While I <would> like to be as systematic as Adler's classic, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/How_to..., I have no illusions about how this will end. Harry Truman longed for a “one-armed economist” because all the economists he consulted would give an opinion and then continue, “on the other hand...” This post is likely to have as many arms as Vishnu.

First a little background. I have just over 200 chess books. That is not a particularly small nor particularly large collection. It is a mix of book types and they were purchased over a span of decades, for various reasons. Over that same time period, my OTB rating changed about 600 points, starting down around 1450 back in the 1970s and peaking around 2060 in the 1990s. Again, not a particularly low nor particularly high rating.

I include some personal background because I think the reader is an important part of the equation. Stronger players will be able to grasp complex material more easily than weaker players and will in general require less guidance from the author. At the far extreme is a GM who might be working primarily from raw game scores, looking for recent opening wrinkles, checking out what the competition is playing, etc. Back in the day, the Informant series came out a couple of times a year, and that was about as cutting edge as it got. Today, with an online source like <This Week In Chess>, the number of available games is not only much more extensive, but <very> current. File number 807, made available on 4/26/10, contains games played earlier that day! Obviously most of us are nowhere near a GM, but you may know an opening system or two very well and need to keep up with any current games without waiting for somebody to publish an updated opening monograph.

This raises the issue of <why> is the book being read. There are books on openings, middlegames, endgames, tactics, history, biography, games collections, tournament books, beginner's books, and so forth. Some of these are read for enjoyment and some are consulted from time to time for reference purposes, but many are read with the implied hope it will improve one's play, not immediately, perhaps, but eventually. The quest for improvement is the most critical, and I will restrict my remarks mostly to this reason.

Watson's series is, in a sense, neither fish nor fowl. They are clearly not repertoire books and are certainly not specialized books on specific openings either. Watson is interested in looking at general plans in popular openings as well as common themes across different openings. Let me give a simple example. I have been trying to learn something about the Caro-Kann, mostly by playing it in correspondence games. The Advance version (1. e4 c6 2. d4 d5 3. e5) is something I've been seeing some:

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Now Black can try several plans. One reasonable idea is to develop the LSB to f5. Another is to attack the pawn chain with 3...c5. As Watson points out, if Black plays 3...c5 and then...e6 within a few moves without developing the LSB first, this is essentially a version of the Advance variation of the French defense, with Black a move down, having taken two moves to get in ...c5. Most Caro-Kann books are unenthusiastic about that kind of transposition, but Watson notes that the Advance French is not necessarily such a fearsome weapon for White anyway, so Black <might> be able to give up the move. If that kind of cross-pollination appeals to you, Watson's series will be thought-provoking. They will not, however turn you into a specialist on your favorite opening.

Tactics books are fairly self-explanatory, but it's probably worth a little time spent on re-examining problems you miss. Even strong players often spend some time on tactics, sort of “finger exercises” for the chess player. A new twist is the tactics web site. These sites can track your progress and adjust difficulty of problem presented. One such site is http://chesstempo.com/.

Common advice on reading annotated games is to play through the game fairly quickly, making some notes on questions you might have and then go back through the annotations more slowly. Another suggestion is a paper-and-pencil version of guess-the-move, covering pages and trying to predict moves.

Endgame books also require slow, careful work for maximum benefit. Many moons ago, when I was rated around 1700, I began working through extensive endgame material targeted at a much stronger player. I learned a lot, but it took a long time. I would work through the variations, play with the position if I didn't understand some wrinkle, and would play some of the positions that were confusing me against a much stronger player. There are a few users here at CG who have taken endgame positions where a GM has resigned and tried to win the position against a strong chess engine.

Sometimes <timing> is important. One book that helped me quite a bit was Dunne's <How to Become a Candidate Master> http://www.amazon.com/Become-Candid.... I think it was more a case of the right book at the right time for me than any special magic in the material. I had been stuck around 1800 for years with the usual problems of finding enough study time and opportunity to play stronger opponents. I worked slowly through Dunne's book one summer just before I moved to take a job that would allow a bit more time for chess, and more importantly, more access to quality opponents. I jumped 200 rating points within a year. So sometimes getting the most out of a chess book is being lucky in picking a good book for you at that point in time. Sorry, but <that> choice is beyond what I can offer here in terms of general advice...

