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.