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Chessville
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Inside the Chess Mind How players of all levels think about the game Reviewed by Rick Kennedy
With 3 books authored or co-authored in 2003, and 4 titles out in 2004 – plus three software CDs – Jacob Aagaard is not just a chess writer these days, he’s a veritable industry. From the midst of all of this production, Aagaard’s recent Inside the Chess Mind, appears as if out of an old “I Love Lucy” episode, where an ever-faster conveyor belt frazzles, and then overwhelms, the star with an endless series of sweets. Jacob! You have some ’splainin’ to do… Actually, the author does some explaining in the book’s Introduction. Then, he does some more explaining throughout the text. Finally, he does even more explaining in the final chapter. By the time I had finished Inside the Chess Mind for the second time, I was trying to find out how to translate reassuringly “when life hands you lemons, you make lemonade” into Danish; and I found myself quoting a pretty bright Danish International Master:
As you will see, Inside the Chess Mind is a decent effort and a fun and enlightening read. It stands on its own – regardless. But, let’s get a little background on the author, first. Aagaard has written a number of books on the opening: Easy guide to the Panov - Botvinnik Attack (1998), Easy Guide to the Sveshnikov Sicilian (2001), Dutch Stonewall (2001), Sicilian Kalashnikov (with Pinski, 2001), Meeting 1d4, (with Lund, 2002), Queen's Indian Defence (2002), and Starting Out: The Grunfeld Defence (2003). He collaborated with Jacobs and Emms on Chess Software User’s Guide (2003), and this year he authored 2 fritztrainer middlegame Attacking Chess CDs and a Basic Positional Ideas CD. The author really hit his stride, however, when he discovered Excellence. His Excelling at Chess (2001) won the ChessCafe.com “Book of the Year Award,” being well-received in spite of – or perhaps as a result of – the fight it picks with John Watson’s revered Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy. (You can see Watson’s take on this, plus a bit of a review of Excelling at Chess, at JeremySilman.com). This year has brought Excelling at Chess Calculation: Capitalizing on Tactical Chances (2004), Excelling at Combinational Play: Learn to Identify & Exploit Tactical Chances (2004) and Excelling at Technical Chess (2004). And Inside the Chess Mind (2004). Everyman Chess’ editor, Byron Jacobs, was looking for an author to write a book with that intriguing title. Here’s how the back-of-the-book blurb starts off:
How’s that for an assignment? As editor, wouldn’t you immediately think of an author who has already penned a book that “identified the key factors that separate the very strong players from the rest”? One who is an International Master as well as a chess teacher and writer? You might, but Aagaard speculates:
What to do? Aagaard quickly decided that he didn’t want to write “a scientifically-oriented book.” However, he recalled Adriaan de Groot’s study, published as Thought and Choice in Chess – a handful of grandmasters, masters, Dutch women’s champions, experts and Class players all were given a series of positions from actual chess games, and asked to choose what to play; reporting out loud what they were thinking about in the process. De Groot analyzed the responses, and drew conclusions: top players do this, others do that. So, Aagaard assembled 8 players, from grandmasters Artur Yusupov and Peter Heine Nielsen, to club player Sidsel Hoeg and chess neophyte Sten Vesterli. For an interesting contrast and comparison, he added Fritz8, with programmer Mathias Feist as its interpreter. Then, he selected 10 chess Test Positions and had each player attempt to solve them, one-by-one, within a time limit – talking into a microphone, as they did so, to record their thoughts. Inside the Chess Mind presents the Test Problems, so the reader can try solving them – a great idea. (Anyone who aces #4 should contact Byron Jacobs and offer to write the sequel!) There is a chapter introducing the participants, as well as giving some background and a representative game. Then each Test Problem is given its own chapter, as the participants’ solutions are presented, from furthest off the mark to the closest (or complete) solution. It's like reading 10 mysteries that unfold, step-by-step, with each iteration coming closer to the truth. That's the fun part of the whole affair: peeking at what's going on, in the beginner's head, in the master's head, in the grandmaster's head. (And comparing it to what went on in the readers' heads, if they had worked on the Test Positions, too.) It's the part that I liked most in de Groot's study (even if it was based on a doctoral dissertation). It's the part that I loved in Avni's recent The Grandmaster’s Mind. It's what I enjoyed in Inside the Chess Mind. Of course, into every life, some zweischenzugs must fall... In Aagaard's case, it involve the tape recorder that he used to record the players' thoughts: it failed during Yusupov's solving of the fourth Test Position; but the author only discovered the malfunction after the GM had completed the analysis of the tenth position. (I do not for a minute believe that Aagaard actually threw his laptop out the window upon discovering this.) Fortunately, the author had been paying attention to his celebrated volunteer, and he reproduced the grandmaster's deliberations as best as he could. Who hasn't heard the admonition, a little bit of knowledge is a dangerous thing, and wondered what kind of ill would a whole lot of knowledge bring? Much to Aagaard's dismay, during the analysis sessions Nielsen recognized three of the Test Positions and Yusupov recognized one, all of which seemed to undercut those Tests' usefulness as measures of problem-solving ability, absent simple recall. Ouch. Aagaard is quickly self-critical, "It almost instantly became obvious to me that the selection of exercises could have been cleverer and more rounded." However the author, the project and the book, went forward:
The last chapter, What can we learn from the Tests?, is largely a critique of the efforts of each player, e.g.
The evaluations sometimes come across as a bit cold, but they are the kind of honest feedback that you might expect from a chess trainer. Some general conclusions I extracted from the summary:
For those who believe that self-improvement comes from thinking like a computer, the “thought” process of Fritz8 is interesting. The program solved most of the Test Positions, but it sometimes seemed “undecided” on the best line of play, moving back and forth between preferring one move, then another. It seems there are still types of positions that the electronic beasts struggle with. Aagaard makes an interesting observation:
It seems as the final pages of the book approach, that Aagaard has made peace with his efforts and their results. He realizes that he as indeed made limonade out of citrons:
But then, as if Aagaard looked at the text of the book’s back cover, and got nervous, having second thoughts, he continues in a raveling manner: "Rather than giving answers, this book sets out to pose questions." Maybe so, but the back-of-the-cover seems to promise otherwise. In any event, even if more conclusions could be drawn and shared by the author, a close reading of Inside the Chess Mind uncovers gems worth searching for. The disclosures by Aagaard are not over, though: "Rather than to teach and preach a truth, this book is intelligent." Oh, my! I’ve always thought of the phrase artificial intelligence as somewhat of an oxymoron. Is there now a Turing test for books? "Rather than being scientific or instructional, this book wants to inspire and communicate." I would argue this book is all four – scientific, instructional, inspirational and communicative. It is hard for me to parse out, however, the writer’s wishes from those of the written. And, again: Chess is a game of beautiful complexity, evolved to give the most possible meaning to our many-sided imagination, as well as the greatest possible challenge to our minds... Jacob! Enough 'splainin' already!
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