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| Dec-23-10 | | hms123: I am working my way through Uhlmann and Schmidt's <Open Files>. Here is an example from the book:
White has just played <15.Bb4> 
click for larger viewZ Kozul vs S Atalik, 2001
At this point, the authors give an "assessment of the position": <....White has appreciably increased his space advantage.....on no account must the black knight be allowed to occupy the c6 square, since then the c-file would be blocked. Black must be compelled to play <15...Re8>, whereupon the exchange can take place with gain of tempo. After this White has two strategic objectives: Firstly, doubling of the rooks on the c-file; secondly to attack the h5 pawn at the proper time.> This illustrates the general format of the book. A key position is given and then "assessed". Most of the rest of the comments give insight into how the objectives are implemented. |
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| Dec-25-10 | | wordfunph: "It will be a book of my mistakes, my chess faults. It will be very useful for me. To make a book of my victories would be interesting for the others, but not for me. A chess player must
learn from his own errors. The moment he is satisfied with himself and his victories, that's the end. There is nothing left to fight for, and chess is like life." - Boris Spassky (on the book he intended to write)
does anyone know the title of the book? |
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| Dec-29-10 | | wordfunph: according to Andy Soltis from Chess Life & Review 1970.. 17th Annual World Student Team Championship in Haifa 1970: David Levy, the author of a soon-to-be-released book on the Dragon Variation, had to call his publisher in London every time a theoretical game was played at Haifa to be sure it could get into the book. Levy said
that if Americans would learn to use algebraic notation then it would double the sales of all the new British chess books. It seems that English descriptive is used to please the Americans but that this automatically loses the large European market. he may be referring to this book..
+ The Sicilian Dragon
http://www.amazon.com/Sicilian-Drag... according to my list, Levy authored around 30 chess books. |
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Dec-31-10
 | | Fusilli: Happy New Year to all the chess books fans! |
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| Jan-05-11 | | wordfunph: thank you <ChessBookForum>.. |
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| Jan-09-11 | | hms123: This collection is complete: Game Collection: The Art of Chess Analysis (Jan Timman) |
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| Jan-10-11 | | wordfunph: interesting books written by GM Andy Soltis..
+ Winning With The English Opening
http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Engli... + Beating The English Opening
http://www.amazon.com/Beating-Engli... exciting to see two players scanning these books OTB, maybe a draw.. :) |
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Jan-12-11
| | Fusilli: PART 1
Review of Andrew Soltis, “Grandmaster Secrets: Endings”: http://www.amazon.com/Grandmaster-S.... No idea why it is listed as so expensive. I bought it maybe five years ago for a very reasonable price, probably $15 or less, new, from a vendor at a chess tournament (this vendor, actually: http://www.cajunchess.com/tourns/up...). The book has a very annoying presentation style. It consists of a dialogue between two fictitious characters, a master and a student. The student constantly expresses his puzzlement over endgames with statements such as: "I never manage to win a rook endgame with an extra pawn, and I even often lose them". So, the master shows him several examples of GM play in that type of endings, revealing principles of technique. After each example, invariably, the student shows complete awe and shock ("that never occurred to me!") This is the case from the first to the last example in the book, suggesting that the student is awfully dumb, as he has made no progress whatsoever in his understanding of the game after all those lessons. (Of course I am being facetious… it’s just that, as a literary tool, it gets annoying. As a side not, it reminds me of Allison Dubois' husband in "Medium"... his reaction to every single dream of hers is "oh, come on, it's just a dream", and even after every single dream of hers turns out to reveal essential information to solve a crime, his