Screenshot of the home page for my course

Secrets of Trapping Pieces: My Experience Writing a Chess Book

KevinSmithIdiot

Updated: Jan 15, 2024, 4:27 AM | 7

So, in September of 2022 I saw a message that chessable.com was having a contest to publish a chess book and that the winner would receive $5,000 against advance sales. Huh. Interesting, but what would I write about?

Picking a Topic

Openings? Nope, that would be like writing about quantum physics. I have an interest but more as a epicurean who is happy to hoist a toast to certain openings, not as an established theoretician and practitioner of any specific opening. And an overall discussion of openings was thoroughly addressed in John Watson's four volume series Mastering the Chess Openings.

Endings? I think not. Between Dvoretsky, Nunn, Silman, de la Villa and many others, not to mention TableBase, I certainly don't have anything substantive to contribute there. That leaves droll humor and other writing techniques that perhaps offer an off-kilter look at endgames. And that was not immediately appealing, though it certainly offers some possibilities for future work.

At least that left me with the vast and expanding universe of the middle game!

The Early Universe as seen by the James Webb Telescope

Narrowing the Topic of "Middle Game"

So, you're going to add to the vast oeuvre of the middle game. What area?

Pawn structures? Oh, sure. Nobody ever thought of that🤦🏽‍♂️. Pachman, Soltis, Zlatonovic, Kmoch, Boleslavsky...and my favorite Chess Structures: A Grandmaster Guide by Mauricio Flores Rios.

How to attack? Hmm...let me think. Vladimir Vukovic's art of attack in chess, Rudolf Spielmann's the art of SACRIFICE in chess, Znosko-Borovsky's The Art of Chess Combination, and so on and so forth. Okay, what about a more general topic on the middle game. Uhm. Did I forget? Just my pittance of a library contains Soviet Middlegame Technique by Romanovsky and Winning Chess Middlegames by Sokolov (one of my favorite authors to practice my ability to visualize the moves without a board. Very mind stretching.) Then there are all of Silman's books. And numerous other authors to whom I apologize for not granting a mention.

WAIT A MINUTE! People are publishing books ALL THE TIME. How are they finding topics?

The Thinker by Rodin

Hmm...well a lot of their topics are updates to classical thought. I thought I'd rather find something at least mildly unique. So what had I seen recently in my games that wasn't covered in excruciating breadth and depth by others? Well, it seemed like I had been trapping a lot of Queens lately in rapid games. Once against my coach, IM Attila Turzo, once against an FM, and once against someone who actually beat a GM in an OTB game this year.

Trapping Queens, could I really make a book based solely on that narrow topic? Trapped Queens?

"imprisoned" by fanette

Whew, seemed unlikely. How much material could there possibly be? [Far more than I expected, as it later turned out.] Well, okay. Let me add in the other pieces. Pawns too? Nope. First, I needed to figure out if there was some way just to deal with the other pieces.

Organizing my Thoughts and Finding Good Examples

Well, I had a general topic: Trapping Pieces. And five chapters, one per piece.

But how was I supposed to find good examples?

QUEST by skitterbay Steampunk by R-region

Databases! Finally, my IT knowledge and experience applied to that most worthy of causes: chess.

I started with key word searches on "trap" and "trapped". Then realized I needed to use an online translator to add in the Russian, German, French, ... words for trap and trapped. Because many annotated games are in a foreign language.

But aside from "learning" a few different ways to talk about traps (synonyms, for example) this turned out to be a somewhat frustrating experience. Some of the traps were buried deep in analytic lines, others are busted by modern computers, and in some cases the traps just weren't that interesting.

Next step? More database work. This time I set up some sample entrapments and asked the database to look for similar examples. For example, a Knight trapped by a King or a King and one other piece. Or a King trapped by a Rook or Rooks and a Pawn. (NOTE: Obviously I would only ask the database to look for one of the positions in the diagrams shown below.) And I contrived multiple other potential entrapment diagrams for each of the pieces.

Ah, now we're talking! And by asking the database to simultaneously pull up mirrored vertical and horizontal positions for both colors I pulled up plenty of examples. Only problem? Well, just one of these simple positions might pull up a thousand games!

So, I used a few simple rules to cut down the number of examples of any one position:

1. Were either of the players famous? Famous players tend to be very strong, so the game is probably intrinsically interesting. Some of the interesting games were simultaneous exhibitions by World Champions against unknowns, others were casual games by famous players such as Paul Morphy against whoever.

