My 'Old' Review: "Applying Logic in Chess" by IM Eric Kislik (from late 2020)
hey guys, i forgot to post this for a few years. Maybe I'll remember to publish my courses too.
I might add hyperlinks to other books and other stuff later, but ian wants to go for pizza, cya
(im in a hurry and might add pics later)
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“There are a great number of books and articles on chess, but comparatively few of them are really informative and helpful.” - IM Mark Dvoretsky
This review is by NM Elijah Logozar, as posted by his roommate. I read ‘Applying Logic in Chess’ last July to improve my logical thought process. As a blitz specialist, I needed all the help I could get to transition to slow chess. Just about everything I went through on logic and calculation helped me, except for this book. I found Aagaard’s ‘Calculation’ and ‘Thinking Inside the Box’ to be foundational from the perspective of structuring your calculation and chess thought process. The first three chapters of GM Johnathan Tisdall’s ‘Improve Your Chess Now’ helped me better understand the nature of visualization. The first three months of the International Chess School’s blindfold exercises combined with blindfold blitz against training partners helped me improve my visualization. Gaprindashvili’s ‘Imagination in Chess’ offered puzzles to apply Aagaard’s methods and improve my candidate move habits. Aagaard’s homework from the 365chessacademy allowed me to maintain my form and further develop my calculation. Dvoretsky’s books helped me apply these methods in difficult contexts, improving my ability to new heights. You could say that the sum is greater than its parts for all the aspects of my calculation and thought process training, and clearly, I have a lot more work to do. I purchased this book to improve my logical thought process, and I did not improve at all in that regard from reading this book.
I was not used to giving bad reviews, and this was my first one-star review. As someone who dearly loves chess, it is far more natural to me to give 4-5 star reviews, especially since I mainly purchase high-quality books by respected authors and publishers. It is natural for me to read and keep on reading, even to the point of studying chess all day for weeks or months on end. I’m ashamed to report that I had to force myself to finish reading this book and even allowed myself to be distracted by television at various points when trying to force myself to finish it. I recall a conversation with my mentor David Milliern last fall, where he talked about how people generally have some form of a ‘love-hate’ relationship with their passion, dearly loving some aspects of it but disliking others and forcing themselves to do non-enjoyable things to progress more quickly. I could not relate to this, except regarding Kislik’s book. I had no context of being bored with chess until I read ‘Applying Logic in Chess,’ and still find no comparison for chess boredom, even after reading around 100 chess books.
Why do I dislike this book so much? To put it simply, there is not much value. Most of the book is a conceptual discussion of Kislik’s approach to chess improvement. As a general rule, I really love philosophical chess books. I’m fascinated by chess concepts and love analyzing them to improve my understanding. I deeply enjoyed reading Aagaard’s ‘Thinking Inside The Box.’ I found other books on similar topics such as Rowson’s ‘The 7 Deadly Chess Sins’ and ‘Chess for Zebras’ to be highly beneficial. I even gave the controversial book ‘Rapid Chess Improvement: A Study Plan for Adults’ by De La Maza 4 stars, as I mostly agreed with his claim of tactics being paramount for adult club players. It takes a lot to get me to give a chess book a low review, especially since I’m grasping for value whenever possible. But there isn’t much value here. I’ll elaborate on that in the next paragraph.
First, there isn’t much new information. Essentially all of what Kislik teaches can be categorized into facts and his opinions. Among the well-known facts, Kislik doesn’t have much new to say. As Vishnu said in his review, you will hear most of the common-sense advice simply by talking to stronger players at your chess club. I’m not claiming that I didn’t improve from reading this book, but it was like squeezing water from a stone. Before I continue pointing out flaws, I will admit that I appreciated how Kislik occasionally referenced Aagaard’s three questions (source: ‘Grandmaster Preparation: Positional Play’) and liked the explanation of retrograde analysis when discussing chess engines. What I just brought up was probably only discussed in around 1% of this book, so it’s not enough for a good review - especially since he borrowed from others without adding value himself. The only thing that comes to mind where Kislik adds value on top of established chess knowledge is where he briefly discusses the concept of ‘losing consistency,’ which I find useful even today. Even the annotated games, which are not the main focus of this book, are low quality. Most of the games have a few vaguely helpful comments mixed in with the main focus: engine lines.
"A half-truth is even more dangerous than a lie. A lie, you can detect at some stage, but half a truth is sure to mislead you for long." - Anurag Shourie
Enough about the facts, what about Kislik’s opinions? You hear controversial claims such as endgames aren’t important, which examples in his own book contradict. Rather than discussing all of the opinions individually, I’ll say that I was not persuaded that Kislik’s controversial opinions are correct based on Kislik’s logic. Given how Kislik treated me after I originally posted my review, I believe there is sufficient evidence to suggest that most of the bold claims are mostly rhetoric to make Kislik appear more significant. I’ll elaborate more on this in the next paragraph.
