Chicken: I did a little checking on the web. I didn't find much but GM Aagaard said in a one-to-many internet chat:
Just the Facts is an awful book with lots of mistakes.
http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/blog/?p=916#comment-4421
When pressed for examples of these mistakes, Aagaard doubled down unhelpfully:
There are just too many stupid mistakes. I know it is popular, but I am allowed my own opinion.
I have "Just the Facts" and like it. Assuming there are mistakes in some of the analysis, I still doubt it will much hurt endgame novices reading the book, since their main takeaway will be general principles, not rote lines.
I had a chess club friend who methodically worked his way through Fine's "Basic Chess Endings" with a chess program. He found plenty of holes in that old classic too.
Learning 1.e4 e5 thoroughly
"Just the Facts!" is mainly the work of GM Krogius, a former top Soviet GM and chess trainer, who helped coach Spassky for his 1972 match against Fischer.
I'd be surprised if "Just the Facts" is that terrible. It may not be a good book for the likes of Aagaard and pfren, but then it's not written for them.
Its main virtue is providing players new to endgame study a concise survey of the endgame in an unintimidating format.
Thanks. Noted.
Does it focus on 1.e4 e5?
Chicken: Thoroughly!
Chicken: Thoroughly!
lol
Chicken: I did a little checking on the web. I didn't find much but GM Aagaard said in a one-to-many internet chat:
Just the Facts is an awful book with lots of mistakes.
http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/blog/?p=916#comment-4421
When pressed for examples of these mistakes, Aagaard doubled down unhelpfully:
There are just too many stupid mistakes. I know it is popular, but I am allowed my own opinion.
I have "Just the Facts" and like it. Assuming there are mistakes in some of the analysis, I still doubt it will much hurt endgame novices reading the book, since their main takeaway will be general principles, not rote lines.
I had a chess club friend who methodically worked his way through Fine's "Basic Chess Endings" with a chess program. He found plenty of holes in that old classic too.
I recall Dvoretsky pointing out at least one case of bad analysis by someone else being repeated in Just the Facts! Dvoretsky is good at spotting errors.
Interesting to note. Since I am not even close to Master level I'm sure I could benefit. However, thanks for pointing that out. There are some people at very high levels following this thread (I am guessing). Good to know.
It would still be nice to know specifically about these errors, especially to their number and severity, that we might form our own judgments.
Then there's the question of how much these errors damage the effectiveness of the book to teach endgames.
Of course just about all chess books prior to the chess engine revolution are filled with errors. Here's IM Silman confessing to this inconvenient truth (while at the same time decreeing chess engines off-limits for amateurs!):
Chess engines and databases weren’t around when I wrote that book (the same goes for the early editions of How to Reassess Your Chess), and I was using pen and paper, with a chess set on the table.
As a result, the Amateur’s Mind was filled with errors. And, of course, once chess engines were a dime a dozen, the know-it-alls not only gleefully pointed this out, they claimed the book was terrible due to those mistakes.
But, that’s completely wrong. The Amateur’s Mind is an exceptionally instructive book, and like all my work, it’s about concepts that will help most amateurs improve their chess understanding.
http://www.chess.com/article/view/chess-engines-are-not-your-friend
Although, to all, learning anything 'thoroughly' is always an ardent task. Even with databases, explorer etc....no books or any one trainer could ever replace experience playing a certain line in a short amount of period.
Just play!
8)
e4 is more attack mode than e5 i think unless it's fried liver for dinner. Iike e4 on a 30 minute game and e5 on a 3minute game. either way your skill comes to the for front in your win or lost.
It's an educational and entertaining experience to play over old games annotated by world-class GMs, while watching the output from a strong chess engine.
Hey are chess engines easy to come by. Are they free to use. How can I get one or use one. I've heard of them but did not think I played the kind of talent that would make me want to use one. After reading about analysis before chess engines I think using an engine might improve my game. I wonder how many of my past opponents use chess engines. What do you all think. ipcress12---najdorf96--- chicken monster and ziryab do you all use them? How and why?
Stockfish 6 is free, and can use multicores too. I'd buy a cheap Fritz 12 or equivalent for a good interface and functionality. It was released before Metro really took off (I still use an earlier version of CCleaner because of the atrocious Metro) so it uses Aero too.
I bought Fritz 12 for $7 a few years ago which I use as an interface for playing over chess games. It comes with a good enough chess engine, but will work with other compliant chess engines such as Stockfish and Houdini 1.52 which are free.
"Scid vs PC" has a stupid name but is free and quite powerful. http://scidvspc.sourceforge.net/ However, its interface is clunky.
Even if you don't use the engine, a good chess interface is IMO a must-have for any modern player at all serious about learning the game. It is just so easy to play over games in PGN on a computer without losing your place or being distracted by the mechanics of looking at a book, finding the next move, looking at the board, making the move, looking back at the book and finding the next move -- not to mention checking variations in the notes if there are any.
I use the engine for lots of things, but mainly for going over games of all sorts -- from GMs, amateurs and my own games. It's a way of getting a fast overview of a game without spending a couple of hours on it.
I've looked over hundreds of chess.com games to get an idea of what my competition here looks like. That would be too tedious to bother with if I had to do so with a physical chess set.
In my own games it's the best way to find tactics I may have missed. I know they say to look over your game without an engine and that's good advice. However, if I was a blind to a tactic over the board (in a slow game anyway), I'm often not that good at finding it later.
The big pitfall with engines is that, amazing as they are, they are not the ultimate arbiters of chess. You must not lose your skepticism about engine output. The longer you use engines, if you do so attentively, the better a sense you get of their limitations.
That said, if the engine score goes south after a move, it's worth stopping to have a think if the reason is not obvious. Some of the engine scoring is based on positional considerations.
A blessing of the engines though is the sense of you get of all the possibilities present in most chess positions -- not just the four or five candidate moves most humans consider.
I use the engine for lots of things, but mainly for going over games of all sorts -- from GMs, amateurs and my own games. It's a way of getting a fast overview of a game without spending a couple of hours on it.
I've looked over hundreds of chess.com games to get an idea of what my competition here looks like. That would be too tedious to bother with if I had to do so with a physical chess set.
In my own games it's the best way to find tactics I may have missed. I know they say to look over your game without an engine and that's good advice. However, if I was a blind to a tactic over the board (in a slow game anyway), I'm often not that good at finding it later.
The big pitfall with engines is that, amazing as they are, they are not the ultimate arbiters of chess. You must not lose your skepticism about engine output. The longer you use engines, if you do so attentively, the better a sense you get of their limitations.
That said, if the engine score goes south after a move, it's worth stopping to have a think if the reason is not obvious. Some of the engine scoring is based on positional considerations.
A blessing of the engines though is the sense of you get of all the possibilities present in most chess positions -- not just the four or five candidate moves most humans consider.
Well stated.
Hey Chicken!
I usually play the French, but played 1...e5 in an OTB game today because I was thinking about this thread. Well, not only that. Paul Morphy's games had an influence as I have been going through many of them lately.
Here's the link to my annotations of my round one game: http://chessskill.blogspot.com/2015/02/taking-care-of-business.html
Then what are the holes, specifically?