The Immortal Game by David Shenk

Maybe it was late December or early January when I started The Immortal Game.  I've been nibbling at it over the past 3 months and I finally finished it last weekend.

Because I nibbled over 3 months, I don't have a whole lot of specific recall.  Rather, I just remember that it was a good book that took a 10,000 foot view of chess over a millennium and a half.

The book goes back and forth between recounting history and the evolution of chess and the immortal game.

I learned how chess moved east to west and how the game had such an impact on culture and society.  I learned of the different eras of chess and how the game was developed and viewed over hundreds of years.

The book flows very well.  It was not boring; either from a chess player perspective or a non-chess player perspective.

I'm not going to get much into reviewing this - there are lots of reviews available.  But if you're looking for a good, broad historical chess book, this would be a good start.

2014 Chess Goals / Book List

1. solve 20 tactics a day at ChessTempo (blitz mode); 7600 problems for the year.

2. play at least 52 games a year (chess.com; guess the move at chesstempo)

3. read all the un-read chess books I own and try to learn something from them.

Here's the list of books which I own, but have not read (or completed reading)

- Reassess Your Chess (3rd & 4th editions - Silman)

- The Amateur's Mind (Silman)

- Chess: the Art of Logical Thinking (McDonald)

- Improve Your Opening Play (Ward)

- Manual of Chess (Lasker)

- GM Secrets: Endings (Soltis)

- GM Secrets: Openings (Soltis)

- The Immortal Game (Shenk)

Just as a reference, here's a list of books I own and have read

- The Chess Artist

- The King's Gambit

- Bobby Fischer Goes to War

- Logical Chess Move by Move

Game 20

Game 20 was a win against silencehunter.  So a bit of background first.  I own the 3rd edition of Reassess Your Chess.  Then I heard all the great things about the 4th edition, so I bought it for my birthday several weeks ago.  But I felt guilty for having never read the 3rd edition.  Therefore I decided to rapidly go through the 3rd edition before diving into the 4th.

I'm still working my way through the 3rd edition, but sis advice about creating a plan seemed has stuck with me; especially the part where he says you look for your "dream position"  So in today's game, when I came to a point where I didn't really know what to do (up to that point, I was simply developing and defending my pieces) I started thinking about a dream position based on his weak pieces and squares.  I was fully expecting the plan to be foiled eventually.  But it wasn't.

After he moved 13. Ne5, I envisioned my knight posted at h4 (via h5, g7 and f5).  Then, somehow my Q would be posted at g5 bearing down on g2.  Then, if my e pawn could dislodge his d-pawn allowing my d-pawn to strike at his knight, my bishop would simultaneously be attacking g2.  This was the thought I had.

I could have been foiled fairly quickly after I played 13...Nxe5 14. Bxe5 Nh5.  At this point, I was expecting him to play 15. Bxg5, but he didn't.  He played 15. Bxg7 and then I responded 15...Nxg7.  I proceeded with the plan.  He started aiming (doubling rooks) for my remaining bishop.  But I continued with my plan by getting the knight and queen where I wanted them.  His attack on my bishop succeeded, so my bishop was now out of the plan.  I was able to get some counter play by checking his king with my knight (I need Fritz to analyze this part of the game - there might have been a forcing line in there somewhere), but he was able to pull back his rook and queen  .... now his king was fully defended and he was up two pawns.

Now he had two pawns storming down the side with only my rook standing in the way.  My plan wasn't going too well.  But my knight and queen were still in play and his queen and rook were tied up defending his king - this left my rook free to roam.

Then he played 35. Nc3 and I quickly pinned his knight with my rook.  Then he played 36. Kd2 to defend his knight.  I checked him with my knight and then my queen.  He had one move: e4, which would win me a pawn back and put him at more danger.  All other moves were losing, but I had a feeling he'd play Kd1?  He was under a bit of time pressure.  He moved 38. Kd1 and I forked his king and queen with Nxd3.  He resigned.

It was a thrilling game and helped reinforce what I've read thus far from RYC 3rd edition.

Game 3 is one week from today.

King's Gambit by Paul Hoffman

King's Gambit by Paul Hoffman was the best narrative chess book I've read.  This book has tons of interesting stories about the game and the people who play it.  From stories about how GMs try to prepare for games, to hustlers to crazy dictators - it has it all.

In a previous post, I copied a few excerpts about some violent antics by chess players ... these were typical stories from the book.

He also interjects his own story about he and his father - which for long stretches at a time, has nothing to do with chess, but nonetheless is a good read.

