Books from my childhood

I've been asked which books I read when I was younger that allowed me to go from 1700 to 2000 elo points.

I'll give you the books I used to go from unrated to 2150 (where I stabilized). I'll try to make clear if I think the book is worth it.

Beware, however, that:

• There may be better books out there.
• The title I give may not be the right one in English as I'm translating it from Spanish. I've searched in google to try and find the right title.
• When I say I've read a book, you must not understand that I have studied it. I just read it (quite literally). I've played the moves on the board but I may or may not have given it a second thought (usually I did not give any move a second thought).

Openings: I did not read any books on openings (those were other times at the end of the 90's). I just read the main line of the informator and constructed my repertoire based on the games I played.

Botvinnik - Selected games: Those are three books on Botvinnik's games. I liked it quite a lot and I think I read it twice or three times. Afterwards I've read about it that Botvinnik was quite complacent about his own play and did not study the games in depth. As I did not either there was no problem for me.

Euwe & Kramer - The middlegame in chess vol. i & II: A book on pawn structures. I did not like it much, it seemed to be quite shallow.

Petrosian - Chess at the summit: I'm reasonably sure I translated it wrongly. The book is Petrosian talking about a bit of everything. It is interesting but I was never too fond of it.

Dvoretsky & Yusupov - Opening Preparation: I have never liked Dvoretsky's books until the last ones with pure exercises came to the market. This may be the reason why. I doubt I finished this one.

O'Kelly - World Championship 1969: A book about the Petrosian - Spassky match that won Spassky. I never took it seriously and I doubt I finished it.

Levenfish & Smyslov - Rook endgames: I read this like three times and may be like the most boring book ever (I always had a thing for endgames). Of course I forgot everything rather soon.

Maizelis - Pawn endgames: I read this like three times too (curiously I've read the pawn endgame chapter from Dvoretsky's endgame manual three times too already). It is not as boring as the Levenfish and Smyslov book, but today the job is done better.

Nimzowitsch - My system: A book every youngster is really fond of. I read it several times and was shocked when I lost a game were I was occupying an open file as advised in the book. Admittedly the open file was the a-file and I was getting massacred on the centre. After that I took this book with a grain of salt. As an adult I read mixed opinions of this book. Some think it is one of the greatest books ever, others thing is just really outdated.

Nimzowitsch - The practice of my system: It should be similar to the previous book but I do not keep any memory of it, so it should not be great.

Alburt - Test and Improve Your Chess: I read this when I was starting to play more seriously and thanks to it I played the Alekhine defense and the Benko gambit. Other than that I do not remember this book as anything special.

Bronstein - Zurich Candidates 1953: The book I'm most fond of. I should have read it more than three times and was (and maybe still is) my all time favorite. I won't read it again as I may change my opinion of it because I'm sure the analysis does not hold up and is shallow.

Kotov - Think like a Grandmaster: This book is quite famous. I tried to read it but never quite like it (although I tried really hard). Every comment about it I've read as an adult points out that I was not alone.

Fischer - My 60 memorable games: I should have liked this book as it is about a collection of games (the books I liked the most), but I never quite liked it. Maybe it is because I never liked Fischer (not because he was mad but because everyone was always such a fanboy about him I could not stand it) but I do not think I have finished this book.

Timman - The art of the analysis: Another supposedly great book that I was not really fond of. I guess here it is because Timman really worked in his analysis and as I mainly read the text commentary it did not attract me.

Alekhine - My best games vol I & II: It was not a bad book but I had it photocopied (a club's mate got it photocopied and then bought the book so he gave me the pirated book) and I did not liked it as much because of it.

Reinfeld - 1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices & Combinations: Not a bad book. I should have read it two or three times when I was reaching my peak elo (I was never good at tactics and that may be the reason). Nowadays I'm sure there are tons of books better than this but in the 90's that is what we had. The book is really worn out because I inherited it from my parents.

And that's all the books I've got on my bookshelf from my childhood.

Review: Thinking inside the box by Aagaard

Title: Grandmaster Preparation: Thinking inside the box.
Author: Jacob Aagaard.
Publisher: Quality Chess.
Year: 2017.
Pages: 408.
Price: 29.99€ (hardcover).

This book is the sixth and last one on the Grandmaster Preparation series from the acclaimed author Jacob Aagaard.

I have reviewed two previous instances of this series: Positional Play and Attack and Defense. I reviewed both highly if my memory serves me correctly. Both are workbooks with exercises to train your positional play and your attack and defense skills. The other ones in the series are also workbooks into calculation, endgame play and strategic play. This book I'm reviewing, on the other hand, it is not an exercise book.

If I understood it correctly, this is the first book you are supposed to read in the series and will lay down the foundations of the work with the other books. It is like a synopsis plus a book on self-improvement. Aagaard tries hard to explain his approach to how do you improve on chess: making better decisions at the board. He classifies the decisions you make into four categories and tries to give you some tips for each of this decisions. Moreover you will get acquainted with the material of the other books on the series before you can try to solve puzzles (except for endgame play which is totally ignored here).

To paint it with a very broad stroke each chapters deal with a subject (that may or may not be portrayed in the workbooks). The subject is explained using words (lots of them, I'm happy with that), and games mainly from the author.  I advice you to read  John Hartmann's review on this very same book to get another viewpoint on what the book is about.

