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Chess Books
Rose's Rants by Tom
Rose The house is sold, my daughter has graduated from college, and I have taken a career break for the indefinite future. The dog has its European passport, and for the next year or two it will be touring Europe with my wife and I. As we travel I'll be playing regularly in tournaments, free from the distractions (work, mortgage, property maintenance, regular bills, TV, assorted official harassments, ... ) of an "establishment-approved" lifestyle. I'll also need some study materials, but there is a limit to what you can carry in a motor-home. What media?In an ideal world I'd load up my Mac notebook with tutorials and electronic manuals but, from what I've seen of multi-media teaching, it just doesn't yet work that well. And most of the chess material that is available is aimed at relative beginners. Books though, cover all levels of ability, and every aspect of the game, but books have deficiencies of their own when it comes to learning chess from them. You usually need a board and pieces alongside the book, and you constantly have to switch your attention between the board and the printed page. I find this difficult. There is some kind of "cognitive conflict" in using the visual system in these two different ways. It seems like making sense of the written word and making sense of a chess position are competing in some way. Maybe it is just me. I have the same problem trying to talk and play the piano at the same time. If someone asks me a question while I am playing I have to stop before I can get any words out. Studying chess, you can always dispense with the board and pieces, but following games and variations "blindfold" gets very tiring. It is all so much easier when you have a teacher pushing the pieces around before your eyes, and explaining what is going on, but I can't afford to drag a private tutor around Europe, and if I could he'd probably object to sharing a bed with a border collie. You might think that video tapes would be the answer, but they are not. You are forced to go at the pace of the tape, the content is limited, it is hard to review what you've already seen ... there is really no feasible alternative to a good book. You can work through a book at your own speed, taking as long as you like over the difficult parts, while skipping over what is less relevant. You can tackle the contents in whatever order you choose, and you can easily refer back to parts you have already read. Another Deficiency of Books in GeneralBefore I tell you what books I have chosen, and why, I want to share with you one of the most important things I've learned about books in the last 30 years: When you buy a book, the information in it does not automatically transfer to your brain. I know, I know, it is so unfair! You have spent all that money on a book, and now you have to actually read it to learn what is in it. But that is the way it is. A typical chess book will contain over a hundred complete games, maybe as many as 500. At half an hour per game it can easily take a week or two just to read over the games superficially, and it could easily take 6 months or more to study them all properly. It is easy to buy a book. It is much harder to study it. It has taken a long time for me to fully realize this. That is why my bookshelf (even after a recent clearout) contains about 300 chess books (and a similar number on each of a dozen other subjects). Yet (whatever my photograph might suggest) I am not yet 200 years old! How Many Books Do You Need?I don't need 300 books on chess. Or on any other subject. Certainly not for the level I'm aspiring to. Kevin Spragget recommends that until you achieve master strength you need only about 25 books. I have done better and selected just 24 that will accompany me on my travels. GuidelinesI started by noting down some obvious but useful categories: General Text Books, Game Collections , Endgames, Calculation and Tactics, Tactical Exercises, Middle Game Manuals, and Openings. I haven't included any books on the nature or philosophy of chess. I have just spent over a year getting my ideas straight in those departments. Another category I've left out is anything on psychological aspects - both on human learning, and on competing effectively, because my biggest problems are not being psyched out by my opponents, failing to make proper use of what I know, or studying incorrectly, ... they are that I just don't know enough chess, don't have well-honed practical skills, and for over 30 years have been too lazy to do the necessary work. General Text BooksA general text book tries to cover the entire game, opening, middle game, and ending. It includes methods of calculating, how to handle the different types of piece, understanding pawn structures, developing judgment, making and following typical plans and schemes. That breadth means that it can't possibly cover any of it in enough depth. Books in this category are useful in four ways: they show you something of the richness of chess, and give you some concepts to make sense of it, they give you a start in the study of each topic, and they help you to assess what you already understand, and where there is still more work to be done. One of the most useful general texts I studied in the past was O'Kelly de Galway's two volume work, "Improve your Chess Fast" and "Assess Your Chess Fast". This time around, I have chosen Nigel Davies's Power Chess Program, Books 1 and 2. Like O'Kelly's books Nigel's combine manageably sized lessons with practical problems that reinforce the material, but they are far more thorough and systematic. Partly of course, I won't be happy until I have completed the course from which I ignominiously dropped out a few years ago. Game CollectionsMost human achievement in any field is built on studying and understanding what has already been achieved. In chess that achievement is embodied in the games that our predecessors have