There are good opening books that give general considerations.
But giving a static assessment in the likes of where each piece is going will only make the problem of deviation worse. e.g. what to do when the book says knight is headed to b6 through d5, but you had to recapture on d5 with a pawn and now you're totally confused.
What makes you good at transitions is understanding the next phase of the game. Study endgames and middlegames.
A real problem, especially for computers and amateurs, is to know what to do as soon as your opponent varies from the expected book move. If you knew even in general what you were supposed to be doing and why, you could figure out the best next move relatively easily. Computers are especially bad at that transition: their book moves have been instantaneous for several moves since they've just been reading off stored moves, then suddenly when out of book they stall for a long time, since they're just starting to assess the position for the first time in the game. In the old days, computers then would try to rearrange their placed pieces for a while to fit their "tastes" (computer heuristics) better, rather than knowing in general to which plan or philosophy to conform! A good opening book would ease that transition to the middle game by giving general advice on strategy and piece placement. That is another improvement that would be good for opening books: start each section (for each variation) with a simple list of your existing pieces and where they should go. Again, that would be very easy for an author to do, and would be of great value for several reasons.
An example list for the Petroff Defense might look something like:
QN: c6
KN: f6 or e4
KB: d6
QB: g4
f pawn: f5
castling: O-O or O-O-O
That is precisely why I thought showing the pros and cons for at least each of the first 5 moves, would give some insight, into how someone who deviates from the best line, is relinquishing an advantage, so that you'll better understand how to take advantage of it. I would rather read a book than to spend countless hours in trial and error, hoping for an exact position to arise again so that, I can try to redeem myself.
How would someone write such a book? How is it possible to understand how all the "wrong" moves relinquish an advantage? Sure for 1 move that's not so much, but for the whole opening wouldn't the author have to have studied millions of positions?
Or maybe there exists something which lets a player navigate novel positions... I suppose learning that would be the ideal. Then not only would you solve your French or Slav problems, but you'd improve your play in nearly every opening.
How would someone write such a book? How is it possible to understand how all the "wrong" moves relinquish an advantage? Sure for 1 move that's not so much, but for the whole opening wouldn't the author have to have studied millions of positions?
Or maybe there exists something which lets a player navigate novel positions... I suppose learning that would be the ideal. Then not only would you solve your French or Slav problems, but you'd improve your play in nearly every opening.
This is why I suggested the book couldn't go past the first 5 moves...
5 moves deep is still some ridiculous number e.g. millions of positions.
Or do you mean the author wouldn't branch at all. e.g.
e4 e5 (If Nf6 then e5, if d5 then exd5, etc)
Nf3 Nc6 (If Nf6 then Nxe5, if d6 then d4, etc)
Then it would solve nothing because you'd still get positions the author didn't cover.
e.g. from the above e4 d5 exd5 and that's where the author leaves you. But if he adds a long line, and each move in that line needs 5 moves, and each of those need 5 moves and so on, then you end up with millions of moves before you get to move 5.
And you've tried to solve your opening problems by memorization... like the majority of class players.
5 moves deep is still some ridiculous number e.g. millions of positions.
Or do you mean the author wouldn't branch at all. e.g.
e4 e5 (If Nf6 then e5, if d5 then exd5, etc)
Nf3 Nc6 (If Nf6 then Nxe5, if d6 then d4, etc)
Then it would solve nothing because you'd still get positions the author didn't cover.
e.g. from the above e4 d5 exd5 and that's where the author leaves you. But if he adds a long line, and each move in that line needs 5 moves, then you end up with millions of moves before you get to move 5.
And you've tried to solve your opening problems by memorization... like the majority of class players.
I would say that some of the possible replies are really bad though...
How would someone write such a book? How is it possible to understand how all the "wrong" moves relinquish an advantage? Sure for 1 move that's not so much, but for the whole opening wouldn't the author have to have studied millions of positions?
There are several ways to write such a book. One is by looking at common mistakes in a given opening. For example, in the Petroff, Karpov always used to play h3 as White. That's too slow, per one book I had, and sure enough, Karpov would *always* let the initiative slip to Black whenever he played that move. (I understand now that such moves conform to his prophylaxis philosophy, but I disagree with that philosophy for that reason.) Those players as Black somehow knew what to do next so that their moves turned Karpov's h3 into a wasted move. That impressed me. But where is that knowledge? Not in any book I've seen. So let's spread the wealth!
