Very much focused on positional training. Each problem solution has a section on evaluating and understanding the needs of the position, which was missing in other books.
I am a positional player, and have gone thru alot of videos and books. For me, this book was the most useful.
I never had any coaches and didn't have access to good video lectures for a long time. The vast majority of my progress in chess has come from books.
Unless you have great players around you coaching and tutoring you, you need books. You can do a lot online though with video lectures on youtube/chess.com, chesstempo tactic problems, and the myriad of databases of master games you can look through. Still certain books will accelerate your learning by a lot, rather than painstakingly learning those things by playing through thousands of master games.
There is plenty of physical empirical evidence to support this. Look at the statistics of people that played. Thousands and thousands of numbers, all support this reality, none of them support the opposing concept.
People that have acumen for chess can learn and be great just by playing other people that are strong. This has been shown and proven
The greatest minds on the planet, and in chess, almost all were auto-didacts.
Basic experience and statistics that are collected in a meaningless way do not constitute empirical data. Systematicity is required. Scads of people who play, but do not improve, do not stand the rigor required to be called "empirical evidence." Empirical evidence requires controls, variations, categorizing, etc.
"Proven?" I guess your standard for proof is satisfied whenever someone's argument accords with your confirmation bias. I wish you were one of my students, so I could have you write a ten-page essay on what constitutes "proof," what methods are viable for providing a proof, and explaining what the standard of proof is (and why X is a standard of proof). I'd expect it to be quite ridiculous, if you could even come up with anything at all.
Every day, people further and further convince me that I can't take the mass of humanity seriously. I feel like I am Alice in Wonderland.
I never had any coaches and didn't have access to good video lectures for a long time. The vast majority of my progress in chess has come from books.
Unless you have great players around you coaching and tutoring you, you need books. You can do a lot online though with video lectures on youtube/chess.com, chesstempo tactic problems, and the myriad of databases of master games you can look through. Still certain books will accelerate your learning by a lot, rather than painstakingly learning those things by playing through thousands of master games.
I also never had a teacher/coach/trainer before becoming NM . After reaching NM I did work for a short time with IM Boris Kogan in 90/91 . I made NM in 84 so had no internet and no videos on chess either . I worked with books , playing as much as I could and by playing postal chess as well . No engines of note back then either ...
Here's a paper:
"... cumulative serious solitary chess study was the single most powerful predictor of chess skill ratings among a broad set of potential predictors, including tournament play and coaching."
"In the young adult [<40]partition of the combined sample, cumulative solitary practice, cumulative tournament play, years of private chess lessons, and current serious study alone were significant predictors. In the older sample, only serious study alone was a significant predictor."
"each log unit of serious study alone yields about 200 rating points compared to 33 rating points for log tournament play. Hence, players ought to devote the majority of their time to that activity"
So, I hypothesise, that, on chess.com, you should progress much more quickly playing (say) 1 game of 15 | 10 a day, and studying "Chess Mentor" and "Tactics Trainer", and "the books", for an hour rather than just playing five games of 15 | 10 a day, and trying to spot ways to improve.
I never had any coaches and didn't have access to good video lectures for a long time. The vast majority of my progress in chess has come from books.
Unless you have great players around you coaching and tutoring you, you need books. You can do a lot online though with video lectures on youtube/chess.com, chesstempo tactic problems, and the myriad of databases of master games you can look through. Still certain books will accelerate your learning by a lot, rather than painstakingly learning those things by playing through thousands of master games.
I also never had a teacher/coach/trainer before becoming NM . After reaching NM I did work for a short time with IM Boris Kogan in 90/91 . I made NM in 84 so had no internet and no videos on chess either . I worked with books , playing as much as I could and by playing postal chess as well . No engines of note back then either ...
It was certainly a lot harder to improve before the internet and engines came around. I received training advice from masters/IMs/maybe even a GM or two on chesspub.com back in 2008-2012 that really gave my training good direction and made me aware of some great books. They didn't teach me anything or coach me really, but their advice and just being able to talk to strong masters was invaluable. From the stories I've heard most pre-internet masters (who didn't have a coach) had to improve via working through thousands of master games, looking over a lot of ChessLife and the Informant, and of course reading books like my system.
Milliern, you have severe teacheritis. Get over yourself.
Your patronizing attiude about being your student is nothing more than mental flatulence.
Explaining everything to you is going to get old very quickly, but I'll do you this favor: I was not patronizing you when I said I'd like to have you in a situation where I could force you to explain what a proof was. How that is patronizing, only you could tell me. Maybe you feel that way very easily. The point was that you could not explain what a proof is, if in that situation.
If you were to become emotionally inclined over anything I said, it should have been that I, in a roundabout way, said you don't know the first thing about the words you used, i.e., "proof" and "emprical evidence." Or it may be that you know this last bit is true, and, still being insulted (for whatever reason), you wanted to be insulted by any other the other content I posted. Whatever. You make no sense to me, intellectually or emotively. That's why I habitually ignore posts by you people. And no, I won't tell you what I mean by "you people."
I don't know of a single world champion or serious contender after Capablanca who did not get some sort of outside training, (books and/or coaches) as he was progressing.
Most of the Soviets grew up playing in the Pioneer clubs where coaches would mentor them and provide public lectures with analysis. As these players got stronger, they would generally also get a personal coach. Many of them also read widely.
