Books to reach IM level

I always had a lot of chess books but I must confess that I was not very keen in seriously studying them. When my level stabilized around 2150 elo points I more or less gave up chess as a competitive sport. I got stressed when I lost and as I played to have fun it made no sense for me to continue playing.

I continued playing the club league each year, so like 10 games each year and for some reason or another (I guess mainly because I studied the opening a bit) I peaked at 2225. 

Unfortunately for my free time, I decided to play a tournament and lost 50 elo points. As I am a very proud person, I could not leave things as they were and decided I would study seriously some chess to come back and do my best. The next year, I returned and dropped another 50 elo points (I had gained a lot on the club league in between, though).

So then I came with the definite list of books I would study to not only show that I  can play good chess, but that I would actually achieve my child's dream to become an IM (I only really care about reaching 2400, even if I do not get the title). The point was that I was lacking 200 elo points so studying 20 books (now the list contains 33 books without counting openings) would rise my level by that much if only each of those books would give me only 10 elo points. At that time it seemed a good idea.

So without further ado I present you the list (which I have been tweaking since then, four years ago). with some comments on the books:

Tactical play:

• Weteshnik - Chess tactics from scratch 2nd edition. Already reviewed.
• Flear - Tactimania. Already reviewed. 
• Gormally - Mating against the castled king. Already reviewed. 
• Aagaard - Attacking manual 1. Already reviewed. I must confess that I have grown to like this book a lot. I find myself recommending it over other attacking books (like Gormally that I liked better according to the review). 
• Aagaard - Attacking manual 2. I am readying this right now (I am at page 60 or something like this) and I'm finding it quite interesting. It is more similar to Gormally's book (or a normal book on attacking chess) as opposed to the previous attacking manual. I think it is really worth it.
• Shaw - Quality Chess Puzzle Book. Already reviewed. 
• Aagaard - GM Preparation Calculation. I have not reviewed this book but I have read half of it. I like it a lot. I find it quite challenging (more than Shaw's puzzle book) and this has stopped me from finishing it. I studied it with a 2350 guy and we took 10 minutes for each exercise and the last of the chapter are simply too difficult for me and really difficult for him.
• Aagaard - GM Preparation Attack and defense. Already reviewed.
• Nunn - Chess puzzle book. Already reviewed.
• Grabinsky & Volokitin - Perfect your chess. This book is a really difficult puzzle book. It has a lot of exercises aimed at IM level. I have only seen the first exercises at the beginning and did not find them very hard, but many people have told me this books is really difficult so I'm saving it for the last push to 2400.
• Dvoretsky - Recognizing your opponent resources. This one is another puzzle book. It has a lot of exercises (like 400 maybe) and there are some extra ones in the solutions. I went through the first 130 of the first chapter (which has 180 I think). I just stopped because I was having a success rate lower than 40% and it made no sense, things would get much harder later and failing every time does not improve your chess. I keep this for just before Volokitin's one and after finishing the GM Preparation series.
• Gelfand - Dynamic decision making in chess. Already reviewed.
• Aagaard - Practical chess defense. Another very hard book. It is an old book and is only on paperback, but I got it anyway. Some day I will study it, right now I keep my distance as I do not want to abandon chess altogether out of frustration.
• Gaprindashvili - Imagination in chess. This one was recommended by Gelfand and I did not know it. I have not buy it yet but I added it to the list. Other people have told me that they have worked with the book and have not find it impossible (as I see it, the book can be perfect for Gelfand and to no use for us mortals, but it does not seem to be the case).
• Afek - Invisible chess moves. Another late addition because of Gelfand's advice. I have nothing to say as I do not have the book.
• Hort & Hansa - The best move. The last addition to the list thanks to Gelfand's recommendation. I do not have the book either, so nothing to say.