played. I don't yet know enough about chess to understand much of what is going on in modern day GM clashes, I lack the necessary "chess culture", so I have chosen books to put that right. Classical games are more useful to me. Seeing how a strong player like Steinitz or Lasker or Rubinstein or Capablanca takes apart a relatively clueless opponent gives me better guidance on how to win my own games than seeing how Shirov out-bamboozled Gelfand or Ivanchuk. CompendiumsA compendium is useful because it covers a wide range of styles of play, and patterns of game. A great compendium that I worked through many years ago, and would recommend to anyone is "Modern Chess Masterpieces" by Gligorich. This is a collection of his magazine articles, each one analyzing a (then recent - now historical) game in depth. One book I DO NOT recommend is Chernev's "Logical Chess Move by Move" ... but more of that in a future rant. For this trip I shall be taking the first two volumes of My Great Predecessors by Kasparov. These books have been criticized for all kinds of reasons, but I don't care. They are exactly what I need. The period they cover (from the LaBourdonnais-MacDonnel match to the death of Alekhine) charts the growth of chess from a barely explored pastime to a level that seems not much different from the standard it is played at now. There are most of the famous games of the past, plus a few that I haven't seen before. It does not bother me if there are a few mistakes in historical details, or in the analysis of the games, nor that some analysis is used without attribution, or that Kasparov may not have written very much of it, or that his interpretations of the champions styles in terms of prevailing social and historical movements is amusing. There is plenty of material to work at, and it is beautifully printed on fine paper, bound in traditional books that lie flat at whatever page they are opened. Tournament BooksThe games in a compendium are carefully chosen, so they can give a distorted view of the true state of tournament chess. There is often a bias towards bold attacking games, towards interesting and generally accurate play, and towards decisive games of sporting significance. There is often a preponderance of short wins by white. In a tournament book you get a realistic picture of things like how most games are won and lost (or - more likely - drawn), how long a typical game is, and what openings were popular at the time. The Chess Struggle in Practice (book of the 1953 Zurich
Candidates Tournament) by Bronstein is a book that has sat on my shelves for
about 20 years. I have dipped into it, but have never studied it from cover
to cover. From my "dipping" it is clear that this epic tournament marks the
boundary between classical chess and modern chess, a kind of summing up of
the state of chess understanding in the middle of the previous century. Single Player CollectionsStudying compendia and tournament books exposes you to a wide range of ideas and ways of playing, but it doesn't give you a coherent approach to the game. A recommended way to develop that is to immerse yourself for weeks or months in the games of just one player, with the idea that you'll begin to think the same way, and start to do the same things well. In a previous chess-life my role models were Keres (Middle Years of Paul Keres) and Fischer (My 60 Memorable Games). This time I will be studying Capablanca (Capablanca's 100 Best Games of Chess by Golombek) to try to learn how he could squeeze wins out of virtually nothing with such apparent ease. As a counterbalance I will also be studying Alekhine (Best Games 1908-1937) to find out how he developed an initiative right out of the opening, how he created those ordinary looking sequences of moves with a nasty sting in the tail, and how he managed to crowd the board with a wealth of tactical ideas. Their chess might use some outdated openings, and possibly modern GM's understand some positional ideas that they did not, but if I could play half as well as either of these great players I'd win most British tournaments. EndgamesI pretty well know Averbakh's "Chess Endings: Essential Knowledge" inside out, but it is very elementary. Most of what I know beyond the elements (which is not much) comes from a book of endgame puzzles by Reinfeld! I have also read Znosko-Borovsky's fascinating "How to play the endgame in chess" which does a good job of explaining the concept of related squares and once, very uncharacteristically studied "Pawn Endings" by Maizelis in depth. What all this means is that play a handful of basic positions OK, pawn endings pretty well, and everything else badly. I also know a stack of interesting oddities that will never turn up in a real game. The means to remedy this have always been at hand. I have on my shelves Fine's "Basic Chess Endings", and Kere's "Practical Chess Endings" not to mention a stack of more specialized tomes, but I have never managed to motivate myself enough to study them thoroughly. I start with good intentions, but can't sustain them. Fine's book is in any case a reference, not an instruction manual. Kere's book is a manual, but in trying to give you just what you need to know and no more it has ended up too terse and too dry, though I suspect it would be a great book for revising endgame theory, when you already know it. Like magic, just as I was planning my chess quest, there appeared Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual. This is a heavyweight work, but as soon as I saw it I knew it was the right book for me. I read 20 pages right there in the shop. It gives you the truth, rather than some watered down version of it, but also provides plenty of guidance and explanation, and supplementary material and examples, and manages to be entertaining too. For me, this book gets it just right. Its innovative feature is the use of blue text for essential material that must be known, and ordinary black text for the optional stuff. The material