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When Perfect Your Chess arrived in the mail, I was rather blase' about it. At least a little excitement accompanies each book that I receive: either anticipation of a book that will deliver me to the promised land of 2500 chess or some laughable waste of a tree that proves I am smarter than a titled author. I had no such sentiment with this book. There was conflicting evidence which led to my ambivalence. Volokitin is a young player of exceptional strength whose games are marvelous to play through, and for a player of his age to come out with a training guide seemed to be quite the promising proposition. My feeling that the title had a presumptuous tint to it was the counter to that. My belief is that in chess, success and improvement are separate values that do not always walk hand in hand. So, without any thoughts of Xanadu, I opened the book and began to turn pages. This is an exercise/problem type book which was outside of what I had anticipated. After working through the first 3 or 4 diagrams I moved back to the table of contents. There are three separate sections; "Make a Move," "Find the Win," and "Answer a Question." Each of the three sections in turn is divided into three parts: "Examples from Andrei Volokitin's Play," "100 Graded Examples," and "Solutions." The introduction explains that the sections from Volokitin's play are 23 examples to provide some aesthetic appeal as well as training experience. Then the "Graded Examples" have 40 aimed at FIDE master strength, 40 at International Master level and the final 20 on Grandmaster level. I jumped ahead to the "Answer a Question" section and worked the first couple of examples before checking my solutions. I felt some satisfaction that I had answered the questions with some level of competency, but was still a little uncertain of the book. I carried it with me for a week doing some exercises in my off hours. This really is an exercise book, albeit with a bit of a twist. The exercises in each of the sections have solutions that are based on calculation, pure and simple. This is not meant as a negative critique, as the exercises are very good and reward the work taken doing them. I just want to be clear that this is not a manual of training aimed at clearing the fog we all find at certain points of our games and wish we had a GM whispering what to look for in our ears. This book is set apart from most exercise books in the first and last sections. "Find the Win" is pretty much self explanatory: some tactical calculation practice. Working in "Make a Move" will help players who are looking to improve their vision and understanding of what elements are important at a "moment of truth" move. Usually the solution is a tactic that involves some hidden resource, but those are the gremlins that we mortals seek. "Answer a Question" casts the exercises in a different light: posing a position to the reader and saying "what do you do?" This section will offer a question for each exercise to point the reader in the right direction.
For anyone who was forewarned that a tactical operation existed, as generally happens in exercise books, this sequence of evaluating factors and finding the calculation would be a matter of technique. For players concerned with moves that "look" normal it takes a bit of coaxing, asking a question, to find the path to the solution. These types of exercise can change the pattern of thinking a player uses. A problem I have always had with this type of book is that you need to have a book mark at the page of the exercise and another one in the solution section. I grew up before the term "multi tasking" came into the lexicon, which makes me think my brain isn't ready to take care of two places in one book. Perfect Your Chess has an additional wrinkle as the solutions for the examples from Volokitin's play are located with the solutions for the graded examples, which was a bit confusing at first. I have to also relate that I found a couple of typos. For example, in "Make a Move" exercise 21 from Volokitin's play it indicates that it is White's move:
Again, I would highly recommend this book for anyone looking for practice in calculation, as well as any player looking for deeper explanation about what factors to follow when making decisions or evaluations in calculating. This book does a good job in those areas. The cover graphic is quite delightful: a pawn equipped with ice axes climbing a mountain, an obvious characterization which is very charming. The physical quality of the book is great with everything tight and easy to follow. Notation is in figurine algebraic which has become a standard for Gambit. The only substantial problem I have is with the title, as I think any player working through this book will improve easily without attaining perfection. A very lofty goal indeed.
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