Great list. I am not a Topalov fan, but San Luis 2005 by Gershon & Nor is a wonderful tournament book.
When I first started to collect chess books, there were two dominant companies who produced paperbacks, Dover and McKay. I found many of the books in an old bookstore just off Wood St. in downtown Pittsburgh. Today there are so many publishers, it is hard to keep track of them all. Some of the newer publishers seem good, but the quality of the production varies a lot. Have a couple of newer books that fell apart after a few weeks of use because of a poor adhesive in the binding. Even with slightly yellowing pages, many of the old books have held up very well over the years.
uscfsales.com/the-games-of-t … -1965.html
uscfsales.com/the-games-of-t … -1983.html
uscfsales.com/nezhmetdinov-s … chess.html
uscfsales.com/lessons-with-a … aster.html
uscfsales.com/billy-colias-m … aster.html
I hope nobody will mind too much if I raise the somewhat off-topic questions: How many chess books have people read all the way through and how long does it take?
I have read perhaps five chess books completely - the longest (I think) being Chernev’s Logical Chess. It takes me a long time, months, perhaps years, to get through any one book. I suspect this is one thing that separates the strong from the weak. This review claim strikes me as incredible: chess.com/article/view/revie … trompowsky
It takes a while to digest the ideas in a good book. I recall way back when I read “Modern Chess Strategy,” “Pawn Power,” and “Capablanca’s Best Chess Endings” that it took about a month to read each book. It took longer to read Euwe’s, “The Middle Game”. Many times you have to re-read some books. I found that was true with Nimzovich’s book, “Chess Praxis.” There is so much material, so many concepts to think about in some books that one reading is not enough. Then there are the old friends, books with stories of the great players and tournaments. You can’t help but re-read them again and again.
My general practice with instructive books is to first skim to get a general impression; second reading is for depth and thinking; third reading is to jot down notes to be put in a notebook, in the margins, or on post-it notes to put inside the book. The jotting down of notes helps me to remember why I liked the passage when I turn to the book again.
Opening books are different. Have read selected portions of many opening books, but none all the way through. Some lines are not worth looking at. Often out of a 150 page opening tome, have found only 10 to 20 pages that were worth reading.
Puzzle books can take months to complete. When I first did the Reinfeld “1001…” books on combinations and checkmates, it took over 3 months, a whole summer, to do them all, and I was working on them almost every day. Most of the time it is usual just to dip into the puzzle books for a session of two a week. Really good puzzle books can be looked at for years.
There are some books I go back to repeatedly to reacquaint myself with certain principles. Chess Fundamentals, The Art of Attack, Think Like a Grandmaster, Positional Play, Chess from Morphy to Botvinnik are among them.
Thank you for the thoughts. It did not seem likely that the (2014) reviewer had been working like this: uscfsales.com/pachmans-moder … ategy.html
uscfsales.com/the-middlegame-book-1.html
uscfsales.com/the-middlegame-book-2.html
uscfsales.com/1001-brilliant … ition.html
uscfsales.com/1001-winning-c … ition.html
uscfsales.com/art-of-attack-in-chess.html
uscfsales.com/chess-from-mor … innik.html
By the way, was “Positional Play” a reference to the Aagaard book?
As a kid I really enjoyed stuff like the Evans book b/c I felt like I was being immersed in this wonderful world of chess somehow. As an adult I’ve realized that so many professionals are cracked in the head in real life and that Evans didn’t have to walk far to write about it. On the spectrum it’s total junk food but still tasty when you eat it; the saving grace is there isn’t much actual chess to the whole thing. Next step lower on the scale (one side being a pedestal and this side being a garbage bin) is Raymond Keene and Eric Schiller.
And thank you to Kevin and Tom for the concrete suggestions. I like seeing the suggestions from those who have passed the 2200 threshold and what has impacted their thinking throughout the years.
An interesting comment you may enjoy that I’ve heard from a few GMs as we teach at chess camps - for the typical chess player, everything they need to know to be successful in tournaments - happened (was discovered/was codified) by the time of the Fischer - Spassky match. Maybe not everyone would agree, and I certainly use later examples in some of my teaching (particularly from Karpov and Kasparov). But there is more than one grain of truth in the statement.
