Chess Book Study

What chess books have you recently employed in your study?

I worked through the 300 positions in Thomas Engqvist, 300 Most Important Chess Positions from late December until a few days ago. I'm now starting work on the sequel: 300 Most Important Tactical Positions, as well as working through rook endings in Jesus de la Villa, 100 Endgames You Must Know, and reading P.H. Clarke, 100 Soviet Miniatures.

I received this as a gift for my birthday. I've long been fascinated by Alekhine's life; how he pursued his dream of winning the world championship by beating the " invincible "Capablanca, and doing that while escaping his collapsing homeland and surviving the calamities of two world wars.

One of the things I learned was that between games four and five of his match with Capablanca, he had six teeth extracted, used one sick day, then resumed the match with a hard fought draw.

Woodpecker 2 by smith, Modern Benoni by Dokjas. But most of my time has been occupied by me working with the computer through modern defense lines.

I'm working through Chess Master vs. Chess Amateur, a game collection that shows how chess masters exploit mistakes of amateur players. I finished game 18 of 25 last night.

I'm also working through 100 Endgames You Must Know. It's not my favorite endgame book (that is Silman's). But, it does have a lot of good positions. For the past 6 months I've been focusing on the essential positions that he recommends in the introduction/forward. After reading a new position, I add it to a PGN collection and then regularly play these against the computer, trying to really integrate the knowledge. I think I have about 30-40 positions in that file (many of those are sidelines from the book).

Finally, I'm doing seven circles practices with Hayes' Winning Chess Tactics for Juniors, which are actually quite hard tactics so not ideal for seven circles. For the last six weeks I've been working through the second iteration and then will start over again, increasing the number I do each day to complete them in half the time.

"Practical Chess Beauty" by Yochanan Afek. My favourite book on chess so far and I have read 100+

Simple Chess: A great explanation of strategy, making it very easy to understand. You have it on YT as well: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUrgfsyInqNbkyiwPSSBQ6ALkkccKItPE

I read it in 2020

Excellent book

Another book by Afek caught my eye on the Chess Informant website.

CD version just arrived, along with the latest Informant.

Nice, the way I use these is I don`t solve them at all, I look at the solutions and visualise them without a physical board - a bit of a Matrix download experience really (you can expect your creativity to explode). In the occasions where I can`t visualise till the end I would set up the position on my computer and analyse with SF). Solving I see as a complete waste of time which is why don`t do puzzles either.

=)) right

The last one I finished is ''Mastering Positional Sacrifices'' by van Delft

I'm about 2/3rds through 'Winning chess manoeuvres' by Guliev

Both are OK but not great. It's is easy to skip days or find other things to do with them. I haven't decided about the next book- hoping to find a really good one to study next. ---Bill

I looked at my bookshelf and can add a few more recently studied books:

Recently finished ''Chess for tigers'' fun book and easy read.

Mostly through ''Bishop vs knight the verdict'' . THis is a good book but very specific. After I play the next bishop vs knight endgame I'll be motivated to get thru its last chapter.

Finished Aagaard's Excelling at technical chess. Wasn't bad as I did finish it but found it disappointing. Interesting annotated games but I found them pretty disconnected from one another. I came away from each chapter thinking ''What was I supposed to learn?''

I usually have this reaction to Aagaard's books. Not because they're bad, I imagine, but I'm just not strong enough to connect the dots with his illustrative games. They are so multilayered.

My coach has me playing through the problems in the first chapter of Dvoretsky's Recognize Your Opponent's Resources and I get a similar reaction to the illustrative games (and sometimes even the solutions to the problems!). But, he says I don't have to understand everything, just that doing the problems will exercise this part of my brain.

I went through Excelling at Technical Chess quickly, mostly just reading the prose. It led to a change in attitude about draws. The resulting fighting spirit, even in technically drawn endings where there is still an opportunity to err, has continued to grow. More recently, some positions in 300 Most Important Chess Positions reinforced this attitude.

That's definitely a good 'take-away'.

I played thru every game on a physical board. The book was well worth its price just for a collection of interesting annotated games. Maybe I was less pleased because I was comparing it to Gelfand's book where the theme (of how to play with a space advantage) was clear all the way through.

My guess (in this and similar books) is that they start with a chessbase file of examples used in lectures/lessons where the author explains what the patterns and ideas are. Somehow the verbal explanations of the themes the games illustrate seldom make it to the printed book. (But that is just a guess of course) - Bill