One common theme running through this post is the emphasis on <active> reading. It's only natural to assess progress with speed, but the more difficult the material is for you, the more I think you'd both grasp and retain with slow, thorough study. I'd even say that effort is more critical than slow speed, but they will often go together. Take your time, make notes if need be, even if temporary ones and be willing to go back to important books later on in your chess development to re-study them.

you bring up very many interesting ideas

active reading is key. and that takes sustained effort. so, you can realistically only do that with a few texts, at any one time

It's organized in confusing manner- I'd have preferred a strict linear chronology- but if you are looking for all kinds of contemporary reports about Steinitz and his friends- Zukertort, Kolisch, Anderssen, Lasker, Chigorin, Pillsbury, Blackburne- then you won't be disappointed.

The newspapers in this era gave a great deal of space to Chess reporting- the articles included meticulous literary-style descriptions of the players in action.

It's almost like being in the room with them. In St. Louis, for example, the gas heater in the playing room was so hot that Steinitz and Zukertort almost roasted to death- but it was so damp and cold that to go too far away from the heater was also insufferable.

In addition, Zukertort's chess clock kept breaking and they didn't have a spare, so they had to send someone out to a local jewelers to get it repaired during the actual game!

Anyways very vivid descriptions of the players= personalities, appearance, dress, playing conditions- if you are interested in this kind of chess writing then you will love this book.

Here is the book info and a brief, but proper review.

Unlike this one.

I liked the term "active reading", a term which I had never heard before (although a quick google shows that you did not invent it-which is sad, because I was going to suggest a trade mark filing ;(). Very useful concept in chess books.

I also like the cros pollination idea. Which in a way why I am disapointed that there is no index (see my example in my first post below). To give another example, my kid has just started out playing 1.d4. He gets a Nimzo in response that went 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.Nf3 c5

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and he was cluless about what to play. So I look in Vol.2 of Watson and it was the devil of a time trying to find the variation.

I think Vol.3 does have a variation index.

But more on Watson after my loan period is up.

Openings are tricky, especially when starting out. At a beginner's level, it it far less important to know current theory as it is to understand something about general plans and counter-plans. Any opponent able to exploit minor opening inaccuracies is probably stronger in other phases of the game as well. Offhand, I don't know of any general survey books aimed at the beginner's market that gives some clear ideas about various openings, but it's not a market I monitor, so there might be something.

Here's my nickel review of the Nimzo, but bear in mind I neither play it nor play against it.

All of the Indian systems look to restrain or break up White's center pawns, often by indirect means, rather than with a classic Queen's pawn opening (1. d4 d5).

After 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nc3 Bb4

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Black is willing to give up the Bishop pair to 1) double White's c-pawns, which will also make the lead pawn harder to defend and 2) try to prevent White from playing e4. Black will often play ...c5 and/or ...d5, keep the position semi-closed and look for nice posts for his Knights.

Now at this point, the two most popular plans are 4. Qc2, which allows White to avoid doubled pawns at c3 and also supports a possible e4, and 4. e3, which is a solid, flexible system.

In your son's game, he went ahead with 4. Nf3 (a reasonable move) c5 (thematic, attacking White's center).

In my games database, the two most popular responses here are 5. e3, transposing into the e3 system I mentioned before, and 6. g3, a system favored by Kasparov, particularly in a number of games against Karpov.

Well, I don't want to dive too deep into this, just to point out that at the beginner level, making reasonable moves (while watching out for tactical problems!) in the spirit of what the opening gives you will probably serve you better than trying to digest big chunks of opening theory. There's plenty of time for that when your overall play improves.

<For most of the modern history of the Nimzo Indian defence, this modest advance [4.e3] has been played more often than any other move. Over the last decade or so 4.Qc2 has become a top level favorite and has recently surpassed 4.e3 on most levels of tournament play, but not by much. between them these moves dominate Nimzo Indian practice. In general one can say that 4.e3 is most flexible for both sides, leading to a remarkable number of formations, sometimes barely related! I'll stick with a few popular variations whose lessons extend into ther lines. We'll look at 4...0-0 and 4...c5, each in their own section.

Another important move is 4...b6. I'm not devoting space to it, but compare the Queen's Indian Defence of the next chapter.

i rate the book 9 in 10..

i recommend you to read pages 313-321 where the inner life of Bobby was presented and how his mother Regina was tailed no end by FBI.

here's the last paragraph of page 321..."It seems unlikely that anybody ever told him (on the death of Paul Nemenyi --- the biological father of Bobby). If the FBI had not delved so carefully into Regina's life, and if Bobby Fischer, the world chess champion, had not remained an object of fascination for press and public to this day, his family secret would have remained just that."

other interesting parts of the book..

+ Representing their countries, Fischer and Spassky were to meet at the Chess Olympiad at Siegen in West Germany in 1970. Naturally, there was a great pressure on both men. Spassky was spotted puffing away tensely on cigarette after cigarette before they faced each other.

