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...

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...

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...

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...

Get better at positional evaluation, they said. Read Heisman's book on positional evaluation, they said. It will be fun, they said. Well, I read the book, and I don't really know what to make of it. But my evaluation skills did not improve much from reading this book. Read on if you want to know 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? Dan Heisman probably needs no introduction. He is a renowned coach and author of numerous chess books, mainly aimed at beginners and intermediate players. Elements of Positional Evaluation  definitely belongs in this category. The book was first published in 1974, and was revised and republished in 2010. Heisman begins by revisiting the state of "positional theory" in 1974, and addresses some aspects that Heisman considers to be flaws or inadequacies in what he calls "1974 theory"; development, doubled pa...

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...

Pawns are the soul of chess. Who said that? I can't remember, but it was probably someone famous. Regardless of who said it first, many people agree that this is true. But few people seem to be capable of explaining why this is the case. Enter the niche category of pawn structure chess books. These books are really not a category of its own, but rather a specific type of strategy book. I first heard about the book when Neal Bruce presented his Pawn book championship  about a year ago. Since Neal named this book the best of the bunch, I just had to buy it. It has been sitting on my shelf for quite some time, and finally I've taken the time to read it. What did I think? Well, it's got a little golden star, so that's a hint it's a good book. Read my review to see why I decided to give it my stamp of approval. 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? I a...