The other way is what I described before, and is similar to my above paragraph: tell a general plan. For example, in the Petroff, Black has often won impressively by keeping his KN outposted at e4 by a supporting f5, especially if he could also get in the bishop pin Bg4. There: It took just one short sentence to say that, but if you were a Sicilian player whose only familar strategy was attacking on the queen side with a6 followed by b5, b4, Rc8, you could end up playing a completely inappropriate attack (= series of moves) and lose because those were mostly wasted moves.
Each variation has subtle nuances that make it different from the other variations. Those differences should be described in general terms, which would have several advantages such as allowing a novice to decide which variation they wanted to adopt, depending on their own personal style and/or preferences.
Another way to describe such things is to list weak squares for each variation. Or common traps. Such descriptions are fairly mechanical, and could easily be included with each chapter of a book at the start. Important variations often don't split off for 2-3 moves, so you wouldn't need an analysis for each move, many times.
An example of a generic checklist for each variation might look like:
Variation name: ...
Typical piece placement: ...
Typical attacking moves: ...
Common traps: ...
Weaknesses for Black: ...
Weaknesses for White: ...
Strengths for Black: ...
Strengths for White: ...
5 moves deep is still some ridiculous number e.g. millions of positions.
Or do you mean the author wouldn't branch at all. e.g.
e4 e5 (If Nf6 then e5, if d5 then exd5, etc)
Nf3 Nc6 (If Nf6 then Nxe5, if d6 then d4, etc)
Then it would solve nothing because you'd still get positions the author didn't cover.
e.g. from the above e4 d5 exd5 and that's where the author leaves you. But if he adds a long line, and each move in that line needs 5 moves, then you end up with millions of moves before you get to move 5.
And you've tried to solve your opening problems by memorization... like the majority of class players.
I would say that some of the possible replies are really bad though...
Sure, so lets look. The number of positions after 5 moves (10 ply)... is so hard to calculate they don't even know the number... but after 3 moves (6 ply) it's already over 9 billion.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Chess.html
So lets look at "logical positions." This site seems to say after 5 moves (10 ply) there are about 6 million.
http://www.chess.com/chessopedia/view/mathematics-and-chess
So, just a few million. Pretty small book huh?
How would someone write such a book? How is it possible to understand how all the "wrong" moves relinquish an advantage? Sure for 1 move that's not so much, but for the whole opening wouldn't the author have to have studied millions of positions?
There are several ways to write such a book. One is by looking at common mistakes in a given opening. For example, in the Petroff, Karpov always used to play h3 as White. That's too slow, per one book I had, and sure enough, Karpov would *always* let the initiative slip to Black whenever he played that move. (I understand now that such moves conform to his prophylaxis philosophy, but I disagree with that philosophy for that reason.) Those players as Black somehow knew what to do next so that their moves turned Karpov's h3 into a wasted move. That impressed me. But where is that knowledge? Not in any book I've seen. So let's spread the wealth!
The other way is what I described before, and is similar to my above paragraph: tell a general plan. For example, in the Petroff, Black has often won impressively by keeping his KN outposted at e4 by a supporting f5, especially if he could also get in the bishop pin Bg4. There: It took just one short sentence to say that, but if you were a Sicilian player whose only familar strategy was attacking on the queen side with a6 followed by b5, b4, Rc8, you could end up playing a completely inappropriate attack (= series of moves) and lose because those were mostly wasted moves.
Each variation has subtle nuances that make it different from the other variations. Those differences should be described in general terms, which would have several advantages such as allowing a novice to decide which variation they wanted to adopt, depending on their own personal style and/or preferences.
Another way to describe such things is to list weak squares for each variation. Or common traps. Such descriptions are fairly mechanical, and could easily be included with each chapter of a book at the start. Important variations often don't split off for 2-3 moves, so you wouldn't need an analysis for each move, many times.
An example of a generic checklist for each variation might look like:
Variation name: ...
Typical piece placement: ...
Typical attacking moves: ...
Common traps: ...
Weaknesses for Black: ...
Weaknesses for White: ...
Strengths for Black: ...
Strengths for White: ...
While I agree that's the good way to study openings, this, IMO, already has a name and is called studying the middlegame 
Watson's French book gives some good explanation at the beginning of each chapter and scattered through variations. Kosten's English book gives lots of general considerations (the type you mention e.g. where pieces usually go and common plans) and even talks about pawn structures. Sadler's QGD book gives lots of explanation as well. King's Spanish book organizes the material according to strategic theme.
I'm sure there are others out there.
