The Bookshelf

The Bookshelf – How To Reassess Your Chess

Leave a Comment / The Bookshelf /

 

How To Reassess Your Chess by Jeremy Silman is a classic chess book that is on the top of many recommendation lists and I must say it lives up to the hype.

I love Silman’s writing style. It is easy to understand, his analogies are great and his sense of humor is refreshing, especially as soaking up all the chess goodness in this book takes some serious brain energy.

This book is not short. It comes in at 652 pages when you include the puzzles and answers.

I spent five months reading the book. I broke it down into two chapters a month and that was manageable. This was my “read without a board” book, so I didn’t set up any positions. I relied on the diagrams and focused on understanding the main idea. I would try and guess the correct move based on the concept that was being taught. Because I didn’t use a board I stuck to the main lines and didn’t go through many variations.

Who is this book for?

My rating is in the 1800-2000 range and there was plenty to learn. Some concepts felt like revision, but there were also ideas that I learnt for the first time. I would say this book is great for people in the 1000-2200 range. If you are on the lower end of the rating scale you may need to work harder to understand everything, but Silman is a great communicator and most people should be able to gain something from this book.

What score would I give it?

I can nearly give this top marks. I would have liked slightly more diagrams (but this would have made the book even longer) and I would have liked the test answers immediately after the problems, as I was reading electronically it would have been nice not to have to jump to the end of the book to get the answers. I tended not to check the answers because of this reason.

I  give this book a score of 9/10

The Bookshelf – How To Reassess Your Chess Read More »

The Bookshelf – Better Chess

Leave a Comment / Better Chess, The Bookshelf, William Hartson /
Here is my second review of a book to add to The Bookshelf!

 

The Book is called Better Chess and was written by William Hartson who was an English chess player that played competitively between 1962 to 1987. He was given the title of International Master in 1972 and reached a peak Elo rating of 2515 during his career.

 

I was given this book when I was younger and really enjoyed it but lost the book along the way and had not remembered the title or author in order to track down another copy. I only recently found it again and scooped it up quickly for only $10 online. The only way I could find the book was by remembering the content of the book. The book is separated into 75 short lessons that occur every 2 pages. This is one of the strongest features of the book as you can choose to read one lesson or more making it an easy book to pick up and read.

 

The two page lesson format works really well in the book as the first page of each lesson explains the idea and strategy using only text which makes it really easy to understand. The second page gives an example that includes a diagram and algebraic notation of the ideas suggested the page before. I really like that the book is organised this way as I don’t need to have a chess board with me to understand the strategies being suggested. For some of the examples I was able to simply follow the variations in my head but for others the variations were more in depth and the use of a board would be required.

 

The book is also separated into Basic, Advanced and Mastery sections (25 lessons in each section).
This is a good way to show the progression of ideas in the book and works well to show how the knowledge learnt in the first lessons are required to better understand the more advanced lessons.

 

The book is appropriate for tournament players looking to improve their game. The lessons may not be that helpful for very strong players but I think the examples are good and even if you understand the ideas in the lessons it is so easy to read and a simple way to revise key ideas that you may already know.

 

I give this book 4 stars!

Keep posted for more reviews!

The Bookshelf – Better Chess Read More »

The Bookshelf – My 60 Memorable Games

Leave a Comment / Bobby Fischer, My 60 Memorable Games, The Bookshelf /
Every chess player enjoys reading a good chess book! 
The first book that I am adding to The Bookshelf is My 60 Memorable Games.
This book is a great collection of games played by Bobby Fischer with wonderful annotations of his thoughts and a strong analysis of the moves he played.
Firstly… I love this book! This is a book where you will need your chess set. But the important part is, you will want your chess set out to see the great things this book has to offer and you wont want to put it away.

 

I have made my way through all the games and have found it to be really helpful in getting my brain back into “chess mode” after not playing much chess at all. It gives great insights into the opening moves, focusing primarily on the Sicilian, Ruy Lopez and Kings Indian but with other openings scattered throughout. This was really good for me because I love these opening lines and often play them in my own games.

 

After reading through this book I feel like I have only just scratched the surface and I really like that because it makes me want to go through and read it again and really study the ideas over and over until they are firmly cemented in my knowledge. Be prepared though as this will take up many hours of your time because there is an abundance of valuable lessons to be learnt from it!

I would recommend this book to those who have a solid understanding of the game as the ideas can be quite complicated at times and require a good prior knowledge of chess strategy and understanding of algebraic notation.

I give this book 5 stars!

I am looking at adding another book to The Bookshelf soon, so stay tuned for that one.

The Bookshelf – My 60 Memorable Games Read More »