+ Spassky-Petrosian Match: After game 17, Spassky was relaxing in his apartment when some heavy blows rattled the front door. "An Armenian guy had discovered my refuge and was trying to storm it. He was shouting: "Spassky, don't win against Petrosian!!" Spassky ignored the threat. "I shouted back, Don’t you worry, I will beat him." The guy then shut up and disappeared.

+ Spassk'y Training Against Fischer: Visitors saw Spassky whiling away the time with whiskey and copies of Playboy magazine. Yuri Averbakh recalled, "Spassky was sitting there with Geller and Krogius….on the table were cards and dominoes, and when lunchtime came Spassky pulled out a bottle of whiskey."

+ As a child, Bobby Fischer would play opponents for a dollar a game and would give twenty-five cents of each dollar to his wheelchaired-bound mentor Jack Collins.

+ Bobby Fischer's feet is size fourteen.

+ In 1971, on a day off, Bobby Fischer and Dimitri Bjelica decided to go and watch a beauty pageant in Sarajevo, for which they had been offered front-row seats. As Bjelica recalls, halfway through the event "Fischer suddenly whipped out his pocket set: 'What do you think of queen to g6?'"

+ Bobby Fischer read comics into adulthood (Tarzan and Superman) and he watched few movies, he was a big fan of James Dean. He liked spaceships and cars. He also enjoyed swimming and table tennis.

+ 1972 World Chess Championship: Bobby Fischer would take his dossier in local restaurant and take his meals. He tended to eat Chinese or Italian dishes. The waitresses were never pleased to see him because he took up tables.

+ 1972 World Chess Championship: Bobby Fischer's incessant demands became the butt of local humor. The joke doing the Reykjavik rounds was that Bobby had demanded the setting of the sun three hours earlier.

+ 1972 World Chess Championship: Everywhere Boris Spassky went, he was greeted warmly. When he went to a sports shop to buy sneakers, the shopkeeper refused to take his cash. When he went to the cinema, they let him in free.

+ 1972 World Chess Championship: Inevitably there are disturbances and mishaps. Bobby Fischer complains that a man is snoring. Arbiter Schmid immediately dispatches the ushers to rouse him.

i rate the book would you believe...10/10!

http://www.amazon.com/Chess-Team-No...

i bought the book at a very cheap $2 in a 2nd hand bookshop and caught myself engrossed in reading it almost non-stop..

going through its pages, the book made me teary-eyed of how Walters surprised his best friend Jim on what was the content of the "box".

who couldn't forget Jeff who is the 2nd board of Escanaba High School team.

the Dillard father and son as integral characters and benchmark of Jim's success..

the horrible blunder of Jim during the 1989 Michigan High School Team Chess Championship!...and its effect to his life.

discover and feel the ups and downs of being a chessplayer! the experience of traveling and playing OTB..

a must-read chess novel..

Is there a decent, meaning quite recent, book on Ivanchuk? I really miss a collection of his...

not probably - definitely!

I remember the night before my second rated tournament - Winter 1996. My local mentors assured me that there were a lot of 1 d4 players in the area, and I spent a restless night with Ruben Fine's "The Ideas Behind The Chess Opening", and Chessmaster 3000 for Mac, preparing the QGD.

http://www.newinchess.com/Shop/Prod...

Like <jess>, most of my current, or recent, chess reading was not about the game itself:

<The Chess Artist: Genius, Obsession, and the World's Oldest Game>, by J.C. Hallman. Excellent, in my opinion. I wrote a 5-star review on Amazon (http://www.amazon.com/gp/cdp/member...). The book also generated spirited debate on Dana Mackenzie's blog after the blogger posted a negative review and the author himself replied: http://www.danamackenzie.com/blog/?.... I posted my own opinion there too.

<King's Gambit: A Son, A Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game>, by Paul Hoffman. Excellent book too. I would say 9 out of 10 points. A personal journey extremely well written and captivating throughout. My only objection is that the overbearing character of his father, which makes the first half of the book fascinating, pretty much disappears in the second half, and then the book loses a bit of consistency. Fascinating, nevertheless.

<Chess Bitch: Women In The Ultimate Intellectual Sport>, by Jennifer Shahadeh. I would give it a 7 out of 10. Pretty good most of the time, although it often feels adrift. An excellent coverage of women in chess, and with very engaging personal content. Very informative and a mandatory reference for anything concerning women in chess. On the other hand, kind of a shallow narration of facts at times. Little systematic analysis, but maybe that was not the author's intent.

