Why Chess books sometimes do not flip the board for "whose to move"
Have you ever noticed that sometimes in chess books, the board diagram always shows the board from the White side, no matter who is to move?
I noticed on the forums that many chess.com members showed a strong preference for books where the diagrams would flip for whoever it is to move. Intuitively this seems to be just a matter of whether or not the editor of the book is willing to flip the diagram.
But then you should ask yourself, how hard is it really to flip the diagram? It actually is really easy - meaning that the editors actually oftentimes intentionally avoid flipping the board.
Why is that?
The answer is quite simple actually. In chess, we need to work on not only finding strong moves for ourselves, but also for our opponents. Reading diagrams or solving puzzles from the position of our opponents perspective is the natural way to train this.
I hope this clears up any misunderstanding... although I should admit that sometimes, it might really just be a case of the editor being lazy!