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I am wondering if there are good books out there for an adult player who has plateaued. When I am white I do not know how to play for an advantage and when I am black I do not get to a playable middlegame. Any ideas?
The only two books that helped me see the game in a different light are Capablanca's Fundamentals and Silman's Reassess Your Chess.
Recently in Dennis Monokroussos’s The Chess Mind site he recommended a book called The Best Move:
TACTICS TIME: A PUZZLE FROM HORT & JANSA'S *THE BEST MOVE*
SATURDAY, APRIL 30, 2016
I recently posted a link to part 1 of an interview with Boris Gelfand, and in that work he praised a number of books including the old, excellent The Best Move by Vlastimil Hort and Vlastimil Jansa. It's a book I had as a young expert and maybe went through one time. The book was long lost, but I picked up a used copy several years ago and decided to give it a gander on Gelfand's say-so.
It's an excellent work, based on positions from the two Vlastimils' games, which is itself useful as their games will be unfamiliar to almost everyone. (It probably shouldn't be so, at least in the case of Vlastimil Hort, who was one of the very best players in the world in his heyday, but that's how it is.) On the other hand, they were both great players and analysts, so the puzzles are of high quality. It's definitely worth picking up a copy if you can find one that's reasonably priced, though I'd warn players rated below 2000 that you'll be in for a lot of frustration. (One grows, in part, by persevering through challenges, but the challenges shouldn't be altogether out of one's grasp.)
SS: Can you suggest any books which you think can be useful for improving the tactics and calculation of a player?
BG: There are many books. The Grandmaster Preparation series by Jacob Aagaard is good. I also like Perfect Your Chess by Volokitin and Grabinsky. Earlier books of Dvoretsky were excellent. The classic, however, is Hort and Jansa. I was arranging the books in my library and I found this one. I am going to go through it now. In Russian it is called “Together with grandmasters”. [Ed – In English it is named as “The best move” and it has 230 grade-yourself test positions]. The book is from the 70s. I liked it when I was young and recently it just fell from the shelf! I started solving it and there are really some amazing positions. I discussed it with Jacob and he said that vast majority of positions are correct under computer scrutiny. This is amazing. I solved them in my childhood and I have some very nice memories. When you solve from recent books and articles, all the positions are computer checked and hence it is clear that there exists only one solution. However while working with books like the one Hort and Jansa wrote you always risk spending a lot of time and not finding the win because it doesn’t exist! But it doesn’t matter. Your work is not wasted. I recently met Vlastimil Jansa and we spoke about this book. After going back home I will work with it again!
SS: Coming to endgames, which one would you say is your favourite endgame book?
BG: The Levenfish and Smyslov book that deals with rook endgames was excellent. Also when I was young I spent a lot of time on the Minev’s book on rook endgames, and I refuted quite a few positions in that book. But I liked it. Also Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual is a high quality book. The good thing about Averbakh’s books is that they give you quite a comprehensive picture about the material in a particular endgame, but you have to check it carefully with tablebases like Nalimov.
In general I like books which show ideas, not just variations and evaluations. These days whenever you reach endgames you are already on 30 second increment with almost no time on clock. Hence it is much more important to learn the method of how to play endgames. Under time pressure even if you know the positions by heart, you can easily forget them under stress. Therefore I think it is important to know ideas and how to play a particular endgame.
SS: Which books in general have made a huge impact on your chess?
BG: Books written by Keres. Yuri Razuvaev’s books on Rubinstein, Polugaevsky’s book Grandmaster Preparation in which he discusses opening as well as some fantastic endgames against Gligoric, Gheorghiu, Geller, etc. Kasparov’s books are really great. My Great Predecessors are nice but his book on the two Matches, as well as “Test of time”, were at an unprecedented level. Fortunately for us, there are a lot of good books. Even though we live in the age of computer, books are quite important – even more these days because we are overloaded with information. So a good book helps you to focus on really the important points. Because there are many databases like Correspondence, Computer, Mega Database, etc. You can easily get lost. So the importance of books suddenly grows. Earlier books were the main source of information. Then they were replaced by databases, but now we have so much material available that one needs to be guided through this.