<White King and Red Queen: How the Cold War Was Fought on the Chessboard> by Daniel Johnson. I give this one an 8 out of 10. Pretty good historic compilation. Difficult to put down. The author's deeply anticommunist views border on childish at times ("in the Soviet Union human life had no value whatsoever", and things like that) and that can get a bit annoying, especially in the second half of the book. If you ignore all the ideological hyperbole, it is a very well documented account of twentieth century chess history.

It depends a lot on why I am reading it. In some cases (e.g., books on tactics), I am trying to increase my ability to recognize patterns and to increase my ability to calculate moves accurately; therefore, I tend to look at the diagram (without setting up the position on a board), think for a while, and then calculate what I hope is the winning line. If I have missed something (often the case), then I go back over the actual winning line. Once I have gone through a chapter (usually themed in some way), I then go back and repeat the process using a physical chess set to go through the variations. I will often go back to tactics books on a regular basis, open then randomly and see how well I recognize the pattern needed.

In other cases (e.g., books on endgames), I follow much the same strategy, but spend relatively more time trying to grasp the underlying principles involved. I am currently alternating between van Perlo’s <Endgame Tactics> (which I recommend very highly) and Muller and Lamprecht’s <Secrets of Pawn Endings> (which I also recommend highly). As I have a copy of the latter with me at the moment, I will use some examples to illustrate my goals as I go through the book.

How many of you recognize the difference between these two positions?

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<1…Kf7 2.Kd6 Kf6 3.Kd7 Kf7 4.Kd8 Kf8 5.Kc7 Ke7 6.Kc6 Ke6 => and

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<1.Kf2 Kf7 2.Ke3 Ke6 3.Kd4 Kd6 4.h3 3.Ke6 5.Kc5 Ke7 6.Kc6 Ke6 7.h4 Ke7 8.Kc7 Ke6 9.Kd8 Kf7 10.Kd7 Kf8 11.Ke6 >

The winning procedure depends on the extra tempi available to White due to the presence of the pawn on h2. I wonder if you would have accepted a draw as White in the second position. You won’t in the future.

Did you know the secret to this position?

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Whoever is to move wins. <1.Kg6 (1.Kg5?? Ke4) Ke4 2.Kg5> or <1…Ke3 2.Kg5 Ke4>

As White, can you avoid being "shouldered away" in this position?

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<1.Kg3 (not Kg4? Kc2) Kc2 2.Kf2 Kd2 3. Kf1 Kd1 4.Kf2 Kd2 5.Kf1 Kd3 6.Ke1 Kc4 7.Kd2 Kb5 8.Kc3 Kc5 9.Kb3 Kxb6 10.Kb4 =>

Have you seen enough examples of "shouldering away" to apply it to this position?

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<1.Ke6 Kc3 2.Kd5 (2.Kd6 Kd4 3.Kc6 Ke5 4.Kb7 Kd6 5.Kxa7 Kc7=) Kd3 3.Kc6 Ke4 4.Kb7 Kd5 5. Kxa7 Kc6 6.Kb8 >

In sum, I try to have specific goals in mind in studying a particular type of book. Those goals change over time; e.g., with any luck my pattern recognition gets better, then my ability to recognize the underlying principles gets better, and then my understanding of those principles gets better, and so on. Of course, it never hurts to drill on the basics to make sure you have them at your fingertips under pressure.

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what if instead of 2...Ke6, Black tries 2...Kf6 3. Kd4 g5

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Now 4. fxg5+ Kxg5 is drawn, so if 4. Kd5 then what about 4...h4?

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"THE SICILIAN VESPERS" starring User: crawfb5:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mVJ_...

Chess is a unique game due to its rich history- whenever any of us plays, we follow in the footsteps of past Masters. This is the story of Larry Crawford, a strong player who recently "played in to" a very famous, and interesting, incident in Chess History: the "Sicilian Vespers" episode between the Russians and the Argentines at the Goteborg Interzonal in 1955. The story continued a few years later in 1958 when a 15 year old Bobby Fischer stunned Gligoric by reviving the "Sicilian Vespers" line at the Potoroz Interzonal in 1958.

I urge all chessplayers to examine their games against a good database to see which famous episodes of Chess History YOU might be participating in!!

Here is the PGN file of Crawford's game:

[Event "Challenge"]
[Site "http://www.queenalice.com/game.php?..."] [Date "2010.2.15"] [Round "-"]
[White "crawfb5"]
[Black "borghese"]
[Result "1/2-1/2"]
[WhiteElo "2237"]
[BlackElo "2405"]
[ECO "B98"]