Lyudmil Tsvetkov

I think he did reach 2200 FIDE, but I know he reached at least 2100.

As of the 1/100000, of course it's not right. It's to small to be anywhere near right. The actual percentage could vary by your definition of probability he is right, and blah blah blah we don't need to get it. To settle it, let's just say anywhere from 5% chance to 0.000000000... (add 1 million more zeros) ...00000000000001% chance he is right. That's a big range on both ends, so now it's settled. :)

And the GM attention is not a one way road. I never said it was, nor implied it was, but the exact opposite, so I don't know exactly what you are getting at. Smerdon does seem to give a pretty positive view, but notes that it is hard to read and understand. He also is kind of nuanced on his review. So if you can get past the confusion, Lyudmil's book might be an interesting book in which you can get a couple of things from. In short, unless you read chess books on your free time a lot, don't get Lyudmil's book cause it would help better if you read a different, more recommended book and read that instead.

We're talking about his official FIDE rating, which has stayed the same due to his inactivity in chess

i think the poster was alluding to the likelihood that he isn't nearly that strong now. 

nope it isn't too small, the 1 in 100,000 is much too large. where is the evidence for any of his assertions? you may believe he reached 2200, but is there any evidence that he did? and note, smerdon alluded to many harshly critical reviews, tvetkov repeatedly refers to the same few review. so not only is gm attention not a 1 way street, the majority of it is negative. 

if somebody claims they can beat usain bolt in a sprint, or claims they are better than any human has ever been at any endeavour, there is a much smaller than 1 in 100,000 chance they are right, their chance is less than 1 in 7 and a half billion, sans evidence. smerdon also specifically says it is not good for club players trying to improve, and this is the most positive review out there. 

Agreed. Also I’m pretty sure he said he reached 2200 Bulgarian rating, whatever that means.

well saying he reached 2200 in bulgaria isn't evidence, either. after all, he says he has written the best chess book ever, that he is better than carlsen, etc. etc. etc. at this point, i'm wondering what the evidence that he was a bulgarian diplomat is. let me try wiki.

so far, i've only seen assertions that he was a career bulgarian diplomat. but this is just a 5 min google. 

I do not disagree with the points raised in that one paragraph by GM Smerdon.  That is why I chose to buy Human Versus Machine, Part 1.  It is amazing and fun.  LT's annotations really are insightful and educational.

As for The Secret of Chess, I wish I had the knowledge and skill to write a chess book that got these kind of comments from a GM:

I feel like it would be unwise to ignore his lessons on how to evaluate closed structures, and it would not surprise me if computers tell us exactly the same thing in ten or fifteen years’ time.  

And this goes to the heart of the issue. Whether or not you believe in Tsvetkov’s chess philosophy or even just his evaluations, there’s no question that his approach to chess is fresh and different, something that’s been missing in the chess literature for a long time. I probably won’t end up a convert, but I have definitely spotted several interesting new heuristics that I will be trying out in the future. Concepts such as “vertically isolated pawns”, “twice backward pawns” and “spearhead pawns” are not things that I consciously think about when I analyse, though in a sense they sit somewhere in my chess intuition for assessment. But knowing which of these heuristics are relatively more important than others – a feature that Tsvetkov’s quantifications can address – as well as automatically bringing them into one’s decision processes, might be quite valuable. In any case, I’m going to try it out.  

Unfortunately, the combination of the textbook style without much in the way of descriptions, combined with difficult English, makes The Secret of Chess a really hard read. And given the knee-jerk rejection that many ‘classical’ chess players will feel, there’s a fair chance this book will be largely ignored by the wider chess community. But I sincerely hope this doesn’t happen. I’m almost surely in the minority, but I believe Tsvetkov’s insights could really change the way we think about chess, from how beginners learn the game to how experts improve. It’s bold, completely different and sometimes conflicts with a lot of established chess wisdom, but, just like big data analysis, meditation and veganism, that doesn’t mean there aren't some lessons to be learned, even if you don't subscribe to the whole package. If you're willing to open your mind to a new way of thinking about chess, and you're determined enough to power through the text, this book is definitely worth a read.  

https://www.chess.com/blog/smurfo/the-secret-of-chess

How about you?

How about you ?

Good question 

UHO (<----another great definition you can't find in his books ...)

We have a REAL NAME . A real name to dig and butcher.

Not the usual UHO a real name

do you have any evidence, contra smerdon, that it improved your game? how about you?

a real name with no evidence to back up the assertions by the real name. here's another real name, gm smerdon, who said that club players like you are not likely to improve by reading the book. same applies to gwtr. 

so do you have any other gm's agreeing with smerdon that it is worth a read? who are they? 

---> do you have any evidence, contra smerdon, that it improved your game? how about you?

---> club players like you are not likely to improve by reading the book.

My humility should advise me not to argue with a NM but for respect to the time you have invested to replay me i feel compelled to answer you.

I have no evidence at all about pratically nothing.

No book can save my poor attitude so my goal is not to blunder.

Where is Lyudmil? Oh well, guess you guys scared him off. Good job folks!

...And yet his followers live on. What a drag.

Where does he say he's not better than Carlsen?

I've actually looked at the amazon.com sneak peek of the book (look inside feature).

The prose is incomprehensible in places, but there is some interesting chess content hidden in all the self praise and confused and confusing heuristic charts.

What are we supposed to do, memorize the centipawn value of each piece in relation to each square?

By the way, it's really quite easy to play and never lose to Stockfish:

1. Play with the evaluation lines visible at all times

2. Take back bad moves

3. Turn off the computer's book function

4. Give the computer a bad starting position that you know it will misevaluate

5. Publish only your wins and draws, without any reference to how you got the computer into those positions

6. Announce to the world that you're better than everybody else.

I could do the same, if you gave me some time

You write like a salesman!

How funny.