2. Was the game annotated? If yes, that indicated someone found some aspect of the game interesting enough to put notes in a database. So maybe the entrapment was interesting as well.

3. Did the game occur between two players rated over 2700? How about over 2500? How about between 2100 and 2500? Or 1900 to 2300? And why those last two categories you may ask? Because at the very top levels fewer mistakes happen. When they do occur, they can be fascinating but can also require otherworldly skills to translate into victory. I certainly didn't envision writing a book designed to inform those rated over 2700, or even 2400, so wanted to provide a compendium of mistakes and refutations seen more frequently below the IM and GM levels, even if occasionally in the stratosphere of top players.

4. Human sources. Did my coach or one of my friends provide me with an example of a trapped piece from their own games or those of their students.

5. Was the game recent? For that cut line I tended to focus on games since 2020. One useful source was chess.com's daily output of analyzed games. It isn't uncommon to see a couple examples of trapped pieces in a single week on the site covering Titled Tuesdays, Bullet Arenas, and major competitions. And I assiduously scour Game of the Day as any trapped pieces always get a mention, even if only in an analytic line of why a certain move, often a capture, was not played.

In the course of writing the book I built a database of seven or eight hundred candidate traps. From that number I published only 315 trainable variations, aka puzzles. I also included thirteen illustrative games that I felt offered prime examples of some of the more important types of traps. For instance, I included a few games with a Queen trapped in the corner after eating a Rook. As one would suspect, there are cases where the Queen enjoys her meal, cases where She gets a mild case of indigestion, and cases wherein ingesting the Rook ultimately proves to be fatal.

Writing the Book

First, let me cover the boring, mechanical aspect of the writing. I did all my analysis and writing using ChessBase. For an engine I used Stockfish 15 and 15.1 to minimize inaccuracies. Then I would convert each problem into a pgn file. Those are easily imported into chessable.com's publishing tool.

What about the actual writing? For me the real question was, "How do I write a book that is both informative and fun?"

As far as the informative aspect, I always tried to keep in mind my own growth as a chess player. What were the questions I had about the moves that were not even mentioned as possibilities in analyses in most books. Usually because the author considered the answer so intuitively obvious that in their mind the question need not even be asked, let alone answered. That's all well and good if you're a titled player or well on your way to being one. Then there are the rest of us. My goal, perforce based on my own limitations, was to remain one of "the rest of us" for writing purposes. And then respond to readers who asked the questions I knew I would still overlook. I also, sometimes rather over pointedly, attempted to note general principles in the problems as those principles were applied. And highlighted instances where general principles failed in the fact of conditions on the board.

Ok, that sounds reasonable. But what's this about fun? And why fun? Bottom line is that one of the aspects I particularly enjoyed about IM Silman's texts were his playful asides. So, blame him for my leaning in that direction. But I have to take full fault for the extremes to which I went in pursuit of my personal vision of fun. It started with the chapter titles. Sure, I could have stuck with Knight, Bishop, Rook, Queen and King. Instead, those who obtained a copy of my book saw the following titles for the chapters on pieces:

And the Horse you Rode in On
A Bishop's Penance
Drain the Moats, the Tower has Fallen
I Have You Now, My Pretty
The Cask of Amontillado

And within each chapter you would find problems such as Little Miss Muffet, shown below, in which I loosely linked a story to the puzzle. This particular puzzle had a special resonance with me as it was a game against my coach, and I spotted the fact his Queen had lured Herself into a cozy little trap. So below you can witness that portion of one of the games that motivated my decision to write this book. And despite the fact I later managed to lose the game. (IMs are tricky.)

I also, within various and sundry problems, managed to sprinkle in references to: classic and new movies, television shows, novels, and the odd bit of poetry; the NFL, soccer, jousting, and other sports including an occasional overdose of professional wrestling; music from classical to rap; philosophers, scientists, politics and the military; beer, wine and mixed drinks; and so forth. I also indulged myself with online translators that checked my use of Shakespearean, German, French and Spanish. I considered throwing in some Klingon or Romulan but held myself back.

Publishing the Course on chessable.com

Five "simple" steps. First, apply to publish a course. Second, enter the course. Third, if they indicate interest in publishing the course then look over their initial editorial feedback and respond accordingly. Fourth, beta testing and updating the course based on the feedback from the beta testers. Fifth, final chessable.com editorial staff feedback and a last update to the course. I'll briefly synopsize each of these steps below.