Come on, I'll wait. He is a great reviewer and I always read his reviews eagerly.

So now that you more or less know what the book is about I want to highlight a nice thing in the structure of the book. Each chapter has a Test yourself section were you will find up to eight diagrams asking you to answer a question (generally which is the best move). Those positions will be found later in the chapter (unfortunately not always in diagram form, something I find is kind of a blunder). It is a great addition as you get the chance to think about the content of the chapter beforehand. Every book should have this!

The edition of the hardcover version of the book is great as it usually is with this publisher and the length is more than enough rivaling even opening books (which are usually thicker).


The book is quite interesting. You won't get bored reading it, that's for sure. Aagaard's style really shines in this format better than in the other ones in the series (as there he has no room to expand, being exercise books). It reminds me of his work for Everyman or his Attacking manual. If you've read any of those you know what you are getting here.


The analysis of the games is great. At least I do not think I find a mistake anywhere. I'm sure there will be, but very subtle and hidden ones. I feel the depth of the analysis is adequate (which for me is very deep analysis) and normally I would not get lost in it.

So all in all, it seems the book has a lot of great things going on for it. But you will know by now there will be a but. Two buts indeed.

The first problem with the book is its purpose. When first I learn about the book, judging by its tittle I though Aagaard was making a treatise of the current knowledge in chess (like good/bad bishops), open files, weakened king, etc) and provide examples for us to solve. But it is nothing like this. The purpose of the book is to explain us how to improve our chess.

This objective is really ambitious and Aagaard himself admitted (I'm not sure if it was in the introduction of the book itself or in his blog) that it would be normal if we would read the book and felt we have not learned anything from it as he was going to state the obvious to try to make us conscious about it.

In my case, he hit the nail. I finished the book thinking I have learned very very little. There is the occasional thing to pick up here and there, do not get me wrong, but mainly everything is obvious (as Aagaard himself intended).

Obviously the chapters that are developed further in the other books of the series are kind of redundant to me as the books already feature their own introduction to each theme, but maybe someone reading the material in the order intended by Aagaard will not share this view.

Let me instead get deep into one instance that I feel showcases the book at its worst and that luckily Hartmann has also focused on: the division of chess decisions into four categories, which seems to be the core of the book. According to Aagaard there are four types of decisions:

• Automatic decisions: Those where your choice is obvious, you recapture, avoid a check, etc. In this kind of decision the only reasonable thing to do is make sure the decision is indeed automatic and then make the move.
• Simple decisions: Those were you just improve your position following the steps presented in Positional Play. You should not spend more than a couple of minutes on this because this decisions are by no means game-changing. You need to save time for tough decisions.
• Critical decisions: Here you have to calculate all the way to a definite conclusion. This is what the book Calculation and Endgame Play are all about.
• Strategic decisions: Here you have to make a decision were you cannot reach a definite conclusion and you therefore should guess somewhat. This is what Strategic Play and Attack and defense are all about (and I'm not quite sure the second book qualifies to be here).

 I find this division very interesting and kind of useful. I do spend a lot of time with simple decisions while I should spend less time on them. I will bring that home after reading the book and this is a success for Aagaard.

Nevertheless, I do not get the difference between critical and strategic decision.

The very concept of critical decisions has been debated over in the quality chess blog and Aagaard found many voices arguing against it. I do not want to enter that discussion as I might side with Aagaard here. I do think it is useful to know there are decisions that are critical and should be calculated accurately on a game, even if you miss them. Next time maybe you are aware of the concept and make a special effort to not miss such situations.

But when I start calculating I may be facing a critical or a strategic decision. The only difference from a practical point of view (as far as I can see it) is that in one you will have finished your calculations while in the other you will not because you lack the time and you will have to guess. Anyway you will have to move one way or the other.

So even in the most important point of the book I feel something is missing. Either my understanding of the classification is flawed (in which case the book is at fault as it did not get the job done) or the classification is flawed from a practical point of view, which defeats the purpose of having two different categories for the same basic decision: go deep and calculate.

Another example would be the classification of the players into four categories: intuitive vs logical, technical vs dynamic. I know I'm a technical player, but I have no idea if I'm logical or intuitive. The exposition of the chapter gave me no clue as this division was underdeveloped. Moreover this division seemed only accessory with no practical advice behind it.

Maybe I'm nitpicking, but the idea with which I finished the book is that there were many interesting ideas but nothing special. The book failed to get a better player out of me.

The second problem is that the games are chosen primarily from Aagaard practice. As he is mainly an attacking player, this is what you are getting, tons of attacking games. Games that would fare better in an Attacking Manual than in a book about improving your chess. After all, not everyone plays this kind of chess (I do not, for instance), and those feel a bit left aside.

So my conclusion is that you have to think about this book as a best game's book. The advice on improvement is interesting and the prose is great, so you are not losing on that front, it may not be useful, but think of it as an extra. The games are quite interesting and well analyzed. So forget it is a Grandmaster Preparation book. It is not. When you are in this state of mind you can judge the book fairly. My personal feeling is that is a good book worth having. I like it a lot more than Gelfand's books which everybody seems to love.