Up to a certain level, in my estimation about 1800-1900, a study of the old classics is good enough to get you there. By old classics, I mean Euwe’s, “The Middle Game” and “Judgment and Planning”, Kmoch’s “Pawn Power”, and Pachman’s “Modern Chess Strategy”, great books for the development of middle game planning skills. For the beginner, Tarrasch’s “Game of Chess” is unsurpassed for leaning endgames and tactics. Euwe and Hooper’s, “Chess Endgames” are more than adequate compared to the $35+ tomes offered today. You can even get by with just a knowledge of Fine’s, “Ideas Behind the Chess Openings.”
At about the time a player reaches Class A level, he realizes that these classical books are not enough. Bent Larsen once said that for his own development he found that what Euwe said about chess was all a lie. There was more than logic which needed to be learned. He turned to Nimzovich because Nimzovich covered what was hard about the game, what was paradoxical, the exceptions. The ambitious Class A player must now widen out his view and study much harder material. His tactical studies have to be redoubled. More emphasis given to opening study, move orders, dynamics and compensation, sacrifices for position. Thinking methods, pattern recognition, intuition have to be explored. Simplicity and straightforward attacking methods have to be replaced with a more subtle blend of positional play and tactics. By analogy, the player must learn to box, not just go for one punch.
The Class A player not only has to study harder material, he also has to put himself into harder competitions. He has to learn how to lose, to take bad beatings from really sadistic players, and to pick himself up and learn how to cope. This means a change in ego and approach to winning and losing. Winning is always fun, but losing has to be dealt with in more productive ways. The old books don’t discuss this very much. This is learned on the field of battle by each player as he struggles to find himself. By the time a player reaches master level, his character has changed. Some learn to be more objective and empathetic toward opponents. Their view of chess is touched by science and art. They shrug off defeat as being in the nature of the game, just as it is in life. I have seen a lot of GMs who are like this. Unfortunately, a few learn to be sadistic and selfish, cynical and dismissive of “inferiors.” They have to hate their opponents in order to win. This is a vicious sort of player who often burns out, fearing loss more than enjoying wins. There is not much about this latter type of player in old or modern books on chess psychology. I know a few masters who were like this, absolutely no fun to be around.
uscfsales.com/the-ideas-behi … nings.html
Wow! That is quite a mind-bending thought for an ~1500 player who has been struggling for years with this or that modern (or at least more recent) opening book. I bought IBTCO around the time that I saw John Grefe’s recommendation about three decades ago, but, since then, my attitude has been shaped by comments such as:
Now, I am trying to think of examples from my own games that would support the appropriateness for me of the Kelleher assessment. Thus far, I have not been able to think of anything very convincing.
I am afraid that Mr. Kelleher misunderstood Reuben Fine’s approach in “Ideas…” Fine was trying to give the budding player an understanding of the general “rules” or guidelines for move selection and the importance of pawn structure in each opening being studied. This was an explanatory book, not a repertoire recommendation or a specialty treatise on the openings. He hit the main lines that many amateurs needed to be familiar with before going on to deeper study. In the back of the book, he cautions that there are exceptions to the rules, too. Fine was probably clearer in his approach to chess in “The Middle Game” and in “Chess the Easy Way”. Many have criticized, “Basic Chess Endings”, too, for its many mistakes. Issues of Chess Life and Review always had letters to the editor with corrections to the book. His concern was in developing a method of analysis of positions. These were all seminal works for American players who were unlikely to have read the German language versions of Siegbert Tarrasch’s, “The Game of Chess” or Emanuel Lasker’s, “Lasker’s Manual” or Nimzovich’s, “My System”.
Before the specialty books on the opening that appeared in the 1970’s, Informants and ECO, chess databases and chess engines, what a couple of generations had on openings were “Modern Chess Openings”, “Chess Openings in Theory and Practice”, by Al Horowitz, and Reuben Fine’s “Ideas Behind the Openings” that explained the reasoning behind the columns of opening moves. His own “Practical Chess Openings”, was a minor seller. I have known players who climbed their way to master on these few books alone.
That lengthy process has been shortened by the advent of the ebook and various readers. The Everyman Chess Viewer for their ebooks is super. It allows you to play through and read the comments simultaneously for every page of their books. The time saved in setting up positions on a chess board is great. I have their viewer on my android tablet and it is lovely lying in bed in the evening reading and playing through their books.
