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About Patzer's Review

I am a patzer! Say it with me. It's liberating. You can be a patzer too.
I am a husband and a father of two. I have been playing chess most of my life, but did not join a chess club until my mid 30s. I work full time, and still have the ambition to improve my game. Some may say it's an impossible equation, but I am not the kind to give up easily.

Why do I review chess books?

I started this blog for two reasons. First of all, I have a lot of chess books. I have read many of them, but not all. I want to read them and document my thoughts about the books. I also want to share my impressions of them with others like me; the patzers of the world. Many of the books and book reviews out there are written for masters, but the majority of players are at an intermediate level. So there's a need for more perspectives on chess books. 

About my reviews

All opinions on this blog are my own. I am not affiliated with authors or publishers in any way, and I do not write reviews for anyone else. Also, I do not claim to represent the opinions of a larger group or that my reviews are "objectively correct". My reviews are simply accounts of my experiences in interacting with the books I've read. If you have a different opinion on any of the books that I've reviewed, please leave a comment below the post, or get in touch with me.

In my book reviews, I try to give an estimate of the playing strength that readers should have to benefit the most from the books. These estimates are always given based on FIDE classical rating (OTB). So if you only have an online rating, please look up how to estimate your approximate OTB strength. I also give each review a tag for the estimated level. Here are some approximate rating intervals for the different categories:

BeginnerUp to 1500
Intermediate:1500-2000
Advanced:2000 or higher

The attentive reader may have found that I do not review opening books. This is no coincidence. First of all, they are all rather similar. Furthermore, I do not feel that I do not have the competence to distinguish the good opening books from the bad. But most importantly, I am not very interested in opening books.

About my recommendations

The groups I review are sorted in two main categories; (1) the ones I highly recommend and (2) all the rest. The highly recommended books receive my "stamp of approval", which is both a badge that I add to the cover image as well as a tag for the posts/reviews. The remaining books range from decent to awful (my subjective opinion), which is a very wide category. So why not apply some kind of rating system for these? Simply put, life is too short to read mediocre chess books. I suggest that you read the great ones and leave the others to the collectors.


So let's learn from each other and share tips and ideas about how patzers like us can improve our chess. This is me doing my part.

This blog is for patzers, by a patzer. Masters are welcome too, but may find my rantings all too trivial.  

If you want to get in touch, please find me on Twitter, @DrLangstrand.


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Comments

  1. UnknownApril 29, 2019 at 11:24 AM

    Well, being a weak 72 years old chessplayer, father of four, owner of around a hundred chess books, I think we are at the same wavelength! So I'll read all your comments, of course!

    ReplyDelete

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