I am wondering if there are good books out there for an adult player who has plateaued. When I am white I do not know how to play for an advantage and when I am black I do not get to a playable middlegame. Any ideas?
The only two books that helped me see the game in a different light are Capablanca's Fundamentals and Silman's Reassess Your Chess.
P.S. I also do not know why I lose games :(
The first step is to learn why you lose games. If you just learn from your mistakes and correct them every game you will likely see rapid improvement. I like the Read and Play books on various openings which teach the ideas and don't get bogged down in variations.
There are so many good books out there so it is hard to know where to start. "Improve your Chess Now" by Jonathan Tisdall is one I use often. Gelfand's new book "Positional Decision Making in Chess" is quite good. Think like a Grandmaster by Alexander Kotov might be a controversial pick but I have seen a few surges in rating after re-reading it. Winning Chess Brilliancies by Yasser Seirawan might be a good one depending on how high your rating is. Any book where you get detailed analysis of positions using word explanations rather than lots of variations would probably be helpful to you.
I am wondering if there are good books out there for an adult player who has plateaued. When I am white I do not know how to play for an advantage and when I am black I do not get to a playable middlegame...(
Try Chess for Life: Understanding how chess skills develop and change with the passage of time by Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan (Everyman, 2016).
It interviews 12 older players, asking how they cope with aging. It also analyzes their games and repertoires; e.g. Cramling's switch to 1.d4 from 1.e4.
And you can be sure their advice will be right because it covers the full range of possible answers
(aka contradictory):
Tony Miles - constantly chop and change your opening repertoire
Sergey Tiviakov - play the same opening against 1.e4.
you get more patient as you get older - John Nunn
you get more impatient as you get older - Jon Speelman
There is a nice book on this topic called: How Chess Games are Won and Lost by Lars Bo Hansen. Another with a small funny flavor - Pump Up Your Rating by A.Smith. The first halve might be quite complicated for <2000 but the rest gives a lot of nice advice how to improve. The main thing is really to work out those tips/advices/problems etc, and be active by playing.
There is a nice book on this topic called: How Chess Games are Won and Lost by Lars Bo Hansen. Another with a small funny flavor - Pump Up Your Rating by A.Smith. The first halve might be quite complicated for <2000 but the rest gives a lot of nice advice how to improve. The main thing is really to work out those tips/advices/problems etc, and be active by playing.
I like and have used both of those books but thought the book by Bo Hansen might be a bit advanced.
Chess for Life by Sadler as suggested by John Upper is an interesting book.
I have found some of the exercises in Amateur to IM by Hawkins very interesting as well.
I just used an exercise from the latter book in a first lesson with an advanced beginner last night (a2 and b2 pawns vs a7 pawn with kings the winning method illustrating opposition and outflanking and the necessity for calculation in king and pawn endgames).
I could not recommend specific books or training methods without knowing at what level you have plateaued. The challenges faced by a C-player can be very different from the challenges faced by an A-player.
I could not recommend specific books or training methods without knowing at what level you have plateaued. The challenges faced by a C-player can be very different from the challenges faced by an A-player.
Your question prompted me to check the CFC's ratings database. Unless I made a mistake, the only Tony Li I came up with has played in a low number of events, (including some junior ones, a while ago). Maybe there's a Tony Li chess player who isn't a CFC member?
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
There's actually a Mr. Li in Kitchener in the CFC database who might be a better match for Tony's query. An 'A' class player, if that'll help you, Dan.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
As far as choice of openings go, limited available study time can put a crimp in one's ambitions. Plus a lot of adults don't want to use a big portion of their free time on chess studies anyway. As a young tournament player in the beginning I used flank openings with White and a couple of defences each against 1.e4, 1.d4, 1.c4 and 1.Nf3 with Black (while noting how the defences fit together - even 1.g3 might need to be taken into account).