in blue covers pretty much the same ground as Keres' book, but it is more thoroughly explained, and set in a fuller context For more real game examples of endgames and study material to practice on I'm also packing Dvoretsky's School of Chess Excellence 1. Endgame Analysis. There are three things I really like about Dvoretsky: he doesn't water the material down or make any concessions - it is tough and you are expected to work hard and be persistent but it is always interesting, he does not preach at you all the time, and he teaches by setting practical exercises that force you to do things right. It is like the way that a good swimming teacher operates. Poor coaches try to explain complex stroke mechanics to their swimmers. The swimmers end up with too much to think about, and in any case they can't see what they are doing and just get into a complete mess. Often they get discouraged and give up. In contrast, a good coach gives clear and simple exercises, one at a time. They might be tough and demanding exercises, but the coach doesn't burden you with too much of the reasoning and theory behind them. In doing each exercise you are forced into good habits, and faults are corrected. I think chess training can (should?) be much the same. Calculation and TacticsFor "heavyweight" practice in figuring out variations I'm packing Dvoretsky's School of Chess Excellence 2. Tactical Play and his earlier Secrets of Chess Tactics. Both work on the kind of calculating skills you need in a real game, when you don't have the benefit of a friendly expert telling you who stands better, or that there is something special to be seen in the position in front of you. If you are looking for something a bit less demanding in this category then you might be able to find used copies of Pachman's brilliant books "Modern Chess Tactics" and "Attack and Defense in Modern Chess Tactics". Currently in print, Nunn's "Learn Chess Tactics" is suitable for both beginners and experts, and when you have exhausted that there is Averbakh's "Advanced Chess Tactics". Tactical ExercisesThis type of book teaches you to spot combinations and tactical tricks - and to spot them quickly enough to be useful in a real game. It is very artificial, but there is no better way of building up a store of standard tactical motifs and combinations. Between 1981 and 1984 the effort of solving tactical exercises and "find the combination" problems improved my practical results more than anything else I did. I worked through several books of tactical positions, but the one that did most good was "It's Your Move" by Teschner and Miles. There would be no point in taking that book now. I know it so well that I immediately recognize all the positions, so for this aspect of the game I've picked three books that I haven't tackled before The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book by Emms for the huge number of positions, Chess Players Pocket Book by Alburt, which claims to present the 300 essential positions that embody all chess knowledge and Test Your Chess IQ by Livschitz. which pretends to let you measure and rate your level of tactical ability (and more of that in a future rant!). Middle GameMany years ago I studied the famous "My System" by Nimzovich. I certainly enjoyed his colourful, cantankerous, and prickly style of writing, but it didn't do my chess a lot of good! I am sure the fault was mostly mine. I have vague memories of devising extravagant knight and queen manoeuvers that were only superficially Nimzovichian. But I never did figure out which mattered most to Nimzovich: explaining the mysteries of chess, or displaying his own eccentric genius. Much of what I understood in My System was stuff that I already knew pretty well, like see-saw checks, using two bishops, using the seventh rank, etc. It was useful revision but no more, and it was all well-known to generations that were playing chess before Nimzovich was born. The ideas that were new to me (like overprotection, interior prophylaxis, and maneuvering against weaknesses) I completely failed to grasp at the time. I also have strong memories of "Think Like a Grandmaster" by Kotov, but my attempts to calculate variations the way Kotov proposed did me more harm than good so I gave up on it. This time I happily put the blame on Kotov. He made a really strong sell of his central point, and at the time I didn't know enough to ignore what was clearly hype, and take what was good. His main thrust was was inappropriate for me anyway. I was already pretty good at calculating variations. Where I was (and still am) weak was in knowing where to put the pieces when there were no fancy tactics going on. Since then I haven't found one strong player that routinely calculates variations in the way Kotov recommended. To tell the truth, I don't think Kotov calculated like that either. I have now discovered that quite a few GM's agree with my assessment of this famous book, ... Tisdall in "Improve Your Chess Now", Nunn in "Secrets of Practical Chess", and Rowson in "The Seven Deadly Sins of Chess" ... amongst others. It is no longer heretical to criticize the Kotov method. I have picked two pretty meaty and challenging books as middle game texts. The first is yet another by Dvoretsky, his School of Chess Excellence 3. Strategic Play. It is not a comprehensive or methodical textbook. Like the other volumes in the series it comprises a series of short chapters on some aspect of strategy with exercises along the way that, carried out conscientiously, force your mind into the right way of working. Before anyone points it out, I know he pays lip service to Kotov's ideas of elucidating all the Candidate Moves in a position, and then systematically building a "tree of analysis" but he doesn't make a big deal of it. From following his descriptions of his own thought processes it is obvious that he doesn't often use the Kotov method himself. The second is Creative Chess Strategy by the little known Spanish GM