Positional play

• Flores - Chess structures. Already reviewed. 
• Aagaard - GM Preparation Positional play. Already reviewed.
• Aagaard - GM Preparation Thinking inside the box. Already reviewed.
• Gelfand - Positional decision making in chess. Already reviewed. 
• (?) Dvoretsky & Yusupov - Positional play. I have this book as a maybe as I'm not a fan of Dvoretsky's classical books, but as the positional play section was kind of lacking I put this as a maybe.
• Dvoretky - Manoeuvring, the art of piece play. Already reviewed.
• Karolyi - Karpov's Strategic wins (2 books). I like Karpov style and I thought a good book on his games would be a sensible choice. I do not know if I would like this book or not. It seems that it packs a lot of games in very few space so the quality of the analysis or the explanations would not be great, but I have not dive in, so I simply do not know.
• Aagaard - GM Preparation Strategic play. This one was supposedly the book you ended up with in the GM Preparation series and I always had a lot of respect for it, so I never tried it, keeping it for last. However a friend of mine (which I introduced to GM Preparation, positional play) tells me the level is more or less the same. In any case I'm sure the book is great and I will go at it with great pleasure once I decide to study it.

Endgame play

• de la Villa - 100 endgames you must know. Already reviewed.
• Van Perlo - Endgame tactics. This book is very famous. It is kind of a puzzle book but not every diagram is a puzzle. I do not like the randomness of it. You see a position and think about it for 5 minutes and you do not see anything. Then, you read the comments and it turns out the position will be a puzzle after White plays a blunder. You feel really stupid. This and the awful edition of the book (it is really really thick, with bad quality paper and where half a page is taken by diagrams and the other half by solutions (vertically separated), but in the diagram section it may very well be that there is only one diagram, or two, resulting in a lot of wasted space). The book is good, the comments funny and it makes endings engaging, but the atrocious edition and the randomness of the task to solve puts me away from it. I have read like 10% of the book.
• Shereshevsky - Endgame strategy. This is another famous book. I went for it as it was famous and read like 50 pages (which is a lot if you think it has 200 pages) but I became disinterested as I found it too simple for my taste. I was reading Marin's book too and compared both analysis in a game they both shared and Shereshevsky's book was just at a tenth of Marin's depth. However now maybe I view it differently. I came to understand that when you are playing it is not so important that this position is won, drawn or lost, but what makes a difference is that you play it reasonably well, as you won't have time to think much anyway. So Shereshevsky's simplistic approach may be well founded for the practical player. On the other hand, I have not touched the book in 3 years so it may be possible that when I return to it I remember why I did not like it in the first place.
• Marin - Learn from the legends - Already reviewed.
• Dvoretsky endgame manual. Already reviewed.
• Aagaard - GM Preparation Endgame play. I have gone reasonably far in this book (like 50% of it) to know that is a good book, but it is hell. I left it when I was in the difficult rook endgames chapter. There was another chapter after it on more difficult rook endgames! I am not at that level yet. I will be (I hope). Of course, the same advice applies to all puzzle books sorted by difficulty (the GM Preparation series is sorted by difficulty inside each chapter, as is Shaw's and Dvoretsky's puzzle books). Everyone can enjoy the book if they just study the puzzles at their level and ignore the ones too difficult.
• Karolyi - Endgame virtuoso. This has a similar reasoning as the book on Karpov's middlegame play. I do not own this book yet so I hope it is good but I have no way of knowing.
• (?) Lund - Sharp endgames. I read the excerpt from the web and it seems a really good book which forces you to study. Right now this book is a maybe, but I think I'm going to buy it.

Review: Dynamic decision making in chess by Gelfand

Title: Dynamic decision making in chess.
Author: Boris Gelfand.
Publisher: Quality Chess.
Year: 2016.
Pages: 288.
Price: 24.99€ (paperback) - 29.99€ (hardcover).

This book is the second one on a series of books about decision making in chess. The first instance was Positional decision making in chess which I already reviewed here.