With flank openings, often you don't get a big edge (or any), unless you're talented, but I used them to avoid heavy opening theory, which requires time to learn a lot of traps to avoid. It's a similar story if you use 1.d4 or 1.e4 sidelines with White. There's lots of traps to learn in case of playing 1.e4 e5 (or 1.e4 c5) main lines with Black, but playing the French and even the Rat (1...g6) against 1.e4 (as I did) might often avoid losing quickly, at least (the French being somewhat more positional than the Rat as a rule). Same for the Rat formation, or any number of Queen's Gambit Declined setups, against 1.d4 or the main flank first moves for White.
If you've got the time and the will to study hard, especially as a youngster, using mainlines starting with 1.e4 (intending d2-d4) is a man's way to play with White (as is 1.d4, intending c2-c4, which normally takes less study than the often more tactical 1.e4). With Black, if you're a strategist, you can still play what I suggested above at higher levels of competition, or slug it out with things like the Sicilian and King's Indian Defence if you're a tactician (or if you're ever an elite player who wants to win more often with Black).
Being good at run and gun tactics is essential before skillfully crawling along with subtle positional play. Sometimes your game will rapidly go downhill if you don't find a tactical shot when you need to. Often playing through a game of yours with an engine will clearly reveal turning point(s), even if no shot was missed. Tactical patterns are quicker to absorb in any case, since often you need considerable experience with a primarily positional opening to play it well. A thick Encyclopedia of Chess Combinations is one thought; study a few combos at night, and/or in the morning, to simulate being tired at a tournament, if you like to train. If you can't solve a position in reasonable time, you might just guess the first move, and/or study the solution, and at least learn a new tactical pattern or two.
Last edited by Kevin Pacey; Sunday, 22nd May, 2016, 12:26 PM.
Reason: Adding content.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
I could not recommend specific books or training methods without knowing at what level you have plateaued. The challenges faced by a C-player can be very different from the challenges faced by an A-player.
A player at, say, C-level, at least in the old days, sometimes had yet to buy one or two comprehensive book(s) on strategy, so that there might be key areas of knowledge that such a player was lacking, until the player happened to get such book(s). To discover such a player's most serious knowledge gaps nowadays might take just a little time with the help of a coach going over some of the player's games and discussing them with the player, to find out what the player was thinking about certain moves. Looking at an engine's evaluation score change dramatically after a given move might not be enlightening enough if one has not learned a decent way to approximate the relative value of the pieces, for example.
This example topic might deserve a separate thread by itself, as different sources give slightly different values for pieces and piece exchanges, but an important thing to note is whether a trade is occurring in the context of an endgame or not. Your typical cheap introductory book to chess might say (numerically) that a rook and pawn are worth two minor pieces, but usually the two pieces will be worth more, except in an endgame. It's the same story for three pawns often not being worth a piece, except in an endgame. Without knowing this sort of rule of thumb, a player can get discouraged, or perhaps even frustrated to the edge of madness, depending on his ego.
As an aside, in the world of chess variants it's common to try to estimate what a given fairy chess piece (i.e. one not normal to standard chess) would be worth in terms of, say, pawns. I was a little bit amused when in a discussion a chess programmer who later became chess variantist presumably misquoted to me a result from GM Larry Kaufman's computer studies which compared the value of B and N in many database games. He had thought Larry pegged a B as being worth the same as a N on average, which is, as serious chess players would know, not quite true.
[edit: apparently Kaufman did peg (long ago) B = N (on average) = 3.25. Go figure. Still, other GMs still disagree with B = N on average. Personally, I distrust such computer 'studies' based on a large number of games (human v. human or computer v. computer) immensely. An example of why would be that one such study by my variantist friend puts an Amazon (queen that can also move like a knight) at only the same value as a Q plus a separate N, on at least some size n x m boards, n,m>=8. My reaction: No way!]