So I recommend this book with some reserves.

A final addition is that you may enjoy this book whatever your elo is, as a  best games' book you will pick what you can.

Review: Chess software

I have been wanting to make a review on the software I use when I study chess but never got around it.

As I reviewed John Nunn's Chess Puzzle Book I realized that being able to talk about this chess software is quite useful for the reviews, so I decided to set aside laziness and go for it!

In this review I will single out what I do in chess and which software best suits my needs. However I would like to highlight two things before we begin:

1. I have a open source operating system in my desktop (so, not windows, not apple). Many software won't work on it even if I were willing to use it.
2. Given the  choice, I try to go for the open-source solutions. I am kind of stubborn and follow that principle quite a lot.

Playing on-line:

I play on-line in a server called Free Internet Chess Server. As the name states it is free and it is enough for me. It is like an ICC from ten years ago (maybe ICC still has the same interface, I wouldn't know) and it does not take me long to find games there. My rating fluctuates between 1900 and 2000 generally (I am fide 2200).

I'm sure there are better sites there, but this is the one I know and I'm able to use given my software requirements.

To play on it I use Xboard (Winboard for Windows users). On my current Operating System (Linux Mint) I only had to download Xboard from the repositories and issue the following command on a terminal:

xboard -ics -icshost freechess.org

Xboard may not be the best software ever, but to play on-line you do not need much. A board and a way to seek opponents. Xboard gives me that and makes it easy for me to play. Windows users may not be able to relate, but being able to set things easy is a big plus.

Database handling:

My main reason to handle game databases is to manage my opening repertoire. I like to put the lines in the books on a database so it is easier to maintain and improve. There are two applications there that do what I need:

• SCID: This application is for the desktop computer and you may think of it as the open source version of Chessbase. Maybe it is uglier but I can do whatever I need to do with my files: I can create variations, comment on the game, etc. It also has a mode that I love called 'Opening Training' where it will make the moves for one side randomly from the opening file you have chosen and wait until you insert the move of the other side. This is a great way to study openings. It is very similar to what you can do in https://openings.chessbase.com/ but it will use your files!
• Scid on the go: This application is for android and is a derivative version of SCID. This android version is able to read databases, search positions and names and create games. I use it to introduce the moves from the book while on the bed before I go to sleep. Afterwards I put them in the computer through dropbox. It has the option to hide the notation of the game so you can train the openings there too (but it won't pick the move at random this time, but the main move of the game you are at). It is not as great as in SCID but it does the trick when you are studying in the subway. There are two things I do not like about this app: (1) it does not allow you to introduce comments on the notation and (2) when the game has a lot of variations and comments it turns slow and somewhat unresponsive when 'clicking' on a move. Furthermore, it won't allow you to change the settings of the engine.

Analyze games:

This is a different section because in the normal world there are both Chessbase and Fritz. As I do not play against the computer the only reason for me to use Fritz (or Houdini or whatever) would be to analyze a game. My engine of preference is of course Stockfish which fits the bill perfectly as it is not only free but open source, and it it the best engine overall (including commercial engines) by elo (or very close to it that you would not see the difference anyway), and I use it in the following apps.

• SCID: On the desktop computer I use SCID for analyzing too. It allows me to do whatever I want as noted earlier. 
• Droidfish: On the cellphone I use Droidfish. I just recently found out about its hidden potential (previously I only thought of it as an interface to play the computer). It allows you to add comments (which is very important for me as i not only introduce the lines from opening books but also create tactical and positional problems from them) and you can change the engine settings. I use that to check the positional exercises I create from an opening. An exercise is good if the first line of the engine is at least +0.2 better than the second one, so when I find a position which seems interesting (generally the ones in diagrams or before a ! move) I load the engine showing two lines and there I know if the position is a good exercise. Sadly Droidfish does not seem to be able to manage databases, so once I have finished analyzing the game/exercise and I have added all the comments, I share the game with Scid on the go where I am able to store it in the correct database. Being able to do it swiftly is one of the great discoveries I had recently.

Train tactics:

I train tactics in Chess Tempo. The site is free to train but some functionality is only available for paying members.  I do not pay so I have no idea if the paying section is worth it, but the free version is great. You can solve tactics slowly or in a mode called blitz (which takes into account the time you use to solve it). There are like 100,000 exercises to solve with a wide variety of different levels. The exercises you are presented with depend on your rating so you won't get something out of your league (too easy or too difficult).

I have been using the site for two month now and I have slowly climbed to 2130 elo in the standard mode. At this level I have to spend like 20 minutes per exercise to get them right. That means that those exercises I'm solving are harder on average than John Nunn's Chess Puzzle Book. 

There are other sites available (chess.com, chess24.com) and I guess they would be good as well. I'm trying to spend 30 minutes each day solving tactics on-line (which sadly now is like two exercises, as I take sooo long to solve them) and my hypothesis is that it should raise my tactical awareness, specially when done without time taking into account. The blitz mode may be more fun but you do not invest as much in those problems and the improvement comes from the energy invested.

In particular ChessTempo (I cannot say for other sites) will show you exercises where only one move wins (a computer evaluation bigger than 1.75). The exercises are different from normal tactical books as they are not chosen to fulfill any criteria on beauty but just to have one good move available. It takes time to get used to it but all the positions are from real games, so you will be very close to real game scenarios (except for the fact that you know there is only one good move and that good move is winning).

