Chess books: when more isn't

My old chess teacher used to say that of all that has been written throughout history the most belongs to human health. The runner-up is chess. I'm not quite sure about the authenticity of this, but the fact is that chess literature is huge, and if one adds the software that has been published over the last couple decades, the amount of learning material is staggering.

It appears to me that there is a very strong, yet subtle, temptation to assume that drawing more from this fountain of material translates to actual improvement. If you're anything like me your eyes go wide open when you browse that chess section in your local library or online, or looking through a catalog (USCF has one). One wants to just grab a basket, make a list and pile on. Ask around and you're bound to find without too much trouble a person that can have well over a hundred books solely devoted chess. There are even some pretty impressive private chess libraries out there. The biggest in my hometown that I know of had 5000 volumes belonging to a local master. An uncorroborated story I heard is that the Polgar sisters toured it with glee when they  happened by once. (for the record my chess library currently has about two dozen volumes + 7-8 software titles)

Now the problem, as you already know, is that one cannot digest all the material. One has the pure honest intention to read each book right away or 'some day' when one is handing the cash, but somehow one never gets around to it. Sure, some titles do get completed, but the chess library grows even faster. And not to mention non-chess responsibilities have first dibs on one's time. One of the RPPR podcast hosts not long ago said something to the effect that when one buys books, one kinda thinks that one is also acquiring the time to read them. Put another way, there's a famous quote that says that life is too short for chess.

Still, even if we know or suspect that the book won't be read soon, there's an urge to own. A fuzzy feeling wells on oneself by just knowing that we have the title at hand and that their contents can be had at command. A closely related aspect is that of collecting. There's no chance in the completion of this set, but just building the library like a deck of (trading) cards gives a perhaps no small amount of pleasure.

Notable titles are also morale boosters. After playing some player on a tourney he bragged just to see my reaction that he had Dvoretsky's manual. He may have had it, but I doubt that he had actually gone through it and it certainly didn't help him on that game. Remember how in one of the Calvin & Hobbes strips Calvin tells Hobbes he wears branded shirts because it gives him the psychological advantage of believing he is sponsored? I find that likewise having chess books gives you the psychological advantage of believing you've read them (same idea with owing the Great Books).

Of course it doesn't really work that way. My high school physics teacher once told us of certain student that had the most basic of calculators and how he routinely got better grades than those who had space-age ones with all the bells and whistles.

In closing I'd like to take the opportunity and call on the Chessbase/Fritz people to aim future efforts to the enhancement of their Fritz Gui Full analysis function. The engine arms race can be considered over and now some of the only distinguishing features and value of chess guis is their natural language analysis. At their time, Fritz 4 and Fritz 5.32 came up with pretty interesting nested output. Nowadays it seems to me that Fritz 13 (the latest I own or fiddled with) just spits out single liners and has become stingy with variations, exclams and useful commentary. What's the use of having a personal GM, when he doesn't express himself as we would wish? Maybe it is my settings or my hardware, but this looks downhill. If they could bring back the old magic to just this feature, that would be pretty revolutionary once again. I'd overpay for that.

Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual: Chessbase version

Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual could be the book to go next after mastering the material of the any of the basic endgame books (I recommend Silman's). The contents are systematic and highlight what is important and what's not. Ratingwise I would discourage anyone below 1900 to read it however as these players could profit more from focusing more on tactics and saving this one for later. I myself am enjoying Müller's and Lamprecht's Secrets of Pawn Endings at this time, but wanted to give a quick comment on Dvoretsky's anyway.

You might not be aware of this but there exists a Chessbase electronic version of the book. Today I give it a look at its pros and cons.

Pros

• Costs about the same as the printed version

• The positions are organized in standard Chessbase format. These can be studied one at a time as in the printed book, and can also be sorted, searched, edited, etc.

• Dvoretsky's "precise positions" (ie the most important ones) are given a medal for easy identification. So are exercises, piece play and others. This replicates what he does with font color and formatting in the printed version

• Engine support

• Tablebase interaction (not checked this one though)

• Ease of replay

• The text color appears to be less of an issue here. Some complain the light blue text on the printed work is hard to read.

• Each exercise is given a line of its own, which stops accidental peeking at the answers

• Chessbase Endgame and Strategy keys which help zero in the material of interest

• Has an included reader

Cons

• The material is there, sure, but feels bit forced into the chessbase format.

• The included reader (Chessbase 7.0 reader) gets the job done, but is limited in comparison with the standard Chessbase database programs; better get one of the latter

• It is not clear what edition the Manual is for this version. My guess is that it is not the latest

• Need of a screen. Probably this one the biggest one. Printed text & diagrams feel much better and portability could be an issue.

By the looks of it this version wins almost hands down. On the other hand, at least for me, a lit screen feels unnatural. On the third hand one is understandably justified in not wanting to expend double just to get the best of both worlds.

A compromise

There is a way of sorts to have your cake and eat it too. If you own the standalone Chessbase program or the light version, you can select all the positions from the games tab and send that to print. Using a virtual printer, such as DoPdf, you can convert the output into a PDF and transfer that to a e-reader. Unnumbered text lines won't print directly and must be done and sorted by hand (more on the tools here). Also, medals won't print, but you can get around this by pre-annotating each position with the proper medal info in the annotator field.

