ECF Chess Book of the Year – Short List

**Wayne Komer** · Thursday, 5th September, 2019, 03:09 PM

ECF Chess Book of the Year – Short List

September 5, 2019

Under the Surface by Jan Markos

I have just received my copy of this book and looked at a few reviews. The title is explained in this paragraph in his Preface:

“It was then I learned that the significant difference between a club player and a professional is not that the grandmaster can see much further, or that he calculates much more accurately or faster. This might all be true, but the significant difference can be found elsewhere. Grandmasters can see deeper. And this book invites you to study the depth of chess. It invites you beneath the surface. I would like to show you how a strong player perceives chess, what he focuses on, and how he thinks about a position. Understanding is pure happiness, and I would like to share this happiness with you.

I write mostly about phenomena I haven’t seen discussed in chess literature before, but which I consider to be important. These phenomena also require new terminology, new words. That’s why you are going to read about a magnetic skin made of pawns, bishops as billiard balls and a freezer for storing tactical motifs. I was looking for metaphors that would be as precise as possible and that would be easy to remember. At the end of the book, there is a glossary of these new expressions.”

There is a review which compares Markos to Nimzowitsch:

Under the surface is a book about how to think about chess, and it is quite clear that Markos has been inspired by Nimzowitsch when he wrote it. One could argue that this book is a continuation or development of My system; the books are quite similar, both in terms of writing style and content. Markos explains many of the same ideas as in My system, but he covers more ground. The 33 (!) chapters of the book are divided into seven sections.

https://patzersreview.blogspot.com/2...r-surface.html

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In a Chapter on Chess and Statistics (Chapter 31), he has tables on the frequency of types of endgames, the relationship of endgames in openings, openings and % of points scored in them.

Other comments:

- The idea to understand knights by looking at knight-less positions (ch. 9) never crossed my mind; the observations that weakness tend to bring more weaknesses (ch. 3) and computer-time is different from human-time (ch. 29) were also eye-openers.

- This book presents useful concepts that can arise in any phase of the game and appears as a large collection of chess lessons that the author learned from other chess players or from his own games. Its style is close to FIDE Master Steve Giddins’ book 50 Essential Chess Lessons in that they are both heavy in prose and have just enough concrete analysis to illustrate the topic at hand. I find the lessons very significant, and while it is less demanding to study than variation heavy-books, it never passes off as a light or trivial material. My study sessions with it were always eye-opening, and it one of the few books that I was able to work on from cover to cover, and without touching any other book in between. If the author could improve it, however, it’s that more games be added to illustrate his concepts. Seeing concepts and ideas work is the most enjoyable attribute of this book, and there’s some lack with just two or three games to illustrate a concept. I didn’t have enough of the good thing!

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Jan Markos is a grandmaster and former European Under-16 Champion. He has won the Slovakian Championship twice and played for Slovakia at six Olympiads. He lives in Bratislava with his wife and two children.

**Wayne Komer** · Wednesday, 2nd October, 2019, 10:32 AM

ECF Chess Book of the Year – Short List

October 2, 2019

The Winner

Game Changer by Matthew Sadler & Natasha Regan

From the English Chess website:

The choice this year fell between two contrasting volumes: a fascinating history of one of the greatest world champions Emanuel Lasker, (publisher Excelsior Verlag) and a book dealing with the highly contemporary subject of Artificial Intelligence, not only in chess, but also in wider society. The latter was the unanimous choice of the judges –

The two energetic authors complement each other very well (they won the BOY 2016 with Chess for Life) and in this new book have explored in detail the new software AlphaZero (AZ), which is making such an impact on the chess world. The origins of AZ are remarkable – the moves of chess were fed into a powerful computer which then played millions of games against itself in the process learning the intricacies of the game, and eventually it became stronger than any other player, human or computer in the world.

The wider implications of this development in the field of artificial intelligence are considered by Garry Kasparov and Demis Hassabis, the inspiration behind AZ. Can AZ’s playing and learning be used for other, wider applications? Hassabis certainly thinks so.

The authors had the opportunity to understand the chess approach of AZ and explore how it played in a series of games against Stockfish, one of the best human designed computer chess-playing programs. AZ won convincingly. Sadler looked at AZ’s games and found a unique style of play with many distinctive features, for example, piece activity, the initiative even at the cost of material and going after the enemy king, are just a few. Not unlike the young Tal perhaps, but more soundly based.

Chess players will find a splendid collection of games with many comparing AZ with players and games of the past. Very readable, there is nothing in the book that cannot be understood or enjoyed. The book is beautifully presented by New in Chess and is excellent value.

The ultimate accolade came from Carlsen who said that AZ had influenced his approach to chess. Game Changer may also influence yours.

— Ray Edwards, Julian Farrand, Sean Marsh – 1st October 2019

https://www.englishchess.org.uk/ecf-...the-year-2019/

ECF Chess Book of the Year – Short List

ECF Chess Book of the Year – Short List

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