To me this site has make puzzle books more or less obsolete . Note that this does not mean I won't be reading puzzle books in the future or I'm giving away the ones I own. I will continue to use puzzle books and I will buy more, but that's because I like the feel of studying with a book, writing in pencil what you have thought so you  can come back a year later and see if you have improved, and specially that if the author is good he gives you something special in the solution or in the selection of exercises.

But when you are studying tactics for tactics' sake, then you may as well go to one of this sites, you do not need anything else, as those are places for the day to day training. The site will bring you puzzles at your level and your rating will be updated after each puzzle, so you will see if you are improving or not.

Chess diags is a little app for android for solving mates. It starts with mates in 1 and goes all the way to mates in 10. There are like 2,000 mates and the potential for anyone to create their own set.

The difficulty is varied, there are a lot of trivial mates, but others really forced me to set the position in an engine.

As far as I can see, the only problem with this app are: (1) It is a data dump of a lot of mates, so some are good, some are bad, it really does not care if you are a queen up, you just have to mate; (2) it does not have an engine that might help you when you are stuck.

SCID on the go as training tactic is feasible if you have a database of tactical problems as you use the training mode in the same way as you did for your openings. You make a move and if it is the correct one SCID will answer it with the main line of the variation until there are no more moves.


Reading books:

To read books I use Forward Chess. It is an app for android and iOS that a lot of publishers use to sell their electronic books.

The application is not bad (although there are tons of things I would it to do that it does not but SCID on the Go does) and you do not really have a choice there, if you want an electronic book from one of its publishers you have to have this app (which is free).

I like it mainly for opening books so I can study them in the subway but I have bought normal books there too (Chess Structures for example) and it is useful to have the engine running at your fingertips.


Importing a diagram to your phone:

The problems with physical puzzle books is that often you are left wondering why your move did not work. Recently I found an app called ChessOcr which will let you read the diagram with the camera of the phone and send it to the app of your choice for studying that diagram (I send them to Droidfish).

The app is great and has saved me tons of time by not forcing me to set-up the board on Droidfish, but you will have to pay for it :( But if you are like me and wonder why your intended move is bad and find yourself setting up the position by hand in an engine a lot, maybe you could consider buying it!

Review: John Nunn's Chess Puzzle Book Enlarged Edition

Title: John Nunn's Chess Puzzle Book Enlarged Edition.
Author: John Nunn.
Publisher: Gambit Publications.
Year: 2009.
Pages: 336.
Price: 20.25€.

Last summer I bought Dvoretsky's Maneuvering: The art of piece play, Gabrinsky's Perfect your Chess and John Nunn's Chess Puzzle Book. The main desire was to get Dvoretsky's book but I took the chance and went to get two puzzle books to go along with it. Perfect your Chess was meant to be there waiting for my level to go up, as it is allegedly hard while I hopped John Nunn's puzzle book would be an accessible book to give me a break from the difficult Aagaard books.

Nunn is an accomplished author and I was at a loss as of which book would be interesting (now I have some better ideas, when I get to review Dynamic Decision Making I'll share what Gelfand recommends you) so I thought his book would do the trick as it was computer-checked and I thought the fact that I had not seen much praise about it would mean that its level would be quite accessible. I do not want to spoil the review, but I can advance that it is not.

The book features 300 tactical exercises in 336 pages. if you look at other reviews I've done that ratio is not really high for a tactics book. The format is unlike anything I've seen so far. It has the puzzles at the beginning and the solutions at the end of the book, but there is a middle section with hints for 252 of the problems. It also features 48 problems in a test format (without hint) where you can rate yourself.

The hint section gives you some advice as to how to solve the problem and gives you the difficulty of it. The hints vary in usefulness. Some spoil the problem completely while a lot more are not useful at all. When solving I only gave myself half the marks if I had to look at the hint to get the solution right even if the hint was obscure.

The edition of the book is poor and is something that shocks me to this day. As far as I understand it Nunn is one of the owners of Gambit Publications so one would think that he would want his book in the best quality available, specially if they are committed to a second edition (it is called enlarged because it features some more exercises, but it is a second edition after all).

However the book is paperback (well, everyone except for QC goes for paperback, but I can still complain as this is my blog!) and the quality of the paper is the worst I've seen in years. This is the problem when you buy in amazon, you won't have the book on your hands and you may end up buying something you dislike.

It seems that this edition not only has new exercises (which is good), but also a diagram at the beginning of the solution for each exercise to help you follow the solution. I cannot judge the usefulness of it as I did not study the previous edition but given how hard it is to navigate the book my guess is that it is a good addition.

The length of the book is excessive for only 300 exercises but the hints and the extra diagram in the solution take space too. The book is about the adequate thickness (thanks in part to the bad quality of the paper on it) so while it would be able to fit a lot more exercises with a better structure you have to think about the cost of each exercise (less than 0.07€) and stop complaining.

The solutions are thoroughly commented (unlike QC puzzle book, for instance), the solution normally takes around half a page per exercise and the comments are good.

