You may be pleased to know that I my copies of three books will arrive at my house on <May 4>!!

1. <Complete Endgames> by Jeremy Silly Man Pajamas

2. <Fischer v. The Russians> by Karl Marx

3. <Bobby Fischer Profile of a Prodigy> by Frank Brady Bunch.

Please refrain from making silly jokes about the names of people who wrote important chess books.

This is a serious forum for serious people who spell everything very seriously.

If you enjoy reading chess books, Edmar Mednis is (was) far and away the most accessible English-langugage chess writer. I can heartily recommend the following:

The Opening Into The Endgame - a true classic, especially on the dangers of the isolated pawn in the ending. This book caused me to change my thinking about the French Defense.

How to Play Good Opening Moves - judging from your comments, this might be the one to start with. Chapter 9's first three paragraphs - "Bad Moves: How Not to Play Them" - is a must-read for society at large. Practical Knight Endings and Strategic Themes in the Endgame might be too advanced.

Practical Rook Endings is an absolute necessity for the budding tournament player. According to Levenfish and WCC Smyslov, 50% of tournament endgames are + endings, and this gentle introduction is as good as any. Wikipedia is also a good reference in this regard, if somewhat voluminous:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tarras...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rook_a...

Wikipedia has a surprising amount of good instruction for the chess competitor, young and old.

"King Power in Chess" is probably available in any used book store, but it's not well organized and in descriptive notation, which is pretty brutal stuff if you're accustomed to algebraic. Fortunately, this classic was "translated" into algebraic notation and re-organized into three separate monographs:

The King in the Opening
The King in the Middlegame
The King in the Endgame

The latter is pretty lame, IMHO. The first two are really quite insightful and enjoyable, though I've improved on some of the analysis using Fritz 11.

Finally, it's important to learn the endgame first, as you have to know how to close out a won game.

Don't you care if I enjoy the forum?

It's not my fault I can't spell. I blame the educational system.>

does anyone have a recommendation on an opening book on the Ruy Lopez? Preferably one on the closed lines as the Breyer, Zaitsev or Chigorin? (Black point of view)

Second question: What about the following title: <The Ruy Lopez: A Guide for Black: A Reliable Defence with More Than a Spark of Aggression: A Guide for Black> by Sverre Johnson and Leif Johannessen?

I am asking, because judging by the review on Amazon, it seems to be quite good.

Thanks in advance!
Pyke

Marin's <A Spanish Repertoire for Black> is magnificent, if you like the Chigorin System.

if you're interested in Rubinstein, you'll love how Marin walks you through Rubinstein's development of the plans in the Chigorin.

Try this for size...

http://www.gambitbooks.com/books/ru...

It doesn't make the mistake of trying to cover too many systems and what is there is quality IMO.>

Hey <Woody> thank you! That's just the very book I've been looking at for some time now, but I've been somewhat uncertain.

At any rate here two links to the best online chessbook review sites:

http://www.jeremysilman.com/book_re...

I also remember fondly his earlier book, <How to Beat Bobby Fischer>, though the Karpov book was probably better.

However, <How to Beat the Russians> was probably one sequel too many. Or maybe I was just turned off by this sentence near the end:

<:The best way to beat the Russians is to play better.">

<<chessbook forum> do i understand correctly that this is a combined account of JFQ and hms123?>

Yes, we are sponsoring this forum as our way of providing an opportunity for everyone to respond to this statement from the chessgames folks: <You are encouraged to participate and learn from players stronger than yourself, while guiding those who are weaker.> The chessgames admins are well aware of what we are doing.

After some time I bought concise chess endings of Neil Mc Donald for half the money. In my opinion it is twice as good with clear examples, for every theme, and with clear explanations of all kinds of thematic positions.

My copy of this book was published in 1991 and I paid just over $6 for it plus shipping and handling. It seems that the book is being re-printed on demand by Ishi Press (2009), and sells for $26.95 + S/H. However, I cannot see any differences in recent re-issued copies when compared to mine.

This book has always been for a specific readership interested in a very specialized area of chess. Given the fact that the book is almost two decades old, you may wonder what relevance it might still have. I purchased this book in the hope that it would focus on aspects of chess programming that would remain relevant today and for the foreseeable future. As mentioned by the authors, chess programs at that time were based largely on the ideas formulated by Shannon in 1949. Today, this is still true. In the preface, Levy and Newborn proclaim "Readers who own a personal computer and who want to write their own chess programs will find sufficient information in this book to enable them to make a good start." That's a stretch, to be generous.

