Evaluate that!

I suck at positional evaluation! Countless times, I have played a game in which I felt I was better only to have my ego stripped away by Stockfish. So when the book Evaluate like a Grandmaster was announced, I immediately knew I had to read it. And I recommend that you do the same. Read on to see why.

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What can you expect from this book?

As the title suggests, Evaluate lika a Grandmaster is a book entirely devoted to positional evaluation. It is mainly a puzzle book in which your task is to evaluate the diagram positions. There aren't many books on positional evaluation, which makes this very interesting. 

The book has a few introductory chapters on how the book is structured and why positional evaluation is important. But the meat of the book is in the problem section. The problems are grouped into four categories, and each of them have their own chapters.

1. Evaluation: Simply evaluate each position.
2. Visualization: Visualize a sequence of moves and evaluate the resulting position.
3. Comparison: You are given two different moves or sequence of moves based. Evaluate the resulting positions and choose the best option.
4. Quartets: You are given four similar positions. The task is to evaluate each position and identify the important elements that influence the evaluation.

I think each of these categories/chapters have their own appeal. The first chapter gives a good baseline for evaluation. The visualization and comparison problems gives you a challenge that is very similar to a real game, which is quite useful. The final category, quartets, is more abstract and challenging in a different way, as you need to draw your own conclusions about the principal positional elements in order to get maximal benefit from the exercises.

The problems are presented four per page, and the solutions are found at the end of each chapter. This is a fairly common structure for puzzle books. However, I would prefer to have the problems on one page and the solutions on the next. That way, you would minimize the risk of seeing the solutions of upcoming problems, and you don't have to flip back and forth between the problems and solutions.

The solutions are quite extensive. They do not only give you the correct evaluation of a position, but also an explanation of why the authors arrive at that conclusion. The explanations are very instructive which make them the best part of the book.

A downside with the solutions is that they are not entirely consistent. In some cases, the solutions lack annotation symbols altogether, which makes it hard to determine whether or not you've evaluated the position correctly. And sometimes the symbols and explanations are contradictive, for instance the text may say that "Black is much better", and the symbol is =/+ (Black is slightly better). Furthermore, some solutions are presented as "X is better", which makes it hard to determine which symbol should be used; is it much better or slightly better? These are not major problems, but can take away from the experience and the instructive value of the book. 

Another minor issue is that I started to see a pattern after a few exercises. Whichever side had the move also tended to have an advantage. I checked this after working through the problems, and it turned out that this was correct for 58 of the 60 exercises in the first chapter. When evaluating a position from a book, it is easy to fall for the bias to prefer the side that has the move. And with these exercises, that bias is reinforced. I think it would be more interesting if a larger proportion of the positions came from a disadvantage for the player who has the move.

Yet another issue is that the names of the players are given for each position. And for the most part, you could guess who is better just by looking at the names. For instance if Magnus Carlsen is one of the players, he tends to have the better position. And in some cases, only one name is given, for instance Perelshteyn vs NN. The unnamed player usually has the worse position. I would prefer if the names were only revealed in the answer section.

Despite the deficiencies I've mentioned above, I still think this is a great book. There is huge value in working through the problems, and the solutions are very instructive. I think the major selling point is that the authors have found a hole in the chess book market and managed to create an (to my knowledge) unique book.

The book has gotten positive reviews by Andras Toth and Jesse Kraai. Of course, the book has also been covered in Ben Johnsons Perpetual Chess podcast.

Who should read this book?

This is a book entirely devoted to the art of positional evaluation. It is one of the few resources out there for this purpose, which makes it a must-read if you want to work on your evaluation skills. The book is probably best suited for players who have a fair bit of experience playing, and have a solid tactical foundation. Your playing strength probably corresponds to a rating above 1500. The book is probably useful all the way up to master level. If this sounds like you, then I recommend you check out the book.

About this book

Author:	Eugene Perelshteyn & Nate Solon
Title:	Evaluate like a Grandmaster
Type of book:	Middlegame
Level:	Intermediate, Advanced