The analysis is also adequate. I think I found only one flawed exercise (where the intended solution did not win). The exercises, though, are difficult. The exercises are rated with stars (with one star for the easiest puzzles to 5+ to the deadliest ones) and the 2-star problems were difficult but manageable for me, the 3-star problems were very difficult but I could solve them about half of the time and the 4-star problems were hell and took me quite a lot of time and even then I had poor success.

The average difficulty of the book is between 2 and 3 stars. Unlike the QC titles the problems are not ordered by difficulty so there is no obvious point were you can go to the next chapter, you have to suffer all the way to the end. However I cheated and looked the difficulty before trying to solve the exercise. I do not know if it gave me a big advantage, but at least it gave me solace when I would get stuck solving. You may as well skip the hardest problems if you like, although I wouldn't do that myself.

As I said earlier at the end of the book there are some tests. I loved that. As Nunn's point out, the elo you will get from there is not reliable but I was surprised that I got around the same marks for each test. The final mark was 2132 which is surprisingly close to my rating (and I was never good at tactics so it makes sense that my elo in tactics is lower). That elo is just the one you will get for having a level between 2 and 3 stars exercises (which is what I got in the rest of the book).

So all in all I do not regret having bought the book. The quality of the edition is terrible and I did not like a bit its structure. I like QC style of having the solutions of the problems just in the next page. That way you only need one marker to know where you are. Here not only you need two markers for the exercise and the solution, but a third one for the hints!  That is a pain to move across the book and it is easy that you see other hints or other solutions by mistake.

But the exercises are challenging and well commented, the test is a lot of fun (at least for me) and overall the difficulty assigned to the problems make sense.

I think a guy at 2000 should be around the 2 star mark and the book features enough 1 and 2 star exercises to make the purchase worthwhile, but maybe at 1800 it makes no sense as you will be struggling too much. On the other hand I think a 2300 will have a run for his money with the book.

That said, I do not recommend the book (even if I do not regret buying it myself). There are a lot of puzzle books out there. This is interesting but not the best one by a long shot. I have reviewed better puzzle books in this page and I plan to share with you Gelfand's recommendation on the subject. This book is not there.

Review: Chess lessons by Popov

Title: Chess Lessons.
Author: Vladimir Popov.
Publisher: Quality Chess.
Year: 2011.
Pages: 256.
Price: 21.99€ (paperback) or 27.99€ (hardcover).

I got this book last year from the Quality Chess promotion where you buy three books and get one for free (if you are from the EU). I had not heard about it but John Shaw thought that based on the books I was ordering it was a good addition (I was ordering Learn from the legends and two GM Preparation books).

Popov is a Russian trainer (one may deduce he is kind of famous in Russia) who worked with the Kosintseva sisters (now both are rated slightly less than 2500 and inactive but at their peak they reached a little bit more than 2575) while they were ascending. The book is a compilation of lessons addressed to improving players based on the games of both sisters. Each chapter has an expository section where the point of the lesson is presented, and some exercises to solve. It reminds me heavily of the Yusupov's books, but while the main point of the second is in the exercises, in Popov's work it seems the exposition is the important part and the exercises a pleasant addendum. That feeling is reinforced by the fact that in the exposition part there are also exercises (with the solution immediately after the diagram as opposed to the exercise part of the chapter, which has the solution in the next page).

The themes of the lessons too remind of Yusupov: it is a mix between positional and tactics. Unlike Yusupov there are no endings or openings , so maybe it is Yusupov limited to the middle game but the lessons are more abstract than in Yusupov book (one chapter is on changing the pawn structure, other in piece play, while Yusupov deals with the isolani, hanging pawns, etc.).

I've got the hardcover edition. Unlike every other QC hardcover, the quality of the paper in this book is markedly worse, it feels more rough. If you compare it with Dvoretsky's Maneuvering - The art of piece play it loses by a very very small margin (so all in all the quality is not bad, just that I'm used to the great quality of the other books). The binding seems good and the book remains open when you put it on the table.

My guess is that the 2.5€ discount on a hardcover is actually because the paper quality.


The book is of normal length at 250 pages and the number of exercises can be found around 450 adding the official exercises and the ones you find in the expository section, but some of them cannot be solved as the exercise needs a blunder from the side to play.

The explanations are light, nothing too insightful. Yusupov's style. However the analysis is atrocious. Many of the 450 exercises you can find in the book (the great majority the positional ones) have bad solutions. The text may tell you that move A and B are bad (with '?' even) and move C is the good one, and you fire the engine and it turns out that the three moves have almost the same evaluation.

I understand that positional problems are prone to suffer from this. The engine often does not understand the position in the same terms as the human and maybe the human move is really the clearer from a plan-point-of-view. Maybe in some instances where I claim the solution is bad the engine was missevaluating it too. However Popov does not mention the engine at all in the great majority of the cases, so we are left with doubts.

The exercise section has a marked improvement in this regard. You may find the occasional alternate solution but normally you may be able to say why Popov considers his move as best. My guess is that the lessons were made quite some time ago (the examples rarely go further than 2005) while the exercise section has been made anew. So the old material was checked with an old computer with a positional understanding that a GM would not rely upon, while the new material has been checked critically with modern means (and maybe some further thought went to ensure there was only one solution).