reaction next time around is, again, "oh, come on, it's just a dream!") Also annoying are scattered quotes from various great players in chess history, usually placed with an accompanying caricature of the player, and with no particular reference to them anywhere in the text. For example, in page 51: “One Knight, at the end of the game, is generally superior to one Bishop”—Howard Staunton, or, in page 148: “In Queen endgames, everything is different”—Mikhail Botvinnik. We all know that every single chess rule recognizes exceptions, and it’s hard to figure out what the point is of presenting all this either questionable (Staunton’s) or as obvious as useless (Botvinnik’s) wisdom throughout the book. Luckily, though, these annoyances are all I find that is wrong with the book, and once you tune them out, I would say it is a very good book on endgames. Like everyone else, Soltis attempts to base his lessons on principles, but again we know principles are not immutable and they do not always apply. If you keep this in mind, then there is nothing wrong with reviewing some good examples where the principles did apply. For the most part, anyway, it is hard to guide your game by principles. Consider “keep your rook active”, a universal principle of rook endings. Fair enough, but what if there are several seemingly possible ways to keep the rook active? Or what if you keep your rook passive in exchange for a more active king and one or two passed pawns (which eventually may force your opponent to send his own rook to stop them, liberating your own rook to be active again)? What I am trying to say is that what you take out of a book depends a lot on you and not just on the author of the book. These ramblings aside, I did take valuable lessons out of the book, the first of which is: strategy in the endgame is so different from that of the middlegame that you have to think about it as a completely new problem. Pawns can suddendly be priceless, cutting off the enemy king is usually a wonderful thing, it usually pays off to push your pawns forward rather than trying to stop your opponents... and many other rules, all of which are, of course... relative! ...and subject to exceptions. I do recommend the book. It covers all type of endgames (in terms of material on the board), it is relatively light reading, and it is short—which means the author had to put effort in selecting the examples. It has a good number of diagrams so that you can work through it without setting up the pieces. I think Soltis decided that 8 moves is the cut off for the inclusion of a follow up diagram, so you may need to be able to visualize as many moves if you are not going to set up the board and pieces. Most examples only require you to be able to see 4, 5 or 6 moves ahead. An example follows on my next post. |
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Jan-12-11
| | Fusilli: PART 2 of Review of Andrew Soltis, “Grandmaster Secrets: Endings” Let me show you an example. The topic is cutting off the enemy king in order to reach a Lucena position. Clearly, a technique question, and a pretty important one. Speelman vs Gulko, 1988
All my comments are quoted from Soltis:
Position after 44...Rh2:
click for larger view
45.Rd6+! Ke7 (“it is easier after 45...Kc7 46.Rd3, when Black's king is cut off, leaving Black's rook futilely trying to stop the king from advancing the e-pawn.”) 46.Rd5! Rb2 (“otherwise White reverses direction and advances the b-pawn after 47.Kd4!”) 47.Rb5 Kd7! 48.Rb7+ Kc6
click for larger view
49.Rb4! (“threatening to go back to Plan A: 50.Rd4! cutting off the king again, e.g. 49...Kc5? 50.Rc4+ Kb5 51.Kd6 Rxb3 52.Rc1 and e5-e6 leads to Lucena.”) 49...Kd7! 50.Rd4+ Ke7 (“slowly but surely”) 51.b4! Rb1 52.Kd5 Kd7 (“otherwise Plan B -- 53.Kc6 and 54.b5 -- soon brings about Lucena”).
click for larger view
53.e5! Re1 (“to stop 54.e6+”) 54.b5 “and Black resigned after 54...Re2 55.Kc5+ Kc7 56.b6+ Kc8 57.Kd6:
click for larger view
because the Black king will be cut off (57...Rb2 58.e6 Rxb6+ 59.Ke7 or 57...Kd8 58.Kc6+ Kc8 59.b7+)”. The only differences between what I wrote and the example in the book are that in the book move number starts at 1 and, more importantly, the book only shows you the initial diagram and the diagram after 52…Kd7. So, in this case, you need to visualize up to eight moves if you want to work without setting up the board. |
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| Jan-16-11 | | wordfunph: on Berlin and Fred Reinfeld..
