Two Board Method of Reading Chess Books

I just posted in the books and equipment forum and was curious as to the general consensus on this topic...

When reading a chess book do you use multiple boards.  i.e. one for the main line and one (or more) for the variations?

This was my comment in the other forum...

"I have never used the two board method. I use one board and play through all of the main lines and variations on that board.

After playing through a variation I re-set the position from prior to the analysis by memory. If I can't remember it then I start over from the beginning. At first it was difficult at times to be able to remember what the position was, but I was certain that forcing myself to learn this way would be beneficial.

Now it's fairly easy for me to keep everything straight in my head and it helps my calculation skills in OTB games immensely.

Improving at chess is not easy work. It's hard work. But you get as much out of it as you put into it."

If using two boards helps you to get through more analysis - but still using your own critical thinking skills in the process - more power to it. If it allows you to shortcut the thinking process, it might actually get in the way as you suggest. I suspect the experience is different for different players.

That's an interesting point of view which I suppose I never really considered.

There are chess programs created to support reading of chess books. Using them is the best possibility.

i prefere to do the variations in my head. it helps with visualisation skills.

I do the variations as far as possible in my head--which of course isn't very far. But I have a program--Chess Genius--loaded on my Kindle Fire which makes it superbly easy to read games and follow analysis from the books.

I just start playing over the games in analysis mode, and then, when I get to a variation, I play it out. When the variation is done, I simply hit the back button until I return to the main line and continue. I played through all of Logical Chess, Move by Move like this, and then saved the games in the database. Now I have all the g ames in that book on the Kindle, and I can play them over and over any time I like.

The other advantage, of course, is the compact size of the whole affair. I don't have this big board set up with the book way over to the side; everything is right in front of me. So, no more boards for me!!

"I have never used the two board method. I use one board and play through all of the main lines and variations on that board.

After playing through a variation I re-set the position from prior to the analysis by memory. If I can't remember it then I start over from the beginning. At first it was difficult at times to be able to remember what the position was, but I was certain that forcing myself to learn this way would be beneficial.

Now it's fairly easy for me to keep everything straight in my head and it helps my calculation skills in OTB games immensely.

Improving at chess is not easy work. It's hard work. But you get as much out of it as you put into it."

I really like that idea, it is interesting. I'm going to try this method, thanks.

I try to use one board and do variations in my head too. If it's too difficult, I replay them on the board and try to reconstruct the initial position afterwards.

Let me know how it works out for you.  It's helped me quite a bit.

Thanks I will. I had glad you reposted to remind me of this idea.