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...

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...

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...

During the past two years, I’ve been working on improving my strategic/positional play. In this process, I have read a number of books, and two books that have long been on my reading list are the strategy books by Johan Hellsten. So when the Swedish chess federation requested reviewers for two of these books, I didn’t hesitate. I am happy that I was given the opportunity to review these books, and hope this review can be of help to you as a reader. If you like these reviews, please consider supporting my work. Visit my patreon page for details. Become a Patron! What can you expect from these books? Johan Hellsten has created a name for himself as one of the leading experts of chess strategy in modern times. His series of strategy books ( Mastering Opening Strategy , Mastering Chess Strategy and Mastering Endgame Strategy ) have received glowing reviews from many parts of the chess world. So it feels good to finally dig into these nuggets. His endgame book is still in my boo...

In my previous review I mentioned how I would like to see an improved version of The Improving Chess Thinker , and that a book had recently come out that seemed to be perfectly in line with my ideas. A few months later, I have bought the book, worked through the exercises and read the prose. And finally, I am ready to give my complete review of the new book Think like a Super-GM . And I can tell you, I was not disappointed by this book. Read on to find out why you should probably get the book too. 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 indicates, Think like a Super-GM is a book about thinking in chess. At its core, it is a puzzle book. But it is more than that. In the chapters surrounding the puzzles, the book digs into the challenges of thinking in chess and how the thinking process differs between players of different levels. The first chapter ...

If you had actual lessons with a grandmaster, would you be brave enough to publish the transcripts? Well, someone did. And that someone wrote about it in book form — three books, to be precise. In this review, I present my thoughts on the first book in the book series Lessons with a Grandmaster . 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? Lessons with a GM  is written in collaboration between Boris Gulko and Joel Sneed. Gulko is a grandmaster who emigrated from the Soviet Union in the 1980s. According to Wikipedia, he is the only player to win the Soviet as well as US Chess championships. Sneed is a professor of psychology at Queens College in New York as well as an amateur player.  In essence, this book is a game collection. There are 25 games in the book, all played by Gulko. There are some real heavyweights among his opponents, such as Kasparov, Karpov,...

What is it that separates a grandmaster from an amateur player? This is a topic of several books, and it is also a question that I've asked myself. I have long been curious about what we can learn from grandmasters and what a patzer like me can implement in my own games in order to take at least a small step towards becoming a competent chess player. And the book under review here is one that promises to do just that.  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 versus Amateur  is a book that I've had in my collection for several years. I bought it back in 2015 and started reading it immediately. For some reason, I only read the first two chapters and then I put the book away. I don't remember why. During my vacation this summer, I decided to pick it up again, and now I've finally read the entire thing. The premise of the book is to discuss what...

In my very first post on this blog, I reviewed The Amateur's Mind by Jeremy Silman. That was my first step to understand chess strategy. And I actually bought another one of Silman's book at the same time, but for some reason, it took me more than ten years to read. I finally decided to go through it and now I am ready to share my thoughts with you. (It feels like I've written this before.) 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? Before writing this review, I had a few candidates. I am always reading several books in parallel, and I have a number that I'm about to finish. So I asked the Twitter community for input on which book they would like me to review as number 50. And this came out on top. So far I have reviewed 49 books on #patzersreview . Which one should be number 50? My candidates are: - Silman: Reassess your chess workbook - Nunn: Solving in...