Patzer's review

What is a chess genius? Well, you could find an argument for a number of different criteria, but one that seems quite feasible is that every World champion was a genius. At least that's the argumentation in the book Sjakkgeniene by Norwegian authors Atle Grønn and Hans Olav Lahlum. I bought this book when I was in Norway over Christmas, and I have enjoyed it very much. For most of you, I guess this review will be of little value, since the book is in Norwegian. But who knows, it might be translated to other languages in the future? We'll see about that, but for those of you that can read Norwegian, I hope you'll enjoy this little bonus review. What can you expect from this book? This is not your typical chess book. It is a one-volume book about all the chess champions to this day. In other words, it follows in the tradition of Kasparov's My great predecessors series, but everything is captured in one volume instead of five. So how is that? Well, it is quite simp...

Wijk aan Zee is a tiny wind-swept town on the Dutch coast. The main attraction for the town seems to be the large beach that is several kilometers long. But in the winter, the town is invaded by hundreds of chess players and fans who want to see the World's greatest players battle it out over the 64 squares. Wijk aan Zee As part of the whole Tata Steel chess event there is a weekend tournament for amateur players. A friend and I decided to play and do a bit of chess tourism at the same time. This was the first time for me at a major international event, so it was a bit exciting. After checking in at the hotel on Thursday afternoon, the first person we saw was Anish Giri. And at breakfast the next morning, Vishy Anand sat down just a few tables away from us, and several famous grandmasters appeared: Fabiano Caruana, Rustam Kazimdzhanov and Pavel Eljanov. We were speculating whether Magnus Carlsen was staying at the hotel as well, but he did not show himself. However,...

I took a trip to Wijk aan Zee in Holland this January to play a weekend event in the Tata Steel tournament. It was a fun and well-organized event, and I managed to take second place in my group. To my surprise, there were book prizes for first and second place, and I found a little book that caught my attention. This little book is Attack & Counterattack in Chess by Fred Reinfeld. What can you expect from this book? Fred Reinfeld (1910-1964) was an incredibly prolific writer, and has written well over 100 (!) chess books. Many of these have been out of print for a long time, but in recent years, several of his books have been updated and republished. Attack and counterattack in chess is a "21st century edition" of the original publication from 1958. The book has been translated to algebraic notation, and the variations have been checked with engines. For the most part, the variations are correct, and on the rare occasions where they are not, alternative lines are ...