This is Bookside, the page where you can decide, and help others to decide, how to spend your well-earned money on chess books. Here is my article, "The ten best chess books of all time". I will up-date it when I have received responses from you, my readers, giving your opinions on the books that I have listed, or suggesting (with reasons) your own candidates for "Best Books".
I have received an article from Dave McRoberts in which he describes his ten favourite chess books. Rather than merge it with my own list, and his comments with mine, I give it in full. He aims his list at players graded 80-120, but I suspect that a wider range of players will be helped by it and interested by his comments. Straight after the list, I have appended my own comments, some of which may be helpful.
A further article from Tim Mantripp aims to bridge the gap between Dave's list and mine. Tim's included a fine review of Silman's How to Reassess Your Chess. It's well worth a look!
| More articles would be very welcome! Come on, I won't bite. Anyone can respond, you don't have to be a Norfolk player. |
In this issue of Bookside, I cover the first book. It's a slow process, as I have decided to completely re-read each book before reviewing it. I would still like to have your comments if you've read any of the above, even before I complete the review, so please e-mail me.
You can find a long review of this book in John Watson's regular review feature in The Week In Chess, which can be found at the London Chess Center web page. It is a superb review, and I agree with most of it, so I will try not to repeat what Watson says there.
Before I start, have you noticed who published the four books that I am proposing to review? In each case, it's Gambit Publications. Even ignoring the Emms book, they have managed to publish the three most important books of the last few years. Headed by Murray Chandler, edited by Graham Burgess (who also, by all accounts, writes a mean book himself), and with the active involvement of John Nunn, Gambit is a hard act for the other publishers to follow.
They have certainly struck gold with Yermolinsky's book. Yermo (he uses the nickname himself) is in his forties, and has developed very slowly from a bright Soviet youngster into a strong Grandmaster, emigrating to America in 1989 and becoming US Champion as late as 1996. In the early '80s, his progress was so slow that a weaker character would have given up and found a real job. Yermo looked at himself and worked on improving his own game. In this book, he shares the secrets that he discovered and that he has applied to training chess players ever since.
When I first read the book, I gained the impression that only strong players can learn from it. A dead give-away was the statement, early on in the book that, after a certain task is completed "your instructor will be able to help you, among other things, to revise your opening repertoire". So, the reader is either strong (and is now in a funded training programme), or rich (with indulgent parents). Even on a second reading, it seems likely that stronger players will benefit most - particularly those who are willing to commit a lot of time to study. And the subject that Yermo suggests that they study most?
Their own games. Why?
When you think about it, it stands to reason. From our own games, we can identify our own strengths and weaknesses. We can see how we react to being at a disadvantage, how we try to win superior positions. We can judge whether we are strongest tactically or positionally. We can identify the opening and middlegame structures where we play best (and worst). The book mainly contains a lot of examples of Yermolinsky's chess, but instead of arranging his material in chronological order, he has put it into three main contexts:
Trends, turning points and emotional shifts - how we can deal with changes during the process of a game. In particular, how we can create changes which suit us and upset our opponents' play.
Openings and early middlegame structures - how the author has approached certain structures. We should not copy him, but decide which suit us best and plan our study and our opening play accordingly.
Tactics and positional play - a wonderful section where the author turns a lot of habitual assumptions about tactics and positional play on their heads.
Yermolinsky is opinionated. Luckily, his opinions are worth reading, and the book is littered with them, many challenging conventional wisdom, all of them based on his hard, often painful, experience. Watson reckons that he comes up with a remarkable comment every few pages (see his review, mentioned above). In a book some 220 pages long, that's a lot of food for thought.
My second reading of the book convinced me that players who do not consider themselves strong, who do not have a lot of time to spare for chess study, can benefit enormously from it. There are no new "rules" for how to play chess well, no clever mnemonics or easy-to-memorise ideas. He makes us think, he is easy to read and he entertains us (the best way that I know to ensure that we can remember what a writer says). At the very least, he gives us some guidance as to how best to use the limited time that many of us have at our disposal for studying chess. Value For Time - what could be better than that?
Don't forget to e-mail me!
For general comments about this web site, please contact
the Norfolk Chess Webmaster.
Return to Norfolk County Chess Association Home Page