http://www.bworldonline.com/content... thanks to Bobby Ang aka <bang>! |
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Jan-21-11
 | | HeMateMe: I bought the Soltis book years ago, its ok. But, nothing compares to the Carsten/Mueller endgame bible. |
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| Jan-21-11 | | whiteshark: <But, nothing compares to the Carsten/Mueller endgame bible.> wrote the patzer of an endgame player. :D |
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Jan-22-11
| | HeMateMe: Not at all. the Carsten Mueller book is the best, if you have the endurance to work through it. If a patzer like you doesn't want to learn endgame theory, than stick with the 100 page 4 x 6 Soltis book. |
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| Jan-22-11 | | whiteshark: <He#Me> Sorry that I called you patzer. No offense meant. :D If you like it that much, so be it. For me it's never deep enough. The time for encyclopedic works like this is imo over. Let me give you an example: Müller/Lamprecht have 6 examples for the endgame ♕ vs ♖♖ (Chapter 10.5). [worse: Dvoretsky has just two in his manual]
I have worked through a complete book analysing only the various facets of this endgame. It was the initial spark for Game Collection: 04_Q vs RR endgames |
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| Jan-26-11 | | wordfunph: i read it somewhere..
In 2001, an inmate of a prison in Oregon was cruelly denied the pleasure of studying Eric Schiller's book Standard Chess Openings. He had ordered it from the publisher, but it was returned by the prison officials because it might endanger the security of the institution, with the simple explanation: "Contains code
throughout".
http://www.amazon.com/Standard-Ches... |
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| Jan-27-11 | | wordfunph: Book Watch!
+ A Ferocious Opening Repertoire by Cyrus Lakdawala (Everyman) http://www.amazon.com/Ferocious-Ope... + Vienna 1922 by Larry Evans (Russell Enterprises)
http://www.amazon.com/Vienna-1922-L... + The Triangle System - Challenging White in the Semi-Slav by Ruslan Scherbakov (Everyman) http://www.amazon.com/Triangle-Syst... + Grandmaster Versus Amateur by Jacob Aagaard & John Shaw (Quality Chess) http://www.amazon.com/Grandmaster-v... + Positional Chess Sacrifices by Mihai Suba (Quality Chess) http://www.amazon.com/Positional-Ch... + Beyond Deep Blue by Monty Newborn (Springer)
http://www.amazon.com/Beyond-Deep-B... guys, happy book hunting! |
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| Feb-01-11 | | wordfunph: mouth-watering chess books..
http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl... http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dl... |
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| Feb-02-11 | | pulsar: I might have missed it, but did anyone read and review Frank Brady's "Endgame" here? (http://www.scribd.com/doc/40856413/...) I'd be delighted if someone did. Thanks! |
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| Feb-02-11 | | wordfunph: <TheFocus: <Endgame>, the Bobby Fischer biography by Frank Brady, comes out today. I am picking up my copy tonight and will post a review within a couple of days.> <pulsar> coming up.. |
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| Feb-02-11 | | pulsar: <wordfunph> Yay, thanks! |
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| Feb-02-11 | | hms123: From <chesscafe.com>: After several weeks of voting, <Chess Duels: My Games with the World Champions> has become the ChessCafe.com 2010 Book of the Year. Congratulations to author Yasser Seirawan and publisher Everyman Chess. Game Collection: Chess Duels by Seirawan This award is well-deserved. The book is first-rate. |
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| Feb-02-11 | | TheFocus: I picked up Frank Brady's <Endgame> last night, but have only read about 60 pages so far and skimmed the rest. It doesn't look like a hatchet job. I will give a review after the weekend, but so far, it is a good read. Found a half dozen mistakes, but nothing major yet. |
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| Feb-02-11 | | pulsar: <TheFocus> Looking forward to your review. Thanks! |
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| Feb-03-11 | | TheFocus: Well, I read most of <Endgame> by Frank Brady and I must say that Brady did an incredible job. There were a few mistakes, chronologically, historically and factual, but overall the book should be on the bookshelf of every Fischer fan or lover of chess. This is better than <Profile of A Prodigy>. This is an instant classic. Go out and buy this book. Buy two - one for yourself, the other for a friend or your local library. |
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| Feb-03-11 | | wordfunph: <The Focus> thanks for the review, i've read every page of Dover's 1973 issue of <Profile of a Prodigy> which is a must-read for Fischer fans. With your testimony, <Endgame> will be in my wishlist.. |
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