Following is a brief summary of each chapter:

1. The challenge is World Champion Kasparov - general introduction to the history of chess programs, gains in strength with time, loss to Kasparov

2. The early ideas - early contributors to chess theory: Babbage, Zuse, Shannon and Turing;

3. The first working programs - describes in detail evaluation functions, move generation and search in early programs followed by example games

4. The formative years - covers programs developed at MIT, Northwestern, the Soviet school and the origin of the "Levy Bet" - all with sample games

5. The challenges for the Levy bet - culmination of bet by Levy that he would not lose a match to a computer by August 1978 (he won 1250 pounds - but was not paid by one bettor)

6. The computer becomes a master - programs get stronger, e.g. Cray Blitz

7. Eyeball to eyeball with Grandmasters - Deep Thought wins GM tournament 1989 beating Larsen in the process

8. Endgame play and endgame databases - beginnings of tablebases

9. Search techniques used by chess programs - minimax and alpha beta pruning (finally!)

10. The evolution of computing systems for chess programs - development of specialized hardware

11. Commercially available chess computers and software - (obsolete) discussion of Sargon, Mephisto and other chess playing hardware

12. On writing a chess program - general discussion of needed hardware and appropriate programming languages (C programming language recommended).

Positives are that the book contains amusing anecdotes and trivia from unique experiences by the authors. Chess programming enthusiasts will be amused by early programs where users had to hand-calculate results of the evaluation functions. There are interesting references to known personalities in chess programming, e.g., Larry Kaufman as an MIT student. "Almost two decades later, Kaufman remains one of the human chess world's most interested observers in the activities of the computer fraternity." The authors might be astonished to learn that almost two decades after their book, Kaufman contributed so much to the development of Rybka 3 that its predecessor was referrred to as the Rybka 2 LK version. When the book was written, many believed that a chess program could never become stronger than its programmer. I doubt Vas would stand much of a chance in a match against his creation. Descriptions of the early programs are quite detailed. The authors must have either interviewed the programmers or examined the source code. Some of the example games I had searched for previously and was unable to find. So despite the age of the book, there is plenty here to interest a specialized audience.

There are also some negatives to the book. The typographical errors are not critical, but you always wonder about how meticulous the authors were in their work. The book is not very cohesive. David Levy is an IM with experience in software. Monty Newborn is a Professor of Computer Science and a class A player. You can almost guess which chapters were written by which author. The fact that some of them describe experiences in the first person reinforces the perception that the book is a compilation of essays joined into one book. I believe the organization and presentation could be improved to make the book more readable and less likely to become obsolete. Chess programs need three critical parts: a move generator; an evaluation function; and a search function. I would have introduced chess programming along these main chapters, and include more on specialized features that improve functionality (e.g., hash tables and "killer" moves). Instead, the reader is thrown into terminology such as Shannon Type A search, minimax and alpha beta pruning as part of the discussion of the early programs. Although these concepts are covered in more detail in Chapter 9, a novice reader might have given up before getting to this point. Speaking of Chapter 9, it is for me the heart of this book (and most likely written by Newborn). The concepts are still relevant and I learned new ones, such as how transposition tables are used during alpha beta search. I was also surprised to learn how difficult it is to write a good move generator. My complaint here is that the terminology is too specific to a given program, even calling the functions by name. A more useful and generalized approach would be to use pseudocode (programming-like instructions that are not specific to a programming language). I have not read an effective explanation of minimax and alpha beta that did not include pseudocode.

<Finding Old Chess Books and Periodicals Online

Just about everybody uses Google, but you might be surprised to learn that thousands of old chess books have been scanned into Google's "Book Search" feature at http://books.google.com/ For example, here is a small list of treasures that you can quickly unearth if you know how to search their amazing repository:

- American Chess Magazine, August 1898, Vol. II, Nos. 1-12.

- Lasker's Chess Magazine, Volume II, May 1905 to October 1905.

- Morphy's Games: Selection of the Best Games Played by the Distinguished Champion, in Europe and America (with Analytical and Critical Notes by J. Loenthal), 1860. (http://books.google.com/books?id=AN...)

- Chess Made Easy (including "The Morals of Chess" by Benjamin Franklin), 1820 edition. (http://books.google.com/books?id=zQ...)