*Sidebar*

Here's how the medals correspond to the text as far I can tell:

Medal	Text
Gold	Blue text: Most important positions
Grey	Tragicomedy
Light green	Playthrough
Light green+dark green	One move at a time exercise
Dark blue	Theoretical
Dark green	Exercises
Teal	On your own exercises labeled '?'
None	Regular black text

Cblight

Reader

Wishlist for a Chessbase endgame challenge database

The people over at Chessbase have a quite nice selection of training software. These, along with the ones from other providers, such as Chess Assistant, oftentimes prove superior to printed materials because of chess engine and database support, digital organization and the occasional multimedia features such as highlights and video commentary (tiring your eyes by looking at a screen is the biggest downside, but that's off-topic).

From Dvoretsky's manual

Taking a look at their endgame software selection I cannot help but feel there is  gap in there: the lack of a proper endgame challenge database. Let's examine what they do have: there are the Karsten Müller series, now past a dozen; a couple of DVDs by Danny King; Dvoretsky's manual, which in Chessbase media might be its best embodiment; and Kasimdzhanov's Endgames for Experts; all of these, instructional. In light of this, I believe it is high time for them to prepare a database program that tests or challenges the player on the wide-ranging fields of the endgame. Here's my wishlist:

Must:

• Be at least a couple thousands big. Up to a point, the bigger the better. Would-be solvers need a room to exercise
• Be categorized, probably supported by the endgame key features
• Include all areas, not just, say, rook or pawn endings
• Resist the temptation to include studies for difficulty's or beauty's sake. Include them, by all means, only when illustrative of the theme at hand.
• Allow solving, but of course

Should:

• Be in standard *.cbh format
• Include exercises all the way to master strength and, perhaps, just a bit beyond
• Offer some sort of solving ladder such as by difficulty (good) or rating bracket (best perhaps). All the material lumped together wouldn't do
• Offer commentary and/or variations on key positions in a way that clarifies the theme, and on possible, relevant alternatives
• Allow the solver to test herself on a theme or, if possible, on a random mix of several
• Be affordable
• Not be spread over several volumes. Everything fits on a single DVD

Many of these features already exist in the competing Convekta product Chess Endgame Training by IM Alpert, which has an over a decade head start over Chessbase. What brings this one down are the clunky Convekta conventions that can be painful to use.

Go on Chessbase! Show us!

Side note: if studies are your thing, check out Harold van der Heijden's superb database at http://www.hhdbiv.nl/

Chess Program: Intensive Course Tactics 1

I wonder how the great chess masters of the past got their high levels of proficiency. It isn't that their skills are duller than what we see nowadays. Say, a three-move combination looks as good now as it did back then. So how did they train? How did the Morphys and Alekhines got to be so good? Having not researched the question, I can give no definite answer, but we can be sure that they had a harder time than we have now. You see, if they wanted to find a certain game, I feel pretty sure that they had at least to go to their local library, or perhaps send letters around to see if someone had the game or book they were looking for; all with large amounts of wasted time. Practice, practice, practice must have been a pivotal piece to improve their natural abilities, whatever those might have been. Now then, we don't have to go the same way as they did, do we? The goal is still the same, but we have now the benefit of over two centuries of accumulated chess to draw upon and, best of all, the miracle of personal computers.

I'll discuss more of chess tactics in future posts, but for now let's assume they are of high importance. If you want to get better at chess, you'd better have more than a good feel for tactics. The easiest way to improve in them is to solve chess puzzles (another, may be playing lots of blitz games) and for that you need to get hold of a collection of such puzzles.

Intensive Course Tactics I by George Renko for Chessbase is such a collection. It holds over 4000 tactical exercises divided  in 104 themes. Each theme illustrates a tactical motif. The themes themselves are grouped into two parts:  1) direct methods, where the tactical motifs work directly such as a fork, pin, entrapment or skewer; and 2) support methods, where you have to prepare the position first to enable a direct method tactic, such as by interference, deflection, or decoy. The first few examples of each category illustrate the motif. Those positions that follow, typically in the dozens, are for you to solve.



On CbLight 2009



Solving relies on the Chessbase training feature, where you are given a certain amount of time and a par score for each correct move. More time and points are granted for more difficult problems. If you cannot solve the current problem correctly on the first try, you're given the opportunity to try again or to see the solution. Or, if you wish to verify or have an idea of your own you can fire up a chess engine and see what it has to say. There are some groups of exercises where all the previous motifs are mixed. In these  you're not given any hint as to what is the tactical motif. I use these separate exercises to verify my progress because these are closer to actual gameplay.



Included reader



The course has very little text, and that is a good thing because it is focused on solving. When relevant, you are given variants and symbolic evaluations. On some positions there are even graphical notations such as arrows and highlighted squares. 

To go through the exercises you do not need to have a previous Chessbase product such as the database program or Fritz, but I would recommend you do. There is an included Windows reader, but looks like something from circa 1998.

The only other downside that I can find is that the positions do not allow for alternate solutions. If you do not give Renko's intended move, you get no points, even if your solution is equal or better. My guess is that there are about 200 of these positions scattered around the course.

Rating-wise, I would recommend this to players rated 1300-2000, but higher non-titled players can also benefit.

If you can find it, it costs about $25. Highly recommended.

PS In case you master the material in this course, there are three further discs by the same author. Intensive Course Tactics 2, deals with forcing moves. Killer Moves explores multipurpose moves. Deadly Threats, looks at quiet, non-forcing moves.