I would not talk about the level of the expository section. The things exposed are quite simple and the exercises may as well be flawed, so you won't give it all anyway.

So how about the exercise section? In this respect the book is very deceptive. I thought the exercises were going to be very easy but was promptly proven wrong. For example in Chapter 16: Detecting ideas there are 12 exercise. I made 5 correctly, 2 half-correctly, 4 badly (one of which was flawed). In general solving half of them was the norm. As I'm around 2200, I think the material in the exercises is challenging while the expository section is quite simple (but the problems there, when they are not flawed, are difficult too, or maybe it seemed to me that way because I was unwilling to spend 20 minutes in a problem just to find out it was flawed).

So this book is aimed at a very wide range of players, from the average club player at 1800 who will benefit from the prose of the explanatory section to the ones aspiring to be masters who will give it all in every exercise, even if it is flawed.

My main problem with this book is that I had to check each and every diagram to see if the solution was correct and discard many of the exercises as flawed (or rewrite the question of the exercise to mend it). That is very time consuming and I was not really learning anything, as it was just time wasted while the computer thought about the position.

The book is not really bad. Bad of the kind that you want to rip off your eyes at the mere sight of it. If you accept that the exposition section has only expository purposes and you read it only to get some ideas but do not delve too much in the positions (that you know may very well be flawed) and with those ideas  you brought home from this you try to solve the exercises it may be even be called a reasonable book.

However if you are like me and wonder why in 2011 authors do not use a computer to check their analysis and reflect that on the book they are writing (like 'here the computer thinks A and B are as good as C, but this reason and this reason make me think C is better from an human point of view') you will not be pleased with this book. As I am who I am, I do not recommend this book. Maybe get it for free as I did. Then it may be worth it!

Review: Learn from the Legends by Marin

Title: Learn from the Legends - Chess Champions at their Best 10th Anniversary Edition.
Author: Mihail Marin.
Publisher: Quality Chess.
Year: 2015.
Pages: 480.
Price: 29.99€ (hardcover).

Mihail Marin is a writer with a very good reputation. I knew him because of his books on the English opening. While I liked his style, I found the books in the same vein as many other openings books: Marin was mainly interested in showing how White is winning everywhere and not in the truth of the position. However it seems those books have made a lasting impression so who am I to tell otherwise.

Anyway I bought this book because I heard many positive things about it. Firstly it won the ChessCafe book of the year in 2005 when it came out. Secondly I reasoned that if a third edition (the 10th anniversary edition) was warranted that must mean something. Lastly I trust the publisher (as you may have already deduced by the number of their books I review).

To my surprise the book is about endings! I do not know how I could not deduce it by myself. I have browsed through its pages once and inspected the first chapter on Rubinstein. I noticed that this chapter was about rook endings, but what else could have it been? It is Rubinstein after all... I noticed there were chapters on some of the old champions, so I thought to each his own. The chapter on Tal surely would be about mad sacrifices, wasn't it?

It was not. The whole book is about endings, each chapter showing a theme based on the champions games and sometimes the games of Marin.

The chapters and its theme are:

1. Rubinstein: Rook endings.
2. Alekhine: The fourth phase of the game
3. Botvinnik: Good knight versus a bad bishop on an open board, very unexpected theme for me, but imagine pawns on d4 and d5, open c and e-files and a white bishop on e3 and a black knight on e6. That kind of good knight versus bad bishop.
4. Tal: Rook versus two minor pieces (the rook winning).
5. Petrosian: Endings an exchange down (with more than enough compensation).
6. Fischer: Good bishop versus bad knight.
7. Karpov: Opposite color bishops.
8. Korchnoi: No theme.
9. Carlsen: No theme. New chapter for this edition.

This is usually one of those books people praise to no end while I'm quite unimpressed. You have to put a very strong will to study the material as it is very easy to just read and nod. In this book I tried hard not to do that and I went on studying the diagrams trying to decide on the next move. If I found the next move could be posed into an exercise (it was Dvoretsky and his little '?' marks in some diagrams who inspired me to do that) I would mark the diagram as an exercise (so next time I read the book I can train myself better). The final product looks like this:

In that chapter, for example, I found 39 exercises. I am too lazy to go through each chapter counting the exercises I found, but one may assume it is more than two hundred.

Taking advantage of the picture above I can say the edition is pretty good (at least in hardcover). As you see, the book lies flat on his own, something very useful when you are studying the material. I have already praised enough this publisher hardcovers, so there is nothing else to add.

The length of the book, at near 500 pages, is really great. You cannot really ask for more. And this extra size does not translate in an increasing price, which is good. It cost as much as the usual QC stuff.

Marin's style of writing is pretty good and insightful. While reading it I was able to understand why so many people claim this book to be one of the modern classics. Marin does not mince words and explains what is going on quite well.

However I was troubled with the analysis. There are three things I want to point out:

• Big statements: Marin is big on saying: this position is winning. You fire the engine and he does not agree (at least not in my phone). It offers a line for the defending side and Marin does not talk about it. I understand that engines' opinion in endings have to be taken with a grain of salt as it is easy they have not reached enough depth. On the other hand, if I had doubts about the big statement and find the line of the engine convincing, what am I to do? Maybe the engine is wrong, but the analysis is at least incomplete and the reader is left with doubts.
  