The one thing that struck me over and over again as I read, was how easily GMs seemingly blundered.  There were at least half a dozen paragraphs where a GM was explaining the game ... he was ahead, the game was equal, but he made a strong move and would have sealed the win, except for an oversight or an outright blunder.  I kept reading these passages over and over again and I couldn't help but think that blundering is just a part of chess.  Professionals seemingly blunder on a regular basis!  In fact, reading these passages seemed to void up my own resolve to keep at it.  If these exceptional players screw up, then I shouldn't feel so bad about my shortcomings.  Rather, I  just need to keep at it - keep chugging along - to work at minimizing my own screw-ups.  Everyone  messes up.

Anyway - a great book - highly recommended.

Other Reviews of the Book


Review at ChessBase
Buy the book and read reviews at Amazon
Review at NYTimes
Review at ChessVille
Review at USCF

Annotated Game Collections

Another aspect of my chess study that I really need to ramp up is reviewing games by GMs and other top-notch players.

Heisman, in his February 2011 Novice Nook column, provides some insight for choosing books of game collections to study.  I'd like to review Logical Chess Move by Move again and then move on to other books ... specifically the ones he recommends.

Logical Chess: Move by Move by Irving Chernev

I have finally completed reading Logical Chess: Move by Move by Irving Chernev.

This little project of mine has been going on years and it finally came to an end on the evening of Friday October 21, 2011.  I can't recall when I received my copy of the book ... it must have been around 2003 as a Christmas present.  I wanted it, because, back then, it was the book to have if you were aspiring to improve your chess.

At about this same time, I heard about the Polgar Brick and the subsequently how a few old Chessville denizens worked on that "project".  I missed out on the project and therefore was reduced to scouring the Internet for that .pgn file.

So to tie these two thoughts together - when I received my copy of Logical Chess, I decided to make a "project" out of it.  I would work on it game by game - page by page.  Sometimes I would spend a lot of time on one game, other times I would blow through a game fairly quickly.  Then there came a time when I abandoned it altogether ... only to just pick up the book and read over the games, but not work on the project.

Then the desire came back ... I just had to finish it.  Granted, it may not be perfect, but in my opinion this book is one of those timeless books and it felt better to have it all in one file.

My future plans for this book include additional review.  I've done some of the variations, but not all of them.  As I have more time to really dive into the games, I'll add the variations.  But for now, it is in a form I've always wanted it in.

Enjoy.

The Chess Artist by J.C. Hallman

This was another one of those Half-Price Books purchases I made on one of the dozens of date-trips Jill and I took there. As always, I scan the chess section for any books that might be on my purchase list. This one was not on my purchase list, but it looked interesting anyway, so I bought it.

I started reading this one after I finished Bobby Fischer Goes to War back in March. But right around that time is when I found out about our job transfer to Houston. So reading and a lot of other things got pushed to the back burner. I read this book on and off for the next three months, but once we settled down here in Houston, I finally focused on finishing it.

The book started out really well and ended really well, but the middle part about Hallman and Glenn's trip to Kalmykia really dragged on. Pretty soon I was wondering if this book was going to be about nothing but their trip to that barren land. It was getting really depressing for several chapters. But I endured and am glad I did. The last few chapters about the tournament and their visit to the prison in Michigan made up for the dullness of the middle.

I enjoyed the chapters about the history of chess. Those chapters fascinated me the most. It was really interesting to read how chess evolved from a game in India to what we play today.

You don't have to be a chess player to enjoy this book, although chess players will find this a good read too.

The Rook

I just finished reading The Chess Artist by J.C. Hallman. Although a bit longish, I enjoyed it. The excursion Hallman and his compadre (Glenn Umstead) took to Kalmykia seemed to take up the entire book ... or maybe the book just dragged on during that part. But the parts I enjoyed most were the chapters about the history of chess and how the pieces came to be today as well as all the other chess adventures Hallman and Glenn took (click here to see a picture of the two).

After I finished the book this morning, I went back and re-read the chapter on the Rook. It was a fascinating discovery about myself.

"The rook's movement and its strength relative to the other pieces has
generally suggested the mechanical, vehicles or articles of war. Most often, the rook is infrastructure. As a line piece that can access all the squares of the board - moving in straight line on either ranks of files and capturing along its path - the rook combines the abstract potentials

of the knight and the bishop. Before the piece came to be represented by the figure of a crenelated castle tower, a depiction that appeared between 1524 and 1550, the rook was often portrayed as a two-headed shape. Early carvings of both bishops and knights were upright figures with some kind of aslant protuberance; early rooks had two such projections. In ornate sets it was a knight with two horse heads instead of one."