Last edited by Kevin Pacey; Tuesday, 24th May, 2016, 10:31 AM.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
I am wondering if there are good books out there for an adult player who has plateaued. When I am white I do not know how to play for an advantage and when I am black I do not get to a playable middlegame. Any ideas?
The only two books that helped me see the game in a different light are Capablanca's Fundamentals and Silman's Reassess Your Chess.
P.S. I also do not know why I lose games :(
Buying books is probably not going to do that much in the near future.
That is what most people do : buy a book, read a few pages casually, put it back on the shelf and then buy a new one.
This way you end up with a large chess library... and a stagnating rating.
Learning to analyse your games and identify your main weaknesses might be a better idea.
However this can hardly be done without good coaching.
I am wondering if there are good books out there for an adult player who has plateaued. When I am white I do not know how to play for an advantage and when I am black I do not get to a playable middlegame. Any ideas?
The only two books that helped me see the game in a different light are Capablanca's Fundamentals and Silman's Reassess Your Chess.
P.S. I also do not know why I lose games :(
I think I agree with Jean; you must first understand why you lose games. To help you, here is a short list of ideas I use myself:
1. I was too tired to concentrate as much as I should have
2. I knew I should have played an opening that I have seen before
3. Time trouble - enough said
4. I actually know that I shouldn't spend 5 minutes on an obvious recapture
5. There is no point paying much attention to my opponent: he/she is just a kid
I think I agree with Jean; you must first understand why you lose games. To help you, here is a short list of ideas I use myself:
1. I was too tired to concentrate as much as I should have
2. I knew I should have played an opening that I have seen before
3. Time trouble - enough said
4. I actually know that I shouldn't spend 5 minutes on an obvious recapture
5. There is no point paying much attention to my opponent: he/she is just a kid
to add a few ...
6. You should see my chess library. My latest purchase on the Tralfamadorian Variation of the Najdorf Sicilian is just killing. It should boost my rating by 100 points.
7. Studying endgames and tactics is so boring. I much prefer those lengthy tomes about strategy.
8. Who keeps their scoresheets? What's done is done.
9. There's nothing like a large meal between rounds. And maybe a refreshment or two.
10. Did you see my latest win? My opponent blundered a piece in the opening, but it was my strategic play that finished him off. Here! Let me show you. It's only 150 moves.
:)
Dogs will bark, but the caravan of chess moves on.
Fwiw, going over your games quickly with an engine may help identify common types of mistakes you make, and how frequently you make them, if you want to seriously work on your playing weaknesses as part of a massive chess self-improvement program.
As an example, for a couple of sample years in my personal games database I looked at just the decisive reason why I lost a given game, or why I conceded an unwanted draw, e.g. to a much weaker player; note that sometimes (more often at lower levels) you can recover from a bad error, only to commit another one later that turns out to be the final one - but this shouldn't skew your data too much, perhaps. The results within a number of recent years consistently broke down to approximately:
50% Tactical/calculation error
25% Serious knowledge gap in opening phase
20% Strategy error
5% Endgame-specific error
I'd note the last year or so my decisive endgame error rate probably has climbed, due to rushing or fatigue. I'd also note a 25% decisive error rate due to the opening phase is likely quite acceptable at my level. That is, with the typical sort of percentage of unwanted draws (say 10%, or 1/3 of my draws) or losses (say 20%) I might have in a typical year of about 75 rated games (at super-GM level it seems ideal to have a very low percentage of unwanted draws or losses, practically all due to the opening phase[!]). Other than that, my main issue is that I haven't tried that hard to work on my playing weaknesses for ages, so for now I'm stagnating at my comfy NM level. :o
Last edited by Kevin Pacey; Tuesday, 24th May, 2016, 06:45 PM.
Reason: Adding content.
Anything that can go wrong will go wrong. Murphy's law, by Edward A. Murphy Jr., USAF, Aerospace Engineer
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