  Personally I feel that this statements most of the times are clear exaggerations. However it forced me to check the text with an engine as I never trusted Marin again. And I was not that impressed in some instances (more than a simple check with a modern computer would allow).
• Dissonant commentaries: If you read the book you will find Malfagia contributed heavily to the analysis. He is the italian translator and found a number of troublesome variations. In the second edition corrections to the text were made based on his and other people commentaries. In the third edition the text was corrected again (I cannot say if as heavily as in the second edition as I do not have anything to compare. Incidentally I think the mistakes I found were in those positions nobody else cared to look at). Unfortunately nobody read the whole text again and you may find contradicting statements where for example Marin says White is winning but then the variations afterward show a draw. It did not happen that much, but when it did happen it created distrust. I would say that you may find around ten instances of such thing in the whole book. It is not too much for a book that big, but it really bothered me.
  
  In that vein there is one very painful example: The game Karpov - Kasparov (Wch 9) Moscow 1984 has seen its analysis heavily edited each time. The ending is really difficult. It is hard to follow, but then when the text does not flow coherently as many edits have been made in the middle of the game it is a lot worse. At some point I had no idea if the position was winning or not, nor which was Marin's recommendation.
• Uneven level of detail: There are games studied to painful depth (Karpov-Kasparov is one example). I doubt anybody except the most adherent fan of endings using silicon help would find those extreme cases interesting. You simply get lost in the details. You may find some interesting positions along the way, which I imagine is why Marin left the analysis there, but the rabbit hole went really really deep.
  
  On the other hand there are games with a very superficial analysis (and some are the infamous 'White is winning' from the first point). 
  
  I would have liked that the excessive details in some games were left out and all the examples were given its fair share.

Another thing I would like to point out that I did not like is that there are Marin's games. There are not many, but in some chapters they are a lot more visible. My guess is that the process of making the book is at fault here. It seems it was conceived as some articles on great players and then put together (that may explain the unevenness of the analysis). So in some chapter he may have wanted to compare his play with that of the great champion. But I as a reader would rather get a champion playing. It does not need to be the one featured in that chapter, mind you, but at least a world championship contender...

On the whole I have a very mixed feelings about this book. I liked reading it, I found it interesting and I am sure at all levels you will find something to learn too. As it is pretty lengthy, you can simply skip the analysis when Marin loses his head in the maze of variations and ignore the light analysis (mind you, it may be at Shereshevsky's Endgame Strategy level, but for me that is just not enough at this age) and you are still left with a lot of content.

On the other hand, the lazy analysis and the confuse text in some parts killed my joy.

So I recommend the book with some caveats. For my part I will read it again to take advantage of the exercises I found.

Review: Maneuvering: The art of piece play by Dvoretsky

Title: Maneuvering: The art of piece play.
Author: Mark Dvoretsky.
Publisher: Russell Enterprises.
Year: 2016.
Pages: 212.
Price: Around 25€.

I assume everybody reading this knows Dvoretsky fairly well. He was one of the best trainers of his time and a great author too. His books were usually aimed at an unusually high level and gained high praise.

Personally I have never been a great fan of his work (except for Endgame Manual). I am lazy and tend not to think too much while reading a book and Dvoretsky's book usually had to be read slowly and making conscious effort.

However his last two works, Recognizing your Opponents Resources and Maneuvering The Art of Piece Play are not his usual kind. They are exercise books like the ones of Aagaard. I like this two books a lot more than his previous work. It is much harder to be lazy when all you have to do is solve exercises.

In this review I will talk about the second one, Maneuvering The Art of Piece Play. While many things may hold true for Recognizing your Opponents Resource too, when (and if) I finish it, I will review it as well.

The book is divided into an introductory chapter without exercises and then ten chapters with exercises to solve. This ten chapters cover opening, middle game positions and endings.

In total there are 228 exercises. However Dvoretsky liked to put additional exercises in his texts (traditionally he did this in his normal works, and he kept it for this book too). Those additional exercises are diagrams marked with the '?' mark on them. There are 128 of those exercises, so we will do best to think of this book as containing around 350 exercises.

The basic point of the book is to teach you to maneuver your pieces. This usually consist of making two or three moves in a row with the same piece until it reaches its perfect square. The main exercises (the ones marked as such) do focus on this. On the other hand, the 128 additional exercises mix things up and can be about anything.

Generally I was satisfied by the solutions, but you do need to keep in mind that this are positional exercises so they tend not to be clear cut. The solution usually contains a large part of the game under consideration (along with some additional exercises if the position merits it) while you are only expected to find the bold moves at the beginning. The idea is to give you a feeling of how the position evolves after the intended solution. While I like the idea behind it, the truth is that I would usually skip this part fast.

The edition of the book is fine. There is only paperback available, while I would have loved a hardcover. The quality of the paper is not bad by any means, but if you compare it with a Quality Chess edition it loses.

One thing I specially dislike about the edition of the book is that it is hard to not spoil yourself the solution of the 128 additional exercises. They are in the middle of the text marked only by a little '?' sign. It is quite easy to miss them. I went through the whole book marking them visibly so I would be aware of them with just a glance and could hide them with a paper. However this solution is not ideal either as it is quite annoying. More than once I placed the paper badly so I spoiled the solution anyway.