Alfonso Romero. This book has orthodox looking section headings but the subjects are treated in some unusual ways. We are often told the importance of thinking schematically. Romero is unique in showing his readers what this means and how to do it. Taking the pawn structure from the game Romero will construct a possible endgame with say rooks, then with say a pair of bishops, then with bishop v. knight. He calculates variations in depth in each scenario and in this way come to an understanding of which piece combinations, and which particular placements lead to favourable endings and which are to be avoided. Returning to the real game this makes a big difference in choosing a sensible plan, and in calculating variations. Another unique feature is that he gives proper consideration to ancillary factors in the position. What does this mean? Well instructional books often grossly simplify the reasons behind a result. A win will be presented as the natural consequence of say, superior dark square control, when the reality was much more complex. There may have been some very obvious feature of the position that dominated our view, but many other factors were probably necessary to win: perhaps a better placed rook, some additional pawn-structure weakness, some specific tactical possibility based on the unique placement of the pieces ... . Romero takes all this into account, points out these additional relevant features of the position, and explains how they interact with the main positional themes. As well as these two general books I am taking several that pack a lot of very detailed information on specific structures and how to play them (mostly structures that are likely to arise in my opening repertoire). I am hoping that they will counter the lazy temptation to rely too much on general principles. The first is Pawn Structure Chess by Soltis. This looks at typical pawn structures that develop from a wide range of modern openings, and at the precise methods of play that are effective in those structures. Winning pawn Structures by Baburin takes this approach even further - an entire volume on how to play Isolated Queen's Pawn positions and the positions that can develop from them (isolated pawn couple, hanging pawns, ... ). OpeningsEventually every player needs their own private repertoire, with variations that they have devised for themselves, but before we can devise our own opening systems and avariations we need both a general understanding of opening methods and ideas, and some knowledge of specific systems and variations, so as to build on what has gone before. You can't figure it all out for yourself from first principles, or with unaided vision, though you may be able to figure out enough to get a playable position, and against most opposition that may be all that you need. Sadly, too many opening books are just potboilers, collections of variations or half-baked repertoires, and there is a lot of uncritical re-hashing of other people's analysis, complete with mistakes. Many years ago I got my overview of the whole range of opening possibilities from Fine's "The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings", and a lot of GM's still recommend this book. I also learned a lot from the RHM Press publication "How to Open A Chess Game" in which several strong players show you their different approaches to opening problems, and demonstrate ways of searching for new ideas in well known lines. You'll have guessed by now that I very much like Dvoretsky's books, so for general opening instruction I have chosen both the final volume in the School of Excellence series School of Excellence 4. Opening Developments and the earlier Opening Preparation written jointly with Yusupov. I have decided to prepare some classical systems where understanding the type of game is more important than knowing the latest variations. A simple repertoire, but a sound one, that will not be refuted by new analysis in some critical line. As Black I plan on playing the French against 1. e4, and defending the Queen's Gambit as black. I have played the French on and off for 20 years so although I have never studied it properly I have a pretty good feeling for what is going on. White's 1. c4 doesn't worry me, as I played it myself as White for ages, and I know exactly the types of development that make White uncomfortable. As White I'm preparing 1.d4, hoping to play a Queen's gambit, but prepared for whatever Black might come up with. This is a new departure, but already it feels more comfortable than the 1.e4 I played in the 1990's, and richer in possibilities than the 1.c4 I used in the 1980's. It is a narrow repertiore, but that means I should be able to master it thoroughly before being tempted to broaden it. To prepare this repertoire I have picked just four books: I actually have TEN books on the French, but there is only room for one on this trip, so I have chosen Lev Psakhis's The Complete French. Unlike some other writers on the French he is realistic and objective in his assessments. (Too many writers go out of their way to try to make their pet lines seem playable, when they know in their hearts that they are unsound). For the Queen's Gambit I have copies of Matthew Sadler's two brilliant books: Queen's Gambit Declined and Slav Defence. For many of Black's other possibilities against 1.d4 I rather like most of the sound-looking, but currently unfashionable, systems suggested in Richard Palliser's "Play 1.d4 ! so that book is going along too. So there you have it. Two text books, five game collections, two books on the endgame, five dealing with tactics and calculating variations, four books on the midddle game, two on the opening generally, and four on a specific repertoire: 24 books in all for guidance along the road to chess mastery. Will they be up to the job? Watch this space. Click here to open a new page with direct links to the books mentioned on this page.
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