 ChessCafe Book of the Year award and is loaded with exercises and positions to solve and is recommended for the over 1800 crowd.
       Blind spots occur from time to time and psychological evidence is that they are unpredictable and, therefore, it may not be possible to avoid them even if you are aware they exist.  For example, see the invisible gorilla test HERE.
       In the test you watch a short video and count the number of times the players wearing white pass a basketball.  In the middle of the video a gorilla walks through the group, plain as day but half of the people who watched the video and counted the passes missed the gorilla. They also wrote a book on the subject. So, will this book really help avoid making stupid blunders?  The psychologist would probably say, “No.”  My guess is they are probably right because even world champions and Super-GM’s have fallen victim so where does that leave the rest of us?!

Chess Master at Any Age by Rolf Wetzell

      
         A much debated question is whether old folks can accomplish a significant rating jump.  Wetzell did it and this book is about his rise through the ranks to achieve his life-long ambition of becoming a master when he was over fifty years old. The general consensus of opinion in any field is if you haven't made it while you are still young then you never will. And it seems these days, in chess anyway, that if you aren’t a master by the time you are in your early teens, you will never make it. The general belief is that getting older inevitably results in an inflexible mind and an inability to absorb new material.  The truth is that usually by age of fifty most of us are not incapable of learning anything, we are worn-out and just too tired from the trials of life to make any intense mental effort.
         Wetzell has some interesting theories on the nature of chess skill and while it may be true that age is a serious handicap in any endeavor, he proved his point. It seems this book’s audience is the 1800-1900 player who wants to make the push to master. Interestingly enough techniques of modeling excellence of Neurolinguistic Programming (NLP) developed by Richard Bandler and John Grinder seem to suggest there are shortcuts in chess just as in any other field.
       Wetzell devotes a lot of time expounding his theory on the components of chess ability.  He discusses things like the ability to visualize future positions in your mind, move selection and one’s attitude and he offers detailed methods of improving each factor. He does offer some rather bizarre advice at times though: If you get in time trouble one of his suggestions is to ‘fine’ yourself by tearing up money!
       Probably one of the most useful suggestions is to create index cards or flash cards to reinforce certain points, to learn openings and help you improve your mental images.  Since the book was written this idea is made much easier with the use of computers and chess programs. A major part of his program is to study your own games by creating exercises, puzzles and positions like ‘What's the Best Move' then make flashcards with mnemonic phrases to convert concepts into a "durable image."  Wetzell also points out some good suggestions including the need for physical fitness.
        Wetzell is very systematic in his approach and he shows how to identify bad thinking habits and how to eradicate them.
        Personally, I’m not much into actually studying chess these days, being content just to play for fun, but if you want to reach the master level, Wetzell’s approach seems to have some merit.  After all, it did work for him, so what’s to lose?!

Chess Mysteries of Sherlock Holmes by Raymond Smullyan

This is not a book of chess problems but a book of logic puzzles about chess positions with Holmes and Watson as the main characters.  These puzzles are challenging, novel, and ingenious. In the positions you have to, for example, deduce whether White has moved a knight, or whether the queen was promoted or the original or on what square was the White queen captured?

Like in all Sherlock Holmes mysteries, Holmes, by his remarkable powers of deduction, is able to demonstrate what must have happened, move by move.  Fun stuff.

Chess is My Life – Korchnoi

      My copy by ARCO Publishing was published in 1978.  Viktor Korchnoi, aka “Victor the Terrible” or as Chessbase called him,  the "Methusaleh of chess", was born March 23, 1931, in Leningrad.  He defected to the Netherlands and later moved to Switzerland. In 1974, he lost the Candidates final to Karpov and played World Championship matches with Karpov in 1978 and 1981. Korchnoi was a candidate for the World Championship ten times (1962, 1968, 1971, 1974, 1977, 1980, 1983, 1985, 1988 and 1991) and won the USSR Championship four times. In 2006, he won the World Senior Championship. A very impressive record, but his games remain mostly unknown to the players of today.       Korchnoi is either loved or hated but it must be admitted there hasn’t been anybody like him in decades.  In this autobiography Korchnoi voiced his opinion on openings, endgames, grandmasters, FIDE, the Soviet-Union, history, chess organization, the quality of food in Havana, Cuba and the contents of Karpov’s yogurt.
       Prior to his defection Korchnoi was a member of the Communist party but he left his wife and son behind when he decided to ask for asylum in the Netherlands and refused to go back to the USSR. It was left to his wife and son who had to take all the heat back home in Leningrad…a rather controversial decision.
       In this book he writes about his childhood in WW2-torn Leningrad, his time as a student of the university, his rise to the top in the USSR and the years before and after his defection to the West in 1976.
       Fascinating reading but it only contains 72 games, mostly unannotated.  Not worth the price unless you can find it used in which case buy it. 