"Shell Knight's Comprehensive Chess" (Academic Publishers, 2014)
Chapter 1: Specific Openings
[Chapter 2: Opening-Middlegame Transition (deleted: does not exist)]
Chapter 3: General Middlegame Strategy
Chapter 4: General End Games
I'm just saying that the transition from opening to middlegame need not be abrupt. If you plotted the calculation time on a computer in the scenario I mentioned before, you would see a time line with 0 seconds spent on moves taken from its opening book, then a sudden jump to say 40 seconds for every subsequent move outside of its opening book. If the computer (or human) had guidance of any kind as to which moves were likely to be the best, based on a short list such as those examples I gave, the computations in that transition period might take only 10 seconds instead of 40 since it wouldn't have to consider everything from scratch. (This gets into deeper issues of A.I. of how to represent events evolving over time, how to reduce search time, and how to make computers "understand" anything, all of which computers have a hard time doing.)
5 moves deep is still some ridiculous number e.g. millions of positions.
Or do you mean the author wouldn't branch at all. e.g.
e4 e5 (If Nf6 then e5, if d5 then exd5, etc)
Nf3 Nc6 (If Nf6 then Nxe5, if d6 then d4, etc)
Then it would solve nothing because you'd still get positions the author didn't cover.
e.g. from the above e4 d5 exd5 and that's where the author leaves you. But if he adds a long line, and each move in that line needs 5 moves, then you end up with millions of moves before you get to move 5.
And you've tried to solve your opening problems by memorization... like the majority of class players.
I would say that some of the possible replies are really bad though...
Sure, so lets look. The number of positions after 5 moves (10 ply)... is so hard to calculate they don't even know the number... but after 3 moves (6 ply) it's already over 9 billion.
http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Chess.html
So lets look at "logical positions." This site seems to say after 5 moves (10 ply) there are about 6 million.
http://www.chess.com/chessopedia/view/mathematics-and-chess
So, just a few million. Pretty small book huh?
pruning is in order bro...
in chess notation there is a symbol for 'with the idea of' and its used when the idea is not obvious. But generally opening books are written for people who already understand enugh about chess that the idea is too obvious for most of these moves for anyone to bother pointing it out. Your idea is basically for writing an opening book for people who are very new to the game.
Yes, I'd forgotten about that triangle symbol for "idea of." That's a good symbol, and it's certainly very applicable for this topic, especially since it need not be used on every move. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chess_annotation_symbols)
But my idea is *not* an opening book for *chess* newbies, only an opening book for newbies to that particular opening. Each opening and each variation within that opening involves so much specific knowledge that is much more detailed than general chess knowledge. Another example: One common problem in the Petroff Defense is Black moving the wrong rook to e8 or d8. Fischer was great at exploiting that mistake, but where is *that* knowledge? Which rook is the "wrong rook" in one opening might be the "right rook" in another opening, so I would think even a chess expert who just wanted to learn more about a specific opening would want to know such things, ideally in an "at a glance" executive summary like the examples I gave.
There are "Move by Move" books available written by several authors. One example is Chernev's famous book the games of which are available for free on the internet here: .http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1004861
Also if you analyze your games or your favorite master's games on the computer you can stop the computer, take back moves and play against the computer from any point you don't understand. The important thing is not to rely on books or memorize openings but to try to figure things out for yourself.
Also you might like to watch Dan Heisman's videos on ICC. He explains games on a move by move basis explaining not only the game ideas but the thought process he uses to arrive at the game ideas.
I'm just saying that the transition from opening to middlegame need not be abrupt.
Absolutely agree. For me they were completely abrupt until I'd studied endgames and middlegames, and then lots of the moves started to make sense, and even better I could see why most of the moves that are never played were undesirable or unambitious, and I could begin to choose variations that suit me, etc. I really liked Soltis' pawn structure book.
If you try to brute force it with memorized ideas, then you can run into the same problems. For example in the QGD tartakower surely you'd tell a student the bishop goes to b7 because it helps support d5 and e4 and it was the point of b6, it's the long diagonal and etc.
And then in this position
On move 11 the student thinks, ah, I know what to do here. The bishop goes to b7, and I'll play Nd7-f6-e4.
But in the database 10x as many people are playing the bishop to e6. And it only makes sense in a middlegame context... black is now going for queenside action (e.g. c5, a5, and heavies on the a and b files) when the bishop would have been in the way on b7.
You could say that's not so hard to memorize, but there are many different variations not to mention when your opponent plays a novelty. Without understanding the ideas there's no context. Without context you'll eventually be clueless no matter how much you've memorized.
Reuben Fine's The Ideas Behind the Chess Openings is one of the better books that does this.
Also a lot of annotated master games take this approach.