There is something about moving actual pieces on a chess board that enhances the experience of learning. Aural and visual learners can grasp concepts through listening and watching videos on a subject. Tactile learners need to have their hands on objects to facilitate the learning process. In dealing with kids, especially very young ones, I have found that the more hands on work we do, the more they remember. Kids love to hold onto the chess pieces. In teaching children, it is a common practice to have manipulatives, such as blocks, to help teach little kids math. Using e-books to study may be good for most adults, but there is a significant segment that needs to put ideas they learn into “muscle memory.” One tennis instructor I know says that you can watch all of the videos you want on tennis strategy, but the player only understands it when he/she feels the ball hit the racket, hears the thunk of a good shot, and sees the ball placement. Repeatedly doing this grooves in the strategy and shot making skills. The use of multiple media, including the use of tactile devices is the way many of us learn new things.
Also, perhaps insufficient thought was given to the matter of the intended audience. I find myself thinking of a comment from a few years ago.
Subject: Greg on Chess: Opening Books
For someone like me (definitely not one of the very young), there is a big cost to moving actual pieces on a board. I can lose a lot of time playing through a line and then trying to resurrect the position before the beginning of a line. Setting up a diagram in the first place can get to be a lot of time lost. I seem to have a choice between using some sort of e-book or accomplishing a lot less reading. Perhaps a lot of reading is not worth it anyway, but I can’t help suspecting that, for me, at least some of the time, getting something read in some sort of e-format is better than not getting it read at all.
Analysis sets. Use two boards, one to hold the position, the second for analysis.
Louis, I understand your problem. It does take time to reconstruct the board. Not everyone is like Bobby Fischer, who was reputed to be able to read Informants the way some read science fiction novels. He could read and analyze all of the notes with ease. I did see a video of RJF, however, sitting on a park bench with a magazine and a pocket set going over variations, moving the peg pieces back and forth. So, maybe he had the same problems the rest of the world has in reading chess books.
It is in the moving of the pieces, in slowing down our thought processes a bit to deepen our awareness, that is the secret of improving your game. By engaging several of your senses, the brain is compelled to take notice and put the concepts learned into long term memory. Quickly going over games barely engages short term memory. Just like cramming the night before was helpful for an immediate test, but lousy for long term use of the material learned. It is my experience and observation of children that when they get to study and play the game with pieces, not just diagrams, they perform better. The apps, engines with analysis windows, and all of the visual cues can be distracting at times. I am not sure that kids negotiate looking at things in two dimensions as well as when they have a tangible object in front of them. This is an area I am still exploring. In general, I think that rushing to learn something rather than allowing yourself to become totally immersed in the subject is a poor way to learn.
KB wrote:
[Analysis sets. Use two boards, one to hold the position, the second for analysis.]
Have done that for years. The Everyman app is more efficient. I started Kasparov’s Predecessors vol 1 again last night and it was a much easier and enlightening reading process. Have you tried the app, to be differentiated from reading Everyman books with the Chessbase Reader?
I am afraid that that solution does not work very well for me. I do much of my chess studying in bed while waiting to feel ready to fall asleep. Managing a book and one set is already a problem. Managing two sets is really out of the question under such circumstances. On those occasions when I have found myself in a position to use two sets, I keep forgetting to make moves on both boards. When I do remember, making moves on two boards, of course, slows down the process. Also, the task of resetting a board to match another board is another delay.
I should probably make it clear that I have not yet tried any specific e-book format. I just have lots of experience with being slowed down by the methods without e-books.
I doubt that he, or, for that matter, you, have as much need as I do to play through variations in order to understand them. Also, it seems like a good guess that my position-resurrecting ability is considerably lower than yours or that of kbachler.
I have a hard time believing that I gain much from the struggle to resurrect a position after playing through a variation.
I am not considering “quickly going over games”. I am considering eliminating some aspects of the process that seem to me to be particularly unproductive.
I am not a child. Perhaps I am kidding myself, but I like to think that I have sufficient self-control to put time into trying to understand moves without using old methods to force me to spend time on seemingly unproductive tasks.
For me, the regular necessity to resurrect a position is VERY distracting.
For me, there is the very clear disadvantage of the old ways with regard to getting less read.
For me, the necessity to resurrect a position is a significant obstacle to total immersion.