The series is created by two authors although only one name is in the cover: Gelfand is the one creating the chess content (although I guess that Aagaard put a little more effort than he claims credit for, but this is just my feeling) while Aagaard is the one translating this chess content into a book.

I did not liked the first book on the series and I nevertheless bought this second book. Why? Because I like books and I think the price is something I can afford. And because I do not have to explain myself to you, okay?

So what is this book about? As the name suggest, the first one was on positional chess while this one is on dynamic chess, tactics, blunders, long term (or real) sacrifices, etc. and how to play these positions.

The book is divided into eight chapters. Some have very specific topics: compensation and time come to mind, on the other hand there are other chapters that has no clear focus: Minsk 1979 (about games from that Soviet Championship) and Petrosian (similar to the Rubinstein chapter from the first book, mixing Petrosian and Gelfand games and what you can learn from him, but much shorter). And yet there are other chapters with a clear focus but not one that it is useful to any facet of chess study, like tactics at the top level (some tactics), the nature of tactical mistakes at the top level (which simply shows mistakes at the top level), and two chapters on collections of great attacking games and great defending games.

Overall I feel in this book too there is a lack of cohesive view or overarching theme that justifies each section. Like in the first one the first chapters have more random sections (sections that feel like and old's man story, jumping from one point to the next without really getting to the point) while the last chapters improve on that respect.

The hardcover edition I posses is great and its length is very similar to the other book. No surprises really here.

The prose is good as it is every time in Aagaard works, but as I stated here (and in the previous work's review) it feels some kind of ramble at times.

The analysis is good. There are 45 annotated games (although some are more lightly annotated than others) in 272 pages (excluding the appendix) which is more games (or less analysis per game) than in the previous work. On the other hand here the focus is in the tactical aspect of chess, hence there is less need for lengthy comments.

Sometimes I felt that the book went to great detail in some variations while skipping through other positions really fast, but I noticed it here less than in Positional decision making.

Overall this book has claimed much less recognition than the first one. I think the reason is that in the first one you could get some (not much) great insight into some positional subtle points while here the insight can be summarized into:

I calculated up to this point and saw my position was very promising so it was not necessary to go further.

This kind of advice is not as appreciated because either you can calculate everything till the end or you cannot (and it depends, too, on the time you have on your clock), so you will try to make the best job you can either way. It reminded me a lot of Thinking inside the box and critical moments. I understand the concept but I cannot find a practical application in my games.

I did not like this book either and I think I too liked it less than the previous work. In this book (as it has become a norm in the books I read) I tried to find exercises on the diagrams in the chapter. This book has some exercises at the beginning of the chapter (which are solved within it) which is a great addition, but I wonder why nobody uses Dvoretsky's question marks on the diagrams to denote that you have to solve the diagram. It is not that difficult to add (or it does not seem that way) and would give great value to the hardworking students. For example in chapter 6 (time) I found 22 such exercises, in chapter 7 (dynamic masterpieces) I found 18. So if this numbers hold approximately on the book, you could have 8 * 20 = 160 exercises embedded in the book with almost no extra effort. As it is both chapters had 8 diagrams at the beginning, giving a total of 8 * 8 = 64 exercises on the whole book. And while I like that there are exercises in the first page of the chapter for those with the will to do them, I find myself unable to concentrate on them, I am eager to start the chapter, so I rather have the '?' symbol on those diagrams which are perfect for solving.

Well, I stop the rambling now. I do not recommend this book. I think there are tons of better books on dynamic chess. I am now reading Attacking Manual II and I feel it is may be one of the best books I've read (admittedly I'm on page 60 or so), but even Thinking inside the box is much better than this book and it is mainly focused on dynamic chess.

Post Script:

Gelfand in the introduction to this book gives advice on puzzle books:

• Aagaard - GM Preparation, Calculation.
• Grabinsky & Volokitin - Perfect your chess. 
• Hort and Jansa - The best move.
• Afek - Invisible chess moves.
• Gaprindashvili - Imagination in chess.