I think the book is short and there is no discount for this, but it does contain around 350 exercises. At 7 cents the exercise you cannot reasonably call it expensive. Compared to Positional play from Aagaard (this is the more similar book I have read), it has more exercises, but it is shorter, so the explanations can't be as thorough. While reading it, though, it never crossed my mind that some solution was not given enough attention. Sometimes numbers are deceitful like this.

Overall the level of the book is difficult to judge for me. I got around 50% of each chapter right (but there were chapters were I did better than others), but I think I spent less time than with other books per position. While solving this positions you enter a state of mind were you only care about maneuvering, which is good because it is what you are training after all, but limits your approach to the position heavily. If you find an interesting move which is not aimed at improving a piece through various moves, then you simply discard this move. If you find a pawn lever that might be good, you discard it too. In this way the positions felt easier, many moves can be discarded through this process.

In conclusion, I recommend this book unambiguously. I do not think you need to be specially strong to enjoy it (but if you are not that strong, prepare to be frustrated by the exercises at the end of each chapter). The solutions are short and easy to understand when you see them and it is likely the first time you encounter problems similar to this one, so it is a very good book to complete your bookshelf.

GM Preparation - Attack & Defence by Aagaard

Title: Grandmaster Preparation - Attack & Defence.
Author: Jacob Aagaard.
Publisher: Quality Chess.
Year: 2014.
Pages: 304.
Price: 24.99€ (paperback) - 29.99€ (hardcover).

This book is a part of a 6 title collection. Each one deals with a specific topic through some introductory prose and tons of exercises. The objective is to give people aspiring to be Grand Masters (or already GMs wanting to stay sharp) training material. The one being reviewed is centered in attack and defence.

In order not to shamelessly copy my post on 'positional play' I am going to assume you have read it. Almost all the things I state there are valid here too, so I may only point out what is different. Be aware of it!

This is a workbook too (which, as said in the other post, I'm in love with) and is divided into 13 chapters, 8 on attack, 4 on defence and the last one mixed. In theory this is the companion book of Attacking Manual I  so the content of the attacking chapters comprise the subjects studied there except for a new one called the Kill Zone (basically you have to keep the king trapped on the mating net, not let him fly away). The chapters on defence are not derived from Attacking Manual I but can be found elsewhere in Aagaard's word. They are Only Move, Comparison, Prophylaxis and Active Defence.

In total there are 309 exercises in this book more or less evenly distributed between chapters.

In this book the thematic division is a lot more clear than that in Positional Play, which may help you a lot when solving your exercises. For example in the first chapter, Include all the pieces in the attack, you know you have to find something to include a piece, in Kill Zone, you have to stop the king from fleeing, etc. Rarely does the exercises feel alien to a chapter.

As in the other GM Preparation books, the exercises are computer-checked. In Positional Play it may came down to opinion which was the best move, and you may not agree with the author. Here the solution is clearly the strongest move, even if in some random exercise it does not feel so reading the solution. If you let the engine run it will agree.

The only problem I had when working my way out with the book is that my solutions were not studied so I did not know why I was wrong. But of course it is impossible to have all the possible moves in the solutions, so no point complaining there (although if these books were on Forward Chess you would have the engine at a tip of your finger).

The edition of the book is great, as is to be expected from this publisher. I own the hardback, which can lay flat on a table while you are studying, and would not recommend to go paperback. You pay 5 more €, but it is so much easier to work with the book! And with a book that you should be revisiting often, why are you going to be cheap?

In Positional Play review i talked about the time / money metric I often use to value a book. This book is even better, as not only it has more exercises, you will usually spend more time on each of them. At 10 cents a problem (in hardback) and 60 cents an hour of entertainment, I do not think you can find much better deals...

In my last review I said I do not think Positional Play is for IMs and GM, but to an audience a notch lower than that. I based my opinion on the fact that I, at 2200, could be able to solve half the problems. Hence my opinion is that at 2200 you stand to get the best results from the book.

This continues to be true in this book to a certain extend. The attack chapters have me always around 50% while the defence chapters and the last one totally destroyed me (Chapter 9: 8/28, Chapter 10: 5.5/9, Chapter 11: 5.5/17, Chapter 12: 10.5/33, Chapter 13: 17/54). So half the book is okay at my level but the other half is harder (or maybe I'm just weak defending). I must admit though that I have always been a positional player, and this attacking thing is new to me.

In this book you can notice how the exercises are increasingly more difficult as you advance in the chapter as in Quality Chess Puzzle Book. In long chapters it is mentally very challenging as you know you have a lot of failing ahead of you when you start experiencing difficulties.

My advice there is that you have to be able to skip a chapter when you see you are in utter misery while solving exercises, but be aware that improving is suffering, hence you have to force yourself to a certain extend, not get demoralized and give up. I think I may have given up mentally at times, but not skipped an exercise.

In order to get a feeling what are you getting into, go download the excerpt and  see how do you fare. Of the 6 exercises there I made 2 correctly and one so-so (2.5/6). I recommend this book if you feel that you are strong enough to handle it (although expect a world of pain), otherwise, go the Yusupov way!