Saturday 28 November 2009

Reviews of Chess Books

Welcome to my new blog which included book reviews written by a patzer for other patzers. Don't expect me to review books from a professional point of view as I clearly am not competent enough to find analytical mistakes in any chess book. Hence I won't even try to find any flaws in the books written by international masters or grand masters.

On the contrary, I'll write from the angle of an ordinary chess enthusiast who likes to play on the internet, in the chess club and occasianally in the weekend chess tournaments. What I'm interested in finding out is whether the book will help me to earn a few more rating points - the more I'll learn from a book, the more useful it is. At the moment I'm rated around 1770. It will be interesting to see, if the books I'll read and write about will help me to improve my chess rating.

It is evident that some of the books I own are of high quality even if they have been completely useless for me. The books by Mark Dvoretski, for example, are clearly written for someone who understands a lot more about chess than I do. I think I should improve my rating at least to the level of about 2000 before even trying to comprehend the analysis presented in Dvoretski's fine books.

It seems I have to start reading the books that are more appropriate to my level of understanding and playing. Before too long, I hope to be able to report about some improvement in my chess.