Step One: Apply to Publish. Go to chessable.com. As seen in the image below, click on the "Tools" tab at the top of the page and select the "Create a Course" link at the bottom of that menu. That link, as expected, will take you to a new page. Watch the video if so inclined and follow the written directions. This is the easiest and fastest step in the entire process. NOTE: You can create courses for your own use with no intent to submit for publication.

Step Two: enter the course. Step two entails all the work described under Organizing my Thoughts and Writing the Book. Obviously, you could adopt a variation of my approach or develop your own. For instance, I preferred to develop initial drafts in my database and then upload pgns. It is possible to enter moves directly on the chessable.com site.

It took me a couple months to enter all the problems and then, within chessable.com, add arrows and other indicators to enhance visualization.

Step Three: Respond to initial feedback. If chessable.com is interested in publishing your course, then they provide initial feedback to align your course with their editorial standards. They may also make suggestions regarding the content. For instance, my initial input only had about 170 trainable variations. And some of those trainable variations were quite long, over ten moves in some instances. They suggested I include many more trainable variations and also that I break some of the longest trainables into piece parts. The good news was that by breaking apart some of the trainables into two, three, even four parts I was part way to adding more puzzles! This phase took me two months of working 40+ hours per week. Easy enough for someone not otherwise employed. Most folks might find it difficult to invest that much time to a project. And I was lucky enough to have several hundred examples in my database that simply had not made it into my initial draft. Those merely needed to be crafted into the format and style I was using.

NOTE: Pay attention to your emails! I missed their initial indication of interest! Fortunately, they asked again.

Step Four: Beta testing and updating the course. Once I had the course finalized at 315 trainable variations, I moved on to Beta testing. Essentially you go to a forum on the chessable.com site and ask for volunteers to test the trainable variations and provide feedback on all aspects of the course that catch their attention. If links are provided to other material in the book, quite common, then they also test the links. Generally, a spectrum of rating levels is sought so that the feedback represents a broad range of those who might find the book useful. Perspectives obviously shift as skills grow so selecting testers with various skill levels is a critical aspect to obtaining multiple points of view. The beta testers are usually given at most two weeks to provide feedback, so it is important to obtain the services of people who have the requisite time necessary to provide feedback.

At times I found myself seeing patterns from my beta testers and would jump ahead of them to address recurring issues. For instance, an annoyingly high percentage of my trainable puzzles simply started with the bland statement "White/Black to play." But it is quite possible to adjust the text to provide a more meaningful introduction to each trainable problem. So, I jumped ahead of the testers and fixed the problems they had not yet reached. And only then went back and fixed those where they had already highlighted the issue. I had to make those fixes in any case, and by proactively addressing issues ahead of the testers I effectively freed them to focus on other aspects of the course.

Step Five: Final feedback and updating if necessary. The final feedback is provided by the staff at chessable.com. They had one or two questions that I was able to address regarding stylistic issues. For instance, I capitalized all the pieces (Knight, Bishop, etc.), but purposely left pawns in lower case. That "barrier" between upper and lower case formed part of the dialogue between the Pieces and the pawns. A barrier that could only be breached if a pawn were promoted!

And yes, the pieces in my book engaged in active dialogues, with an occasional soliloquy. The pawns in particular are somewhat bitter about their lower-case existence. And the Queen and King always refer to Themselves in the third person, establishing a barrier between Them and the minor nobility.

In Conclusion

On April 18, 2023, my first solo, commercial publication was released to the world. Sales continue and it provides me with some beer 🍻 money once a month.

More in a future blog on the feedback regarding the first book that led me to just finish writing my second chess book on the topic of trapping pieces...and breaking traps. My second book was submitted to chessable.com for their consideration on November 16, 2023. This second book, 97% new material, includes over 650 trainable variations/puzzles. Plus 54 illustrative games, including one with annotations by GM Vladimir Kramnik. He was kind enough to grant permission for me to use his original analysis. The new book contains far more diagrams that point to thematic trapping configurations of Pawns and Pieces. Plus, I promoted Pawns in this next book. If you get the first book and the second after it is released, then you'll understand why. But no, Pawns did not get their own chapter. Though I did add chapters on zugzwang and temporary traps.

Secrets of Trapping Pieces: My Experience Writing a Chess Book

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