My Brother's Review on Kislik
This is the review of legendary GM Xon Ferguson, typed in 10 minutes by phone. stay humble!
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First of all, I’d like to rectify any erroneous presupposition that I detest this book. Particularly because in order to truly detest something, I’d have to be offended to such a degree leaving me in an emotional state, Specifically one where emotional irrationality triumphs my temperamental proclivity to sustain a logical and rational demeanor.
That being said, I must address a few more things before I can assess the content of the book. In regards to the generously high reviews, I’ve taken notice to the “Vox populi” and have gone one level deeper to understand why such a facile book has received a plethora of 5 star reviews, the results may shock you. The main reason you wont see a more objective, impartial balance of reviews is because the people who dared to be froward enough to give 4, even 3 stars have been relentlessly harassed by inexorable rhetoricians, who revel in their disingenuous anonymity. Disgusting. I can’t confirm if the perpetrators are hired by an associate of the author to belligerently excoriate the reviewers or just are perceptually vacuous when it comes to understanding that people have opinions. Both are likely options. I understand that by contriving this synopsis, avoiding them will be ineluctable.
One more point to address before the content. Erik Kislik claims to have been a relative beginner at age 18 and became an IM anyways. The reality is he was already around 1900 USCF. This gave him a massive neurological advantage over those who were actual beginners as an adult. He purports to be the only one who was a beginner at 18 who became an IM, yet he clandestinely gerrymanders the truth in order to foist his narrative that he’s something special, and therefore his book is worth your time. How puerile. His troglodytic dissimulation is appalling.
Now for the content. To avoid litany, I’ll try to preclude myself of ravaging the information completely. Firstly I’ll mention what I found to be somewhat useful: I enjoyed how he references GM Jacob Aagaard's principles from positional play. Understanding that retrograde analysis can strengthen computer analysis and is a somewhat useful process. I approve. Unfortunately that’s where the beneficiaries end.
Now we take a sharp vicissitude into the bastardized cacophony known as “applying logic in chess”. Firstly, the authors banal, insurmountable usage of poor annotations rendered the content as monotonous as boorish. I found that he doesn't clarify in high detail during game analysis, he repeats himself a multitude of times and attempts to substantiate by completely copying engine lines. Due to his perfunctory temperament, I took noticed when the author continuously regurgitated previously clarified information. This occurrence consistently relayed over the extent of his book. Product to this, I found myself daydreaming an over-analysis of his inextricable semantics, a complete waste of analytic process. I can’t accentuate enough how perplexing it is how people can seriously regard such facile, superficial information as useful. It’s just so colloquial and elementary... This quandary provokes possibilities regarding the reviews. Could be that some of the reviews are fake... and whether that’s true or not isn’t important, the fact that I have to contemplate whether it is or not is an integral existential statement about the temperament of the book/author.
In closing, I think I’ve made it clear I do NOT recommend this book. There is some disingenuous behavior exuding from this.
