Patzer's review

The Perpetual Chess podcast has been the  chess podcast for several years. Since its launch in 2016, Ben Johnson has made almost 500 episodes in which he has interviewed many of the most notable people in chess. After all of these conversations, he has collected a massive amount of material on the topic of chess improvement. So when he announced that he had gathered the most important lessons from the podcast and put them in writing, I was very excited. Unfortunately, I have had many other things in life that have required my attention, so my review was delayed. But now, it's finally here! Hope you find it useful. If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details. Become a Patron! What can you expect from this book? Perpetual Chess Improvement is essentially a distillation of hundreds of conversations from Perpetual Chess Podcast into a single, highly digestible volume. Rather than presenting a rigid training system, Ben Johns...

Ever wondered what chess was like at the turn of the 20th century? Curious about the legendary players who paved the way for modern chess theory? On his blog, Sam Kahn has taken us on an intriguing journey through a pivotal decade in chess history. And now, he has converted his blog into a book format. But what makes these historical games interesting? And how do they still resonate with players today? With expert annotations and rich historical context, this book promises to be more than just a collection of old games. Read on to discover see if A Century of Chess  might be the missing piece in your chess library. If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details. Become a Patron! What can you expect from this book? Sam Kahn is a devoted chess amateur who has written a blog on chess history since 2021. On his blog, he explains the background andnpurpose of what has grown to become a massive project. I’d been playing throu...

Have you ever felt tired of chess? Maybe you’ve been uninspired or perhaps you think it’s too much work. To paraphrase a famous movie: All work and no play makes you a dull person. If that is the case, I may have a cure. You need a fun chess book. Something that will rekindle your joy for the game and inspire you to play creatively. I give you Tiger’s Chaos Theory ! This book found me at a time when I needed it the most. My inspiration and motivation to study chess was way down. And like a bolt from the blue, the Swedish Chess Federation approached me and wanted me to review this book. And the kind people at Quality Chess agreed to send me a review copy. An offer I couldn't refuse. So after this happy turn of events, I have a new review for you. If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details. Become a Patron! What can you expect from this book? Grandmaster Tiger Hillarp Persson, a multi-time Swedish chess champion, has al...

There are just not enough novels with a chess theme. The nation's gambit (Original title: En nasjon i sjakk) is an exception. I heard about the   book when it came out, but since I usually don't like crime novels, I paid little attention to it. During a book sale, I found the book at a very low price, and decided to give it a chance. Surprisingly, I ended up enjoying it. If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details. Become a Patron! What can you expect from this book? The nation's gambit  is the debut novel by Norwegian author Johan Høst. The original title "En nasjon i sjakk" literally translates to "a nation in check", which is a play on words; being in check vs in shock . In Norwegian, the word for chess and check is the same, which puts chess directly in the title. This doesn't work as well in English, which probably explains why the English title is a bit different. The outline of th...

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. If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details. Become a Patron! 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 cha...

Which is the best chess book ever? As a chess community, we repeatedly ask this kind of question, for various categories. And one of those categories is, of course, tactics. So which is the best tactics book ever? The answer to this question depends on the playing strength of the reader. But if we consider the fact that the majority of chess players are in the middle of the bell curve, the best books should logically be among the ones written for an intermediate audience. With that said, this might be the best tactics book ever written. A bold statement, perhaps. Read on to find out why I recommend this book. If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details. Become a Patron! What can you expect from this book? Chess tactics from scratch was originally published as Understanding Chess Tactics  – as indicated by the book's subtitle. This book is actually what inspired the now famous "woodpecker method". In his book Pu...

Modern Chess is too much concerned with things like Pawn structure. Forget it, Checkmate ends the game. This statement by Nigel Short may trigger different reactions in the chess experts of the world. Some may argue that it oversimplifies the game, since it is not possible to play for checkmate in all positions. On the other hand, it quite correctly pinpoints a major problem for beginning players in that they simply don't know how to end the game. I've seen this in our kids classes at my local club. The kids can be up a ton of material, but they don't know how to checkmate their opponent. A common piece of advice served to beginners is "do a lot of tactics". And I agree that this is a good idea. But I think we should expand on that advice and suggest that beginners (and stronger players) "do a lot of checkmates". And what better way to do this than go through a checkmate puzzle book? If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visi...

