Having Trouble With Chess Books - Chess Forums

JoshH

Nov 15, 2007

0

#1

Hey everyone, I am a relatively new player and am trying my best to improve my game. I am having one problem though, I'm having a tough time learning from chess books because I can't really learn from them listing the moves by notation. There are pictures of the boards, but then they go on and explain a lot by just using the moves in notation form. I'm currently trying to read Reassess Your Chess by Silman, and it's a great book but I'm having such trouble learning, and it's like that with all the chess books I have.

Any advice or information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much.

IndridCold

Nov 15, 2007

0

#2

JoshH wrote:

Hey everyone, I am a relatively new player and am trying my best to improve my game. I am having one problem though, I'm having a tough time learning from chess books because I can't really learn from them listing the moves by notation. There are pictures of the boards, but then they go on and explain a lot by just using the moves in notation form. I'm currently trying to read Reassess Your Chess by Silman, and it's a great book but I'm having such trouble learning, and it's like that with all the chess books I have.

Any advice or information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks so much.

You really have to play through the moves on a board or computer. Even now I always set the postion or game up somehwere when I study out of a book. I can play through short sequences in my head, but not entire games. And even if I could, I've found that I always understand and remember the material better when I play it out on a board.

Edit: If you're trying to solve tactics problems (like the kind in Reinfeld's 1001 Winning Chess Combinations and Sacrifices) you should do all the calculating in your head. After that you can review the solution on a board if you need to.

antne003

Nov 15, 2007

0

#3

josh h

i HAVE THE SAMWE PROBLEM TOO, HOWEVER WHAT INDRID COLD MENTIONED ABOVE IS THE WAY I DO IT AS THE BOOKS CONFUSE ME WITH THE NOTATIONS, IF YOU REALLY WANT TO GET CONFUSE WITH NOTATIONS, GET NUNNS CHESS OPENINGS

I FOUND MASTERING THE CHESS OPENINGS, VOLUME#1 BY JOHN WATSON VERY GOOD SINCE IT HAS A LOT OF BASIC LANGUAGE ABOUT WHAT YOU SHOULD CONSIDER IN THE OPENING PHASE OF THE CHESS GAME

GOOD LUCK, TONY FROM JERSEY SHORE(ANTNE003)

KnightNotHorse

Nov 15, 2007

0

#4

I have kind of the same problem, and here is the best way I know to go about it. Its kind of lengthy, but will definitely get the job done: Most books use classic games, which the PGN for can be downloaded from ChessGames.com. Once you have the PGN file, you can then create a blog here on Chess.com and use that as a place to store all the games you are going to create (more on that in a bit) -- as a side note, you can set your blog accessible to only friends thru the settings (that will keep out most of the public). Once you have your blog, you can create postings and in each of the postings, import the PGN (using the chess board icon) and voila, there is your game. If you have additional time, the excellent "game wizard" that helps you create your games will also let you annotate them and put in variations as well, so when the book you are reading gives these lengthy variations, you can enter them and see what they are talking about. Again, this takes a bit of time, but I think that is the most thorough way to "translate" from book to board. Another big plus about the Chess Wizard tool on this site is that once you have created and annotated your games (and maybe put in a few variations), you can export the PGN in proper format with the "FEN/PGN" button in the lower left-hand corner of the chessboard. Of course, you can also do a lot of this offline on a computer using chessbase or chesspad.