Hallman later notes in the same chapter that some family coat of arms associated with the word rook retain the two projections. (Rookwood to the left, Rochette to the right and Rochlitz at the top)

He goes on to describe how the rook started as a chariot or ship. In Arabia, rukh mean "chariot" while in Sanskrit roka meant "ship." Once the game arrived in Europe, different countries tried different names. In Germany marchio or "lord of the marches" described the piece, while in England it was known as duke. "A fifteenth-century morality listed rooks as judges for three reasons: a rook cannot play until a way is opened for it; a rook is in danger when on the same color as the king; and a rook loses power when it is 'in the King's palace' (i.e. not yet castled)." But the Europeans did not fully understand the definition of the piece and deferred to the Italian word rocca which meant "fortress." And this is how we have our modern-day rook which looks like a castle fortress.

What I Learned About Myself and the Rook

First of all, what I was fascinated about was learning the rook had a two-headed projection which was carried into family coat of arms. When I did a search on the Rochlitz coat of arms, I was shocked to see the resemblance between that coat of arms and the little icon I created for this blog. Both sport a mirror-R and are black and yellow. Is there some subliminal context of the rook concept that I picked up through the years of playing chess? It's a bit freaky seeing this connection.

Another aspect was the idea that rooks are associated with mechanical vehicles or articles of war and are usually associated with infrastructure. Maybe I'm thinking about this too much, but my entire career has been in infrastructure groups within our IT (i.e. mechanical) company. Also, I partly chose the handle Rocky, which comes from Rocky Balboa (the fictional boxer), because he seems blue-coller-like. To bring this back to infrastructure ... anything to do with infrastructure is very much blue-coller-like .... there's lots of work and it can be menial, but it is vital to the existence of the group/company/nation.

And lastly ... the relation to ships. Over the last few months, I've been becoming a big fan of the old tall-ship, sea-battle paintings that many others have a fixation with (click here to see an example of what I'm referring to which also happens to by favorite painting of this kind). And so when I learned the rook was also associated with ships, the hairs on my arms seemed to stand up.

Anyway, like I said, I may be thinking about this a bit much, but to say the least, it is very enlightening.

Sources

Rookwood and Rochette Coat of Arms: House of Names

Rochlitz Coat of Arms: Wikipedia Commons

Bobby Fischer Goes to War by Edmonds & Eidinow

Halfprice Books is a favorite stop when Jill and I go on dates. The one section that I visit first and every time is the chess section. I've found some good books there before. The last time we went, I found two books that I had seen before but never purchased. Since I have really jumped into chess recently, I decided I needed something to read that was chess related but not of the study type. So I bought Bobby Fischer Goes to War and The Chess Artist.

Bobby Fischer Goes to War was a little tough to get into and to finish. I didn't really like the style of the authors. Perhaps since it was written by two authors, their two styles might have muddled things a bit.

The most interesting thing I found as I read this book was the fact that I seemed to be pulling for Spassky while reading it. Of course I knew Fischer won, but if what the authors described of Spassky is true, I think I would have pulled for Spassky. Fischer seemed to be such a pompous, self-conceited individual while Spassky seemed humble and level-headed. I really felt sorry for Spassky and all that he had to put up with in that championship match. He was really squeezed between a rock and a hard place (Fischer and the Communists).

Another thing I found fascinating, which I didn't know before, was how dominating Fischer was in the preceding tournaments before the championship including his 6-0 thrashing of Mark Taimanov and 6-0 drubbing of Brent Larsen. That just boggles the mind.

I'm glad I read this book. I never really knew much about the Fischer excitement of the late 1960's and early 1970's. My dad and brothers got into chess (like thousands of others around the country) because of the Fischer/Spassky match. As a result, I ended up playing chess with my dad and brother as I grew older. Every chess enthusiast should read this book.

Several other sites have read and reviewed this book. Also, I've seen a few links that suggest this book will be made into a movie to be released in 2010.

Review at jeremysilman.com
Review at npr.org
Review at NYTimes.com
Review by Ken Owen
Review at chessville.com

Chess Master vs. Chess Amateur

I seem to have forgotten about this book: Chess Master vs. Chess Amateur by Max Euwe and Walter Meiden. I came across a review of this book while blog surfing the other day (reading Abend's Chess who wrote about a game in said book). Judging from the reader reviews at Amazon, it seems like a very useful book. A lot of reviewers compared it to Chernev's Logical Chess, which is what I'm reading now.

hisbestfriend gave some advice when reading the book ... he said he used Fritz to analyze the game while going over the game. He seemed to find a lot of problems with the games, but was convinced he learned more by going through the process of using Fritz while reading the book rather than simply reading the book - read his posts linked below.

I'm considering getting and reading this book.

Links:
CM vs. CA on google books (limited view)
SquirrelChess reviews the book
A Chessbase file of the games in the book (because it's written in descriptive notation)
hisbestfriend wrote a little about the book and some more and some more, still more
BDK says "wonderful book" tempted to give it an A, but gave it a B on his 100 chess book reviews (part 5) ... great book review series by the way.
Takchess offers two cents