ChessOK Aquarium

       I recently purchased this program as a download from ChessOK (for about $30) because I had been reading about Aquarium’s IDeA analysis function which I thought would be quite handy.  Unfortunately the program has proven to be quite disappointing. See my Blog posts for Sunday, May 6 and Thursday May 10 on my regular Blog for details.

If you are looking for a chess program, my recommendation is to buy Fritz and download the free Houdini 1.5 engine.

UPDATE: It's been over a month and I still haven't figured out how to use this program! In the past when I installed other programs like Shredder and Fritz, I was up and running in minutes...not weeks!

Chess for Tigers by Simon Webb

 Just for the record Simon Webb (10 June 1949 - 14 March 2005) was a British IM and Correspondence GM as well as an author. Webb also represented England at bridge with his brother, Roger, as a partner.

On 14 March 2005, he was stabbed to death in the family kitchen by his 25-year-old son, Dennis, after an argument. His son, who had spent time in jail for drug-related offences, subsequently crashed his car at high speed into a bus shelter, in an apparent attempt to kill himself. He survived with just a broken nose

Chess for Tigers is an excellent book and one that will be referred to time and again. The book contains real life ideas that can be applied in your games.

The first edition was published in 1978 and the third edition was updated just before Webb’s death.  This book is full of practical advice on how to play better players, improve your opening repertoire, handle drawn positions and so forth; in short, practical stuff... suggestions you can use regardless of your rating.  His suggestions on how to play against higher rated players is invaluable.

This is NOT a book for children who are just learning chess even though each chapter begins with a cartoon of a chessplaying tiger and has some silly chapter titles like How to Catch Rabbits and How to Trap Heffalumps.  Webb defines a ‘tiger’ as a winner and his suggestions are more psychological than a guide to improvement.  For example, in the introductory chapter Webb asks the question 'are aiming to play the best moves or are you playing to win?' He opines that if you want to be a Tiger, you must forget about playing the best moves and try instead to win.

Webb begins with the claim that, “You could be a much better chess player than you are.” and I doubt that any of us would disagree with him. I think it was US Senior Master Dr. Eliot Hearst who once described a ‘Master’ as ‘every player’s secret appraisal of his own ability’!!  Webb discusses aspects of practical play that are often ignored such as the art of the swindle, or creating chaos against a stronger opponent in hopes he will blunder. 

In the first chapter, Play the man – not the board , Webb argues only an engine plays the same way against every opponent and to be practical .   So, to be practical you should try to capitalize on any weaknesses your opponent might have.  He admits that you can’t spend a lot of time preparing for your typical weekend Swiss opponent "but you should still be able to make good use of anything you know about your opponent's style of play." Webb claims that even somebody you never met before gives clues by his appearance, his mannerisms, his age, etc. that might give you a hint as to what kind of player he is.

Most people tell you to play the board and not the man because if you alter your style based on your opponent you are more likely to get into positions you aren’t familiar with and you can get into trouble not only psychologically, but you run the risk of getting bad or unfamiliar positions.  I’m not sure I agree with Webb's advice on this though. 

Webb gives valuable advice on how to use the information gleaned from you analysis that will enable you to play to your strengths rather than to improve upon one's weaknesses. Once again, this advice is an attempt to maximizing your practical results.

When it comes to everybody’s favorite topic, openings, Webb recommends having a primary and a secondary opening in your repertoire and he includes some brief comments on how to go about learning an opening given a limited amount of time to study.

In the chapters How to catch Rabbits and How to trap Heffalumps, Webb recommends adopting a style to counter your opponent’s.  Again, some may find the advice to change their style questionable, but I do agree with his advice on how to play against weaker opponents…keep things simple and wait for them to blunder.  Come to think of it that’s how I play against stronger opponents in the hope that it's me that doesn’t blunder.  That goes against Webb’s (and other player’s advice) to go for for positions that are so complicated and unclear that either player is likely to make a mistake.

Remember that in this book Webb is only concerned with winning and not becoming a better player through increasing one’s understanding of chess. His point is that it’s only a game, and we are within our rights to do anything we can within the rules to win.

Other chapters include How to win won positions, What to do in drawn positions, Clock control, and How to avoid silly mistakes.

One point Webb makes in the latter chapter no longer applies though because of a change in FIDE rules.  Webb advised writing your move down on the scoresheet before playing it. This was almost always the way we did it back in the old days and it wasn’t uncommon to see scoresheets with half the moves scratched out as minds were frequently changed. Players often took three approaches. 1) write the move down and immediately play it 2) write the move down while shielding it from your opponent’s view with the other hand then lay your pen over the move and think a few more seconds before making it.  Then there was the third type; the type who would do something I’m sure would have met Webb’s approval; write their move down in full view of their opponent then stare at the board for a couple of minutes knowing that your opponent was thinking about how to meet the move written on the scoresheet then play something else. 

In the final two chapters Webb covers Quick Play and recommends a gambit opening repertoire because the clock is a factor  and in Correspondence Play he advises being particularly careful in your choice of opening since a poor opening can lead to literally years of suffering.

For all players under master!