Sure, I know what you are thinking: "YATB, Stick? Really?" Yup, that's right, Yet Another Tactics Book, folks. I figure that I can always do with some more tactics study in whatever form it might take, and Susan Polgar's Chess Tactics For Cham...
I've been a fan of Dan Heisman 's Novice Nook column for quite some time now, so it should be no surprise that I wanted to check out his books. First on my Heisman reading list was Back To Basics: Tactics. This book is largely what it sounds like...
The title of the the book under review at the moment is somewhat deceptive. While Art Of Attack In Chess is, indeed, about attacking play in chess, it is specifically about attacking the opponent's castled King. That's it. Almost the entire 350...
For every discipline worth studying, there is a set of iconic books. Chess is no exception to the rule, and Aron Nimzowitsch's My System is one of it's icon texts. Despite being Latvian, Nimzowitsch wrote the original version of My System in Ge...
I have to admit that when I first cracked the spine of Streetfighting Chess I winced. At first blush, this book appears to be a survey of the author's games and in my noggin alarm bells did ring. Digging into the book, my fears were quickly al...
Imagine, if you will, a man named 'Silman' enters your home, duct tapes you to a chair and precedes to give you a thorough trepanning. He then pours hot lightening through the aforementioned hole in your head and into your skull. Producing a cor...
A friend of mine, let's call him "Jay," recently bought a handheld chess computer because he wanted to practice his chess skill without being tethered to his PC. He placed an order with Barnes and Nobles for the New York Times Deluxe Edition Touc...
Mastering The Chess Openings: Unlocking The Mysteries Of The Modern Chess Openings is a two volume set authored by John Watson. The first volume includes sections on opening principles, but otherwise is dedicated to King's Pawn openings, and the ...
Some chess players have a chess coach. The really lucky players have a good coach. What about the rest of us?Well, there is a ton of material out there from which to study: books, magazines, videos, software, websites, and so on. So, just pick ...
Freaky fast forward, Batman! Danger, Will Robinson! And as Chessmaster is wont to say while analyzing my chess games, “Yikes!”By the time I had finished watching the first volume of Roman’s Lab I was all geared up to ...
With a title like “The Immortal Game: A History Of Chess” you would think the subject of this book is pretty obvious. Not quite, my friend. Witness the subtitle, “Or How 32 Pieces On A Board Illuminated Our Understand...
Raise your hand if you hate playing the endgame. That’s what I thought; I’m not alone. OK, well, “hate” might be a bit strong, but maybe “dread” is a better term. Nothing about chess is easy, b...
If you’ve been keeping up with my various chess ramblings here on Chess.com, you know I’m pretty much up to my eyeballs with Seirawan books. I hadn’t really considered the notion that there might be a Seirawan teaching vide...
When I first became serious about playing chess, I only played on or against a computer. Eventually, I was hankerin’ for some over-the-board play, so I decided to buy some chess gear. After a bit of investigation, I determined th...
The full title of this book by I. A. Horowitz is “Modern Ideas In The Chess Openings, ” but that is way too long for this review’s title, so we’ll just call it “Modern Ideas,” shall we? In this case, you c...
With Winning Chess Openings, Yasser Seirawan’s writing style has much improved. In a previous article I mentioned that his pros are often a bit on the goofy side. This time around the syrup has taken a backseat to irreverence.&nb...
First, the preamble, in case you missed it from my last McChess article. At the moment, I run OS X and only OS X, so although Shredder Chess comes in Linux and Windows flavours, I won’t say much, if anything, about the alternativ...
Following on the heels of Winning Chess Tactics, Winning Chess Strategies is the third book in Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan’s seven book Winning Chess series.If you are going to play chess, ya gotta have a plan. Some would argue that ev...
"Winning Chess Tactics" is the follow-up book in Yasser Seirawan's Winning Chess series. WCT picks up where the sections on tactics in "Play Winning Chess" left off. Not too surprisingly, WCT details more subtle or less obvious points about the ta...
With any luck, this is the first in a series of chess software reviews. I should state up-front that, at the moment, the only operating system I use is OS X. So, although many of the programs that I will review have versions that run on other oper...
First, a bit of backstory is in order.I started taking chess semi-seriously about three months ago when I started playing Facebook Chess. I decided I would do some reading and get my learn on. Of course, I started with reading whatever I could fin...