Too lazy to set up a board and play through the analysis?

OK, perhaps lazy is a bit harsh, but most of us are balancing a desire to improve our game against other demands on our time. One problem with chess books is that it is easy to buy them, but reading them can be hard work, particularly when lengthy analysis is presented. Playing through games is time-consuming enough, but if you play through a variation over the board you then have get back to the main line position start all over again - I am assuming here that like me you are not quite ready to play blindfold yet ;-)

Playing through the game on a PC (if you don't mind on-screen boards) is an improvement,and searching databases for the games from your book can also help, but there are web sites where the games have already been collected for you. One good site is www.chessgames.com , it has a good searchable online database, and many collections. The only slight drawback is that although you can download the games individually for no charge, to download whole collections in PGN format you have to be a 'premium member' which involve paying an - admittedly not unreasonable - annual fee of 25$.

One of my favourite recent finds is http://www.gambitchess.com/index2.htm . There is a great collection of free downloads here containing collections for specific books, so particularly if you have an old title you may well get lucky here. Most of the files are .pgn, but I even found a .cbh (Chessbase/Fritz format) file of a book I am studying, an old copy of 'New Ideas in Chess' by Larry Evans. Someone has even gone to the trouble of typing in the annotation!

So there you go, not a book review as such but hopefully a useful accompaniment.

Review of www.eudesign.com/chessops

Although this is ostensibly a book reviews blog this author is taking the liberty of reviewing a couple of websites he has found very useful for improving his game.

I first found this website after repeatedly losing to my friend at chess. Since he was very rude about the way I played I decided to look for “chess opening moves” through Google and this is what I found.

This site is completely free and there are not even any annoying adverts. The look of it is cheap and cheerful but as an introductory guide to the openings it is absolutely brilliant. It is a site that I keep looking back at even now as it is constantly being updated, and I need to keep refreshing my knowledge of the openings I play OTB.

The main problem with this site is that as my knowledge has expanded I have come to realise that it does not cover all of the variations in many openings, and that its evaluation of a few positions is a bit suspect. Any move that you click on that is not in the database automatically comes up as a bad move (“You can do better than that! Try another move!” it says), even when they are good. Also the descriptions of the strategies behind the openings are too brief to either illuminate the novice or to fill out the understanding of an intermediate player.

That said this free site is terribly useful and is the perfect complement to playing chess, particularly if one is playing chess and losing a lot.

An Encyclopaedia of Chess Wisdom by Eric Schiller

This was the first book I bought to help my game. At the time I was playing mostly online and barely knew how the pieces moved, and while this book is good for giving the beginner player a few handy pointers on what to do with each of the pieces and a few strategic and tactical concepts, it does not justify its £16 price tag.

There are two main problems with the book; firstly it tries to cover too much ground, and secondly it is inaccurate.

As a book aimed at the beginner one expects that it would deal with the main tactical themes in as simple a fashion as possible. Instead it gets into a number of fairly advanced tactical themes very quickly, including all manner of sacrifices which are of little use to the inexperienced player. Further to this it explains the ideas in long strings of algebraic notation, with side variations which quickly lost and confused me. These strings and side variations often end with a comment like “which is clearly better for black” or something equally unhelpful to a novice.

The second big problem with the book, which has only become apparent to me on re-reading it with a better knowledge of algebraic notation, is that there are a great number of errors in the notes. No wonder I found them so confusing to follow to begin with! This is not just a few typos (almost every book has a few typos if you look hard enough); this is repeated mistakes that must play havoc with anyone trying to learn from the games.

One might be inclined to think that this book must be aimed at a more advanced player, one that can follow the algebra better. However the games are not really covered in enough depth for a more advanced player and the tactical themes are better studied through practical examples. As such this book falls between two stools.

It is a shame because Eric Schiller is a good annotator on the internet, and his opening manuals are also good from what I know of them. This book seems rushed, badly thought out and designed to grab the attention of newbies (and their money), without delivering what it promises on the cover.

Fred Reinfeld’s 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate

This is a wonderful book for practising one’s chess tactics. Having so many puzzles on so many themes really sharpens one’s instincts for the checkmate. The 1001 puzzles are arranged by themes such as “Queen Sacrifices”, “Harrying the King” and “Discovered and Double Check”. I have found myself thinking of possible checkmates much earlier on in my games owing to a greater awareness of potential weaknesses.