I posted my review on my main account last year. I naively assumed that authors of books generally are well intended and would behave in ethical ways. Sheltered in my ‘chess cave,’ I believed that I could privately seek the truth and publicly state the truth as I best understand it and that others would function in similar ways. How incorrect I was - though my principles wouldn’t allow me to back down after being targeted, even at personal risk. After posting my review, I was harassed by Kislik on numerous platforms from anonymous accounts to such a degree of absurdity that several friends suggested that I sue Kislik. I’m sure that it was Kislik, given that the language structure and type of insults are similar to those used by Kislik on the public forums in response to criticism. No fan would be dedicated enough to target me with such precision and diligence as Kislik did. Rather than list all of the extremities that I faced in the attempt to get me to delete my review (or raise it to at least three stars, as a threat from an anonymous Twitter account stated), I will point out the most absurd. My amazon account was impersonated, and all of the books I gave good reviews to were given one star (Kislik’s Twitter alt clarified that these would be deleted when I cooperated). Kislik gave bad reviews based on false claims on some of my Chessable courses and sent hate mail on several websites. Kislik wrote a detailed quora post, falsely claiming that I was a psychopath (this cost a student because the parent became concerned). Kislik wrote a medium article about me, comparing two of my associates and me with chess with the known chess cheater Igors Rausis. My father was contacted with lies, accusing me of criminal activity. My dad’s music received fake bad reviews from the same amazon account that impersonated me. As reported by numerous alt accounts, my amazon account was restricted, and I had to repost my review several times. At this point, all restrictions have been lifted except for the ability to post my review on Kislik’s books. I wasted dozens of hours on this drama that I could have spent studying chess, but the truth must be revealed even if it means great personal cost. Kislik, if you are reading this, you should know by now that targeting me only makes me speak louder, so if you don’t want to be exposed further, you should not escalate this. To be clear, I have forgiven Kislik. I am a happy person and don’t like to hold grudges. I am posting this review because of my principles - I value truth and don’t want to stand down and allow deception to rule.
Before I move on to why such a low-quality book has four stars, I’d like to point out that Kislik is known for making bold statements to appear more significant. Sometimes, Kislik forgets that he lied and later contradicts himself. Rather than point out all the cases in which Kislik's dishonesty can be proven, two examples will suffice. "Currently, I am the only coach that is the full-time trainer of 3 players rated approximately 2650 FIDE and above." Kislik advertised this bold claim on his website, ICC, and his lichess coaching profile. Kislik later contradicts this, denying that this is true. Apparently, he forgot that he lied about this. Evidence can be found on the youtube video "Perpetual Chess Podcast Follow-up and Missed Questions with IM Erik Kislik" from 21:04 to 21:24. "I am the only IM in the world who was a beginner as an adult (at age 18) and still became an IM" (Kislik's youtube channel as repeated on Kislik's lichess coaching section). This is where Kislik pretends to be an adult prodigy. Would you consider 1900 USCF to be a relative beginner? Kislik was 1900 USCF at the age of 15 and returned to chess as an adult. Kislik was already almost expert strength, yet Kislik pretends to be an adult prodigy to increase his credentials.
There are two main reasons why this book has four stars. The first reason is that bad reviews tend to get deleted by Kislik’s army either directly - via mass reporting from dozens of alt accounts, or indirectly (harassment or threats until the reviewer backs down). Vishnu Sreekumar (VishChess on Twitter - he can show you the proof) has screenshotted evidence of several people contacting him with proof of reviews being deleted in this way. There is enough rhetoric in the book to convince many naive readers that this book is instructive, so with all of the negative reviews silenced, several positive will slip through. The other reason is that many of the reviews are fake. You will generally notice that reviewers of chess books usually don’t only review one book or one author, but if you check Kislik’s books, you will notice that this number is more like 30-50%. I manually checked, and if you assume that all reviews that only review Kislik’s books are fake, 30-40% of the positive reviews of this book are fake, and more than 50% of the reviews on the sequel ‘Chess Logic in Practice’ are fake. Given that Kislik has a sockpuppet army to report bad reviews, it shouldn’t be surprising that many high reviews are present.
Let’s bear in mind that many people are being harassed here. Two chess professionals have privately emailed me, telling me about how they had trouble with Kislik in the past. Recently, a former student of Kislik messaged me telling me about how I was right about Kislik and how betrayed he felt after Kislik’s verbal assault. Vishnu Sreekumar was targeted and had to repost his review several times after Kislik got it deleted. The other honest reviewers weren’t so lucky or didn’t fight back; they just quietly let their reviews stay down and lay low to avoid trouble. I’m rather surprised to notice that three recent 1-star reviews were posted. Maybe Kislik was too busy to get those deleted? In any case, I don’t expect them to stay up for long.
There is a 10-page discussion about sockpuppets and fake reviews on Chesspub for a reason. I don't recommend this book, either for the content or for the fact that dishonest advertising practices were necessary to make this book appear instructive. There are occasional tidbits of value, but you have to avoid landmines designed to support Kislik’s ego and be well-read enough on chess literature to know what to pay attention to. Those looking to train their calculation and logical thought process should look elsewhere (see paragraph 1 for more information). There is no need to squeeze water from a stone here, given how many good books there are. If you want a recommendation for improving your logical thought process, I recommend GM Jacob Aagaard’s ‘Thinking Inside The Box.’