Korchnoi studied Lasker's games and his "Manual Of Chess", Petrosian read and re-read Nimzovich, Karpov studied Capablanca and Botvinnik. Fischer actually learned Russian, just so he could read chess analysis published in that language. Larsen spoke of reading "My System" by Nimzovich. Kasparov studied the published games of all of the past world champions, as did Kramnik. Tal mentioned reading Kmoch's book on Rubinstein, among others.
Morphy, Khan, and Capablanca come to mind as a few possible exceptions, but I think it's safe to say that most of the strongest players of the past century made heavy use of books and/or coaches to develop whatever natural talent they had to begin with.
Three great books come to mind: PAWN Power Chess, Point Count Chess, and Weapons of Chess. But positional play is very, very shallow unless used in league with tactical finesse . . . and most importantly . . . even tactics and positional play together can be seriously compromised resultswise by two horrendously immature and common habits: 1) memorizing Chess openings and 2) ignoring the need for endgame prowess.
What a great topic. Though few specific answers.
"My System" is wonderful, though weird reading. It got me thinking about positional issues beyond "Occupy the center."
The Euwe/Kramer/Kmoch books just confused me. The Silman books were better but never seemed to translate well to what I encountered over the board. Silman has an "infomercial" feel that doesn't sit well with me.
The rest of what I know about positional play came in dribs and drabs from annotated games and stray comments in chess articles and books.
Bellin and Ponzetto have a fun book, "Test Your Positional Play" that I haven't worked all the way through but like a lot.
My System - Aron Nimzowitch
That book is a frickin' joke.
I think it was John Watson who wrote that My System is even funnier in the original German. Nimzowitsch did have a singular wit.
One can get some idea of the lasting scope of the respect for My System by looking at:
https://www.chess.com/article/view/the-best-chess-books-ever
Still, it might be noted that My System apparently did not occur to GM Yasser Seirawan as something to include in his list of personal favorites, and Aaron Nimzowitsch was not identified by the GM as a very worthy author.
Also, My System has accumulated some direct negative commentary over the years.
"... I found [the books of Aaron Nimzowitsch to be] very difficult to read or understand. ... [Nimzowitsch: A Reappraisal by Raymond Keene explains his] thinking and influence on the modern game in a far more lucid and accessible way. ... The books that are most highly thought of are not necessarily the most useful. Go with those that you find to be readable; ..." - GM Nigel Davies (2010)
Even fans of My System have acknowledged that:
"... Not everything in it has stood the test of time, ..." - IM John Watson (2013)
http://theweekinchess.com/john-watson-reviews/john-watson-book-review-108-of-eplus-books-part-2-nimzowitsch-classics
One last point to keep in mind is that, even if My System would eventually help a player, it might not necessarily be helpful to a player now.
"... Just because a book contains lots of information that you don’t know, it doesn’t necessarily mean that it will be extremely helpful in making you better at this point in your chess development. ..." - Dan Heisman (2001)
https://web.archive.org/web/20140626180930/http://www.chesscafe.com/text/heisman06.pdf
I believe I'm in the same position as the author of this post.
Currently with 1673 on ChessTempo standard and 1400-1500 here (now i'm on a losing streak). Reading only one chapter from Simple Chess (outposts) - Michael Stean gave me 200 rating points. Now i can go to move 10-15 with some sort of advantage in most of the games, but from there on I usually make blunders or don't know what to do.
I started solving exercises from the book 1001 from Fred Reinfeld, but I dont believe my problem is really tactics. Do you guys have any suggestion on middlegame plans/position play? Should I go on with Simple Chess from Stean?
Here is the list of books I have access. You can also recommend others if possible.
Thanks guys.
I believe I'm in the same position as the author of this post.
Do you guys have any suggestion on middlegame plans/position play? Should I go on with Simple Chess from Stean?
Good Positional Chess, Planning & Strategy Books for Beginners and Beyond...
https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/introduction-to-positional-chess-planning-strategy
What a great topic. Though few specific answers.
I don't think anyone has tested all books on positional play through proper, empirical, double-blind experiments so how could there be a specific answer? You are only going to get the opinions of a few people based on their personal experience, which isn't a bad thing, but it isn't a specific thing!
mein kampf is a good read
Do you mean Struggle by Emanuel Lasker?
mein kampf is a good read
Do you mean Struggle by Emanuel Lasker?
If you hit Master then your origal level of chess acuity/chess IQ was very high and absolutely could have been done without any books had you exposure to the right people (you know, like all the other people prior to 1950 pretty much did, you know the ones the ended up writing the books ... hahahaha)
Most people do not have such acuity, and no amount of booking up is going to raise their level of play.
You might be interested in Carol Dweck's work. Lots of professionals and scholars disagree with you. If anything, the reason why players like Morphy were 2300-ish is because they had, as you call it, "chess acuity," but did not have a systematized training, books, etc. The GM who trains me is dumfounded by some of missed mating patterns by players from classic games --and I don't mean games that long ago, e.g., 1950. Probably the reason why Kasparov 1988 or Carlsen 2015 could slap around the player with the most "acuity" in history, Fischer, is a product of books, supplements, training programs, more expansive opening theory (in books and databases), etc.
The thinking itself --that there are minds deterministically capable of either absorbing a kind of information or not-- is horribly troubling, and it sounds like an excuse more than it does a theory about how minds learn chess.
I simply can't entertain your assertion. There is neither empirical evidence or reason to back it.