I think I see what you're saying. It's like learning a new job, where so many things that have become obvious to experienced people at the company are new to the new employee, who wonders why they don't bother to write down their knowledge. Still, to me that says there's a niche for a type of book that I'm describing, somewhere between the beginner and the expert. From what people are saying here, such books/resources exist, but I just haven't seen/explored them yet. Anything that bridges a significant knowledge gap anywhere should have demand for it, whether a book, web site, or other. Everything is about efficiency and time savings nowadays, so anything that can speed up learning and save lengthy self-training should be worth some money, I would think.
P.S.--I've seen Reuben Fine's book, though many years ago. It's good. That's roughly what I would like to see, except focused on a single opening instead of all openings.
in most positions theres only a handful of moves that some master would understand is a logical or reasonable move. HOwever the master is also considering countless other moves that may never actually be played, but because they are legal, do effect what must be played...does that make sense? and this is too much information to really give in english. The diversity in chess is so explosively rich and the number of legal positions increases so fast (exponsentially) per legal move that you jsut need a more suitible language to express such things.
OK, so to me that suggests there might be a need for yet another type of book: one that lists such chunks. Even just today I came up with another couple situations or positions that are so common and useful to know that I believe there should be a name for them, but I know if I post them in my earlier thread asking for their names, I'll just get the usual response saying they don't have names, so I don't bother anymore. (E.g., many mating puzzles rely on the fact that a king checked directly along a file cannot back up along the king's two rear diagonals because those are blocked by pawns or other units in the puzzle. I think of those two reverse diagonal squares as the king's "two hind legs," which sounds silly, but I'm sure there is no other term for that useful concept of quickly visualizing some mating positions.)
I think I also understand what you're saying as for as "explosively rich": I believe you're saying that so many repeated and *subconsciously* learned patterns occur in chess that it is too difficult to enumerate them all, therefore the only efficient way to learn them is through extensive exposure. I haven't reached that level of proficiency yet, but from what I've seen, that sounds about right. Thanks.
P.S.--An example of the king's "two hind legs" pattern I mentioned, though with the king being checked on a diagonal...
Source: Palatnik, Sam, and Lev Alburt. 2013. Chess Tactics for the Tournament Player. New York, NY: Chess Information & Research Center.
Though I somewhat agree with FiveofSwords observations, I think it would be possible to make much more beginner/intermediate friendly books. One way would simply be to have club players review the manuscript, and include their questions in the book.
But of course, it would cost so much time and money, that there's no way such an investment could be justified.
Though I somewhat agree with FiveofSwords observations, I think it would be possible to make much more beginner/intermediate friendly books. One way would simply be to have club players review the manuscript, and include their questions in the book.
But of course, it would cost so much time and money, that there's no way such an investment could be justified.
Thanks for the ideas. I have tentatively decided to start adding some chess articles to my blog, especially ongoing articles where I keep adding knowledge to them as I get such knowledge. One such article for which I currently have high enthusiasm is a list of the types of chunks or patterns I keep coming across that don't have names but are useful. Some are positional, some are tactical. I'm not sure how to involve this site, though: should I duplicate my articles here, or just post a link to them, or create a thread here for just that topic (to which people can add) and post the link in passing to where I'm collecting that info more formally? Any preferences?
I'm also not sure how to make playable PGN in arbitrary HTML, which would be great. If anybody knows what program allows PGN to play the moves visually, please let me know, otherwise I'll have to look it up myself.
I'm glad FiveofSwords reminded me of that triangle notation meaning "with the idea of." I wonder if that idea can be extended into a new language, as he mentioned, like to include more general terminology for positional attributes instead of just moves, like "with the idea of QS attack," where there exists a formal, finite set of named concepts like: QS, KS, attack, defense, promotion, endgame, middlegame, weakness, hole, etc.
A real problem, especially for computers and amateurs, is to know what to do as soon as your opponent varies from the expected book move. If you knew even in general what you were supposed to be doing and why, you could figure out the best next move relatively easily. Computers are especially bad at that transition: their book moves have been instantaneous for several moves since they've just been reading off stored moves, then suddenly when out of book they stall for a long time, since they're just starting to assess the position for the first time in the game. In the old days, computers then would try to rearrange their placed pieces for a while to fit their "tastes" (computer heuristics) better, rather than knowing in general to which plan or philosophy to conform! A good opening book would ease that transition to the middle game by giving general advice on strategy and piece placement. That is another improvement that would be good for opening books: start each section (for each variation) with a simple list of your existing pieces and where they should go. Again, that would be very easy for an author to do, and would be of great value for several reasons.
A book on middlegame strategy is too general for what I'm advocating, since the particular strategy arises from the particular opening.
An example list for the Petroff Defense might look something like:
QN: c6
KN: f6 or e4
KB: d6
QB: g4
f pawn: f5
castling: O-O or O-O-O