Book Reviews Previous reviews are available in The Chess Cafe Archives . This Week at The Chess Cafe . To receive this free weekly update, send us your e-mail address. You can remove your name whenever you wish and we do not make the list available to anyone else.
Chess is a complex game, and even modest success requires many kinds of skill and knowledge.
One must be well-versed in opening theory, middlegame and endgame technique, methods of attack and defense, strategic and tactical themes, evaluation of static and dynamic positional factors, etc., etc. Most players gain this knowledge from experience, and from study of books. There is already a vast body of books on the aforementioned topics and others essential to mastery, but they can only take one so far. Knowledge is necessary but not sufficient, if one cannot apply it efficiently under real-time competitive conditions. To make an imperfect analogy, a player who understands, say, pawn structures, but can t conduct an effective minority attack in a tournament game, is like a body-builder who understands physiology but can t lift half his own weight, or a soldier who understands the mechanics of firearms and the chemistry of gunpowder, but can t shoot well enough to hit his enemy in battle.