A few months ago, I was planning an endgame course at my local club. I based my course almost entirely on Silman's endgame course , but I wanted to include a bishop+knight mate, which Silman doesn't cover. And accidentally, I stumbled across a book which does  cover this endgame. So I decided to take a closer look at the rest of it as well. What I found out is that the book has many other interesting topics, but I have some quibbles about the title. Read on to see why.   If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details. Become a Patron! What can you expect from this book? The tactics bible  is not your typical tactics book. Most tactics books are very heavy on puzzles, and only contain short descriptions of tactical themes. This book is the diametrical opposite. There are no traditional puzzles in the book. Instead, the book puts emphasis on examples and explanations. In the first two chapters, Grivas presents 133 ex...

I recently found a book that I once had intended to write myself. A few years ago I started exploring the world of memory techniques or mnemonics , and was curious about how this could be applied to chess. I experimented with a method to memorize chess openings, and tried it in a few games. It was surprisingly effective, and it was like having an opening book with me during the game. It almost felt like cheating. This led me to the idea of writing something to present my method to the world, but for various reasons, I never finished the project. So when I stumbled upon the book The Chess Memory Palace , I felt that this was a book I needed to read. And having done so, I think it's a book that you should read too. Read on to find out why. If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details. Become a Patron! What can you expect from this book? Now, you may be a bit skeptical about the relevance of this kind of method in chess. But...

Many years ago, I concluded that I needed to work on my endgames. After searching the Internet for a while and reading various chess forums, I came to the conclusion that Silman's endgame book was the one for me. I got the book and worked through the chapters up to my level (as suggested) and then put the book away. Somewhere around last year, I concluded that I had forgotten many of the things I had learned from the book, so I decided to pick it up again. Only, I didn't actually pick it up again. So when we were planning activities this semester at our local chess club, I volunteered to hold a three part lecture on basic endgames. This was a way for me (a bit like this blog) to put some outside accountability on myself while also giving back to our local chess community. So a few weeks ago, I actually  picked up the book. Two days later, I found out that Jeremy Silman had passed away, and Noël Studer had also written about this book in his newsletter. So to my mind, this was a...

Would you like to know a fun fact? You know that online chess community that everyone is talking about? Back in the day, there were a few different suggestions for which hashtag we should use. As you all know, we arrived at the decision to use #ChessPunks, and the rest is history. But initially, this was not the leading suggestion. Instead, it was #Chess4Life, but for various reasons we had a new poll and got a different result. This has nothing to do with the book in this review, apart from the fact that they share the same name. But with slightly different conditions, we would have a thriving chess community with the same name as this book. That would have been a fun coincidence. So after this pointless introduction, you may have chosen to stop reading. But if, for some reason, you are still reading, I hope you enjoy this review.   If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details. Become a Patron! What can you expect f...

Sometimes books just come to you by accident. In my case, I came across an unknown book on an online second-hand book store. A chess novel by GM Jesse Kraai. What? Why have I not heard about this? I felt obliged to check it out. And chances are you are not familiar with the book either. So why not read my review to find out more? If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details. Become a Patron!   What can you expect from this book? As you probably can guess from the title of the book, Lisa is the name of the main character in this book. And the book describes her experience of learning chess while growing up. I may have missed it, but I don't think Lisa's age is given specifically, but she goes to school and seems to be curious about alcohol and boys, so my guess is that she is in her mid to late teens. Lisa comes from a broken home, she doesn't like school very much and her mother works too much. In order to keep her dau...

Study your own games and learn from your mistakes! This is an age-old piece of advice that is thrown around in the chess community all the time. But how do you actually  learn from your mistakes? This is a tricky question that rarely gets the same level of attention. So when you come across a book with the title Learn from your chess mistakes , it has to be a good sign - right? A friend of mine had this book in his collection and suggested I read it. It took me some time to get around to it, but finally I went through it. And let me just warn you at the get-go; this book has very little to do with your  chess mistakes. But anywho, let's dive in! If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details. Become a Patron! What can you expect from this book? Chris Baker (author of this book) is a British IM, and as far as I can determine, this is the only chess book he's written. However, he is also the writer of the column "How b...

Chess is a game filled with mistakes. And if none of the players make a mistake, the game is drawn. So eliminating your mistakes is essential for improvement. Thus far, I think most people will agree. But the main question is how you can work on eliminating or minimizing your mistakes in the most effective way. To this question, there are numerous opinions and theories. This post will be the first in a series of reviews on the topic of chess mistakes and improvement.  If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details. Become a Patron! What can you expect from this book? Larry Evans is a name that will be familiar to many chess enthusiasts. He was a grandmaster, won the US championship multiple times, and has written several books. But although he shares his name with the famous Evans gambit, it is not named after him. In The 10 most common chess mistakes , Evans aims to provide lessons for improving chess players by presenting...