Pawn Pushing Up Daisies

by Tuirgin on Apr.22, 2009, under Chess

I am not dead. Though I might play better chess if I were. It’s just a thought.

I think I’ve gotten myself into too many games. I’ve got about 20 of them going right now. 10 of them—well 9 now that I’ve resigned one—are from a round-robin tournament on SchemingMind. My brain is chess tired, and I’m really looking forward to the end of the tournament. I need to pull back on the number of games I’m playing and focus more and the kind of practice that C.J.S. Purdy is so fond of prescribing: playing through annotated games. I really enjoy doing this, and when the game is over I don’t feel like a complete idiot, which is a good thing. At the same time, I do enjoy the social games I’m playing. There’s one opponent in particular with whom I always get into interesting situations—the game could go my way, there’s a chance. I have blown it each time, but it’s tantalizingly close.

I have several books to work through and review. I’m enjoying A First Book of Morphy quite a bit, and I’m looking forward to Neil McDonald’s The Art of Planning in Chess. Both of these books are heavily annotated collections of games. I’m also enjoying reading through the selection of Purdy’s magazine articles collected in The Search for Chess Pefection II. Thank you to the several people that recommended this book to me.

Other than this, I’ve been too busy with sick kids and work to spend much time plotting the overthrow of the chess world. There’s always next week…

12 Comments for this entry

tommyg
April 22nd, 2009 on 11:39 pm
I would also recommend Irving Chernev’s Logical Chess: Move By Move. Some people in the blogosphere like to bag it on it because it can be repetitive but that is the point! Chernev is trying to hammer home concepts. In fact (and this is just my opinion) I think Chernev’s Logical Chess is much more instructive then A First Book of Morphy. And Chernev’s love for the game oozes off of every page.

Chernev was a natural teacher. Every book I have read or worked out of his is just fabulous. (I like to think of Chernev as the stepping stone to Purdy…both of them are pedagogically brilliant!)

The Neil McDonald book is awesome as well!

Game collections are the way to go!

Reply
- Tuirgin
  April 23rd, 2009 on 12:12 am
  I’ve got Chernev & Reinfeld’s Winning Chess: How To See Three Moves Ahead. I haven’t heard too much bad about Logical Chess, other than the openings theory being out of date. I’m not focused on the openings, anyway, so I doubt that would be a problem for me.
  
  I’m enjoying the Morphy, though I don’t know how instructive it is. That’s yet to be seen, I guess. But it’s the first time I’ve followed games of a specific player, and it’s enjoyable to have recognize something of his style. Really I’m just hungry for any annotated games collections I can get my hands on that are written at my level… Nunn is way over my head, for example.
  
  The more recommendations the better!
  
  Reply

Hank
April 23rd, 2009 on 1:42 am

Here’s Dan Heisman’s list:

“Recommended Instructive Game Anthologies (in roughly ascending order of difficulty)”:

* Logical Chess Move by Move - Irving Chernev
* (note: the non-anthology A First Book of Morphy by del Rosario can be read here!)
* Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played - Irving Chernev
* Chess: The Art of Logical Thinking - Neil McDonald
* The Art of Planning in Chess - Neil McDonald 
* Chess Master vs. Chess Amateur - Euwe and Meiden
* 50 Essential Chess Lessons - Steve Giddins
* Chess Success: Planning After the Opening - Neil McDonald 
* The Giants of Strategy - Neil McDonald
* 50 Ways to Win at Chess - Steve Giddins
* Winning Chess Brilliancies - Yasser Seirawan (after this book I would go to individual game collections)
* Understanding Chess Move by Move - John Nunn
* Instructive Modern Chess Masterpieces - Igor Stohl

* Zurich 1953 – David Bronstein

From what I’ve heard Sunil Weeramantry’s “Best Lessons of a Chess Coach” might be pretty good as an instructional collection also (his stepson seems to have done pretty well!). And user reviews of Robert Snyder’s “Unbeatable Chess Lessons for Juniors” seem quite positive…

– Hank

Tuirgin
April 23rd, 2009 on 9:58 am
Great list—thanks! Best Lessons of a Chess Coach keeps getting recommendations… looks like I’m going to have to take a look at that one next.

Reply

tommyg
April 23rd, 2009 on 2:10 am
Best Lessons of a Chess Coach is a GREAT book! I always forget about that one. I am reading through Chess Master vs. Chess Amateur right now and am really enjoying it.

Reply
- Tuirgin
  April 23rd, 2009 on 10:03 am
  I got a look at that one before—looked pretty good. What would you say is the particular benefit of it being a collection of master vs. amateur games as opposed to the normal master vs. master collections?
  
  Reply
chessx
April 23rd, 2009 on 6:09 am
Best lessons of a chess coach is a very good book,it explains things clearly. The only trouble i have with it is remembering to use it in my own games. Capablanca games are good to play over as is Alekhines. 3 books i thought are very good are Eduard Gufeld “The search for mona lisa” a collection of his games.With clear notes. Golombeks “Richard Reti’s best games” openings out of date but again clear notes. Last but not least Frank Marshall’s “My fifty years in chess” This book will give you hours of attacking enjoyment.The notes are ok but the game style will win you over.

Reply
- Tuirgin
  April 23rd, 2009 on 10:01 am
  Is there any particular book for Capablanca’s or Alekhine’s games? I probably have most if not all of them in my reference database, but without good text annotations it’s not going to do me much good.
  
  Thanks for the recommendations. Book recommendations are one of my favorite things.
  
  Reply
chessx
April 23rd, 2009 on 12:22 pm
“The Immortal Games of Capablanca” by Reinfeld I think is the best book on Capablanca for clear notes.

Reply
- Tuirgin
  April 23rd, 2009 on 1:05 pm
  Great… adding all these recommendations to my wishlists. Thanks.
  
  Reply
tommyg
April 23rd, 2009 on 12:27 pm
I liked Capablanca’s best endings by Chernev for Capablanca games. I have heard Golombek’s Capablanca book is very good as well! Get the dover version of Alekhine’s best games. It has a bajillion games in it that are all annotated by Alekhine himself.

And The Frank Marshall book that Chessx recommended is awesome as well. I recently posted a review of it at my blog: http://prodigalpawn.blogspot.com/

The whole point of Master versus Amateur is that Euwe uses that format to point out the mistakes that we patzers tend to make. It is has been very instructive!!

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- Tuirgin
  April 23rd, 2009 on 1:41 pm
  The wishlist is growing, growing, growing… I don’t think I’ll ever run out of material… time. Yes. Material. No. Thanks!
  
  Reply