Solving chess puzzles has to be one of the most enjoyable ways of improving one’s game. I intend to re-read this book very soon to keep drilling these patterns into my brain. If it is true that a club player understands about 1000 positions, and a club master about 10 000, an IM about 100 000 and a GM about 1 000 000, then learning the 1000 positions in this book would be an ideal step on the path to chess improvement.

I would recommend reading this alongside a theory book, as the theory will help to clarify the practice and give you a better idea of how such positions can come about. I found this book ideal to read on the train as working through it without a board forces the reader to develop their visualisation skills, which will pay off in your games even if you never do manage to make a stunning queen sac.

My only gripe with this book is that the composed problems (the last 70 in the book) are rubbish. The positions are so stupid and contrived that I cannot imagine anything like them has ever come about in a real chess game. I suppose that solving them might give one a greater understanding of the co-operation of the pieces but I just lost patience.

This book is usually available for about a fiver; considering the number of problems in it that represents great value for money. There is even a deal to get the partner volume 1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations on Amazon. Bargain!

The Seven Deadly Chess Sins by Jonathan Rowson

This is not a beginners book at all. Rowson takes the experienced player through the 7 commonest pscyhological problems which cause mistakes in chess, which he categorises (i) thinking; (ii) blinking; (iii) wanting; (iv) materialism; (v) egoism; (vi) perfectionism; and (vii) looseness. Each of these he defines and illustrates with his own games (It is refreshing to see a chess author put in so many games where he has lost.). His sources of wisdom are eclectic in the extreme: the second quote in the book is from St Teresa of Avila, the penultimate is Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. I read this book without following through the games but I did study the board positions.

This book tackles the myth that chess players play an entirely rational game and analyses where their subjective thinking patterns most frequently fall down. It could be read as a guide to life as well as chess.

It is a real page turner (How often do you hear that in relation to a chess book?). It is very funny in places, very human. It instructs the reader on how to train to spot these common errors.

Irving Chernev’s Logical Chess: Move by Move

My name is Simon Hayward and this is my first review for the blog. I am writing from the perspective of someone who has learned to play chess properly only recently, and having learned some basic tactical themes and some openings now wishes to improve their game to the standard of serious club play.

Reading annotated games is an excellent way to improve your play but I find that often annotations concentrate just on the novelties in a game or else lose a novice reader in endless branching variations. Logical Chess is the perfect antidote to this. It gives simple explanations of every move, good or bad, in over thirty master level games. This covers an enormous range of tactical themes, opening theory, positional jockeying, and endgame techniques. I found the games demonstrating how to exploit the weaknesses created by moving pawns in front of the castled king particularly enjoyable and instructive.

There are a couple of minor flaws with the book, but they should not put you off studying it. The first is that sometimes Chernev does labour his points; while his wit and erudition does carry the reader through slightly repetitious opening annotations they do eventually get to be annoying. The second is that it concentrates a great deal on variations of the Queen’s Gambit Declined and the Indian Defences to Queen’s Pawn Openings. However since well over half of all tournament games begin with 1.d4 this should not be seen as too serious a flaw.

I would recommend this book overwhelmingly to anyone that wishes to improve beyond the strong beginner stage of chess playing, and wishes to understand why certain moves form the mainline of the openings. It will also improve your endgame technique and positional understanding. A great book.

The Chess Player's Handbook - A popular and scientific introduction to the game of chess, by Howard Staunton

My copy was published in 1893 and the author's preface was written in 1847, so it may be tricky to find a copy of this book now. Its value may be more historical interest or possibly financial, rather than as a guide to chess theory. It starts with an explanation of the rules of chess and then turns to the openings, starting with the King's Knight openings, then King's Bishop openings, King's, Gambit, Queen's Gambit and then it looks at end game combinations. I have seen players who lacked any theoretical knowledge suddenly gain an appreciation of the ideas of chess (which can't be gleaned from the rules) from this book but, quite frankly, it is more of a curio than a useful font of wisdom nowadays.

Simon Hayward suggested a book review page - what a great idea!

When bloggers post a review here, they can write the book title/author/*s in the label box, which is just under the box where you write the messages (or you can pick an existing label from the list, if you like). This will allow readers of this blog to look through the list of labels on the right-hand side and pick the relevant reviews, because they can look at them altogether.

How about we go through the books in our club library and review them here...? Might take a little while...

When labelling, separate your labels with commas. Let's use a star rating from 1-5 on labelling, which would mean that you could either write * or ** or *** or **** or ***** in the label field.