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Chessville
from the
Green
Regulation
Place Your Ad Advertise to Single insert:
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Excelling at Chess Calculation Reviewed by Rick Kennedy
You knew that was coming, didn’t you? So, club player that you are, one day you pick up Jacob Aagaard’s new Excelling at Chess Calculation – maybe you know him from his well-received Excelling at Chess (2001), or you’ve heard of his more recent titles, Excelling at Positional Chess (2003), Excelling at Combinational Play: Learn to Identify & Exploit Tactical Chances (2004), Excelling at Technical Chess (2004) or even his DVD Basic Positional Ideas (2004), or CDs, Attacking Chess 1 & 2 (2004), and Right Decisions [with Lund] (2004) – and you drool over the back cover, which inspires you:
You thumb through the Introduction – with the book at almost 200 pages and priced under $25 why not? – and you’re cruising along (hmm, this Aagaard can write) when you hit the mother lode:
Yes! Gimme them tools! Teichman’s fabled “99% of chess” gets cleared away with just one book! Come to Pappa... Wait a minute. “Train?” What’s he talking about? You read a little bit further…
Gulp!
Sigh. You knew that was coming, didn’t you? Say – maybe that DVD Aagaard made would be easier, you know, than the book… Still there? Good. The International Master, chess coach, and prolific author knows what makes a good chess mind tick (if his Excelling series is not enough proof, check out his Inside the Chess Mind, 2004) and he really does want to share his wisdom. Here’s what Excelling at Chess Calculation has to offer:
Aagaard knows that the task of improving the skill of chess calculation can be a challenging one, and that not all chess resources are immediately helpful to the average pawnpusher. He even acknowledges that his hero, Dvoretsky, may be over the heads of some:
For example, in touching on Kotov’s landmark Think like a Grandmaster, the author makes the point that it makes little sense to investigate how to develop a “tree of analysis” based on the “candidate moves” (he also likes “candidate ideas”) in a position, if the chessplayer doesn’t know how to properly arrive at those “candidates” in the first place. To that end, it is most important, he maintains, not so much to see many moves ahead in any position, but to first see the position for what it is and what it has to offer. When calculating, one ought to first “calculate wide, not deep.” And when to calculate? At different critical moments in the game, starting with when the game leaves established opening theory. And at critical points:
In the first eight chapters of Excelling at Chess Calculation, Aagaard presents and discusses about 80 positions or chess games. He cautions readers about the dangers of assumptions – how they blind the player to dangers or resources. He illustrates and discusses desperados, domination, creativity, chess vision, comparison, elimination and prophylaxis. He acknowledges that sometimes you have to force yourself to be concrete in your calculation. He encourages that sometimes you have to calculate “more slowly” -- checking out every legal move in a position to make sure you don’t miss anything. Arguing that “calculating long lines is just like calculating short lines, only it takes more time,” he refers to Jonathan Tisdall’s idea of creating “stepping stones” (from Improve Your Chess Now!) to help you move along through your visualization. Throughout, the author holds to his belief that you improve your calculation by wrestling with candidate move problems (he recommends Gaprindashvili’s new Imagination in Chess as well as his and Lund’s Right Decisions CD); working thorough combinations (he likes his Excelling at Combinational Play, of course but he admits that older collections, while not computer-checked and hence with errors, are useful); tackling pawn endgames (he lauds Lamprecht & Miller’s Secrets of Pawn Endings), solving studies, and analyzing complicated positions (in Dvoretsky’s books, or Jacob’s Analyse to Win). The final two chapters of the book
include a selection of 100 of such challenges, with solutions. Aagaard
wants you to work hard on this training section. He provides a grading
system for the Exercises: you get 1000 points for completing the chapter,
and the highest you can score is 2700. He lightly admits that this
will shortchange highly-rated super-GMs like Kasparov, and points out that
1000 is the lowest rating in Denmark: if you are the worst player, you will
still score 1000 on the Exercises. Three examples:
Those who know of Aagaard’s set-to with John Watson (starting with taking on Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy in his Excelling at Chess) will find him a bit more reserved in Excelling at Chess Calculation, but he has not completely sheathed his claws:
In discussing how to identify “critical moments” in a game, and two books that address the topic, The Method in Chess and The Critical Moment, Aagaard can hardly let another author off the hook:
I’m inclined to agree with Aagaard that for advancing and strong club players, working though Excelling at Chess Calculation is a good way to accomplish just that. Solutions to the three Exercises:
Oh? Are you still
here? Did that “Train” thing in the beginning of this review
scare you away from Aagaard? Sorry. My bad. You still have
to calculate, you know. Try Silman’s How to Reassess Your Chess
and see if that helps. Look at C.J.S. Purdy’s writings in The Search for
Chess Perfection and see if his method of thinking is useful to you.
Enjoy Soltis’ The Inner Game of Chess: How to Calculate and Win –
it’s a keeper. Sooner or later, though, if you strive after
excellence, when you’re ready, you’ll come back to Aagaard.
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