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Reviewed by Rick Kennedy Ok, while you were growing up you learned the rules of chess. You’ve played more than a few friendly games across the years. Even now, you manage to get one or two in at lunch, plus maybe the occasional battle with a buddy and a beer after work. In those, happily, you hold your own. Then again, there was that recent trip to the local chess club, where struggling (in vain) against that wise guy junior high school kid (and then, his younger sister) felt like touching a hot stove: not something to be repeated any time soon. What did they know that you don’t – and where can you get some of that for yourself? Chances are, they’ve been reading the Winning Chess series, by Yasser Seirawan: Play Winning Chess, Winning Chess Tactics, Winning Chess Strategies, Winning Chess Brilliancies, Winning Chess Openings, Winning Chess Endings, and Winning Chess Combinations. If you want to know “what’s it all about?” on the sixty-four squares, maybe you should, too. After all, one of the most important divides in the world of those-who-play-chess is not the one between pawnpusher and master, but the one between those who have read one or more chess books – and those who have read none. World-Champions-To-Be can shudder at the thought, and bibliophiles can snicker, but many’s the man or woman who will spend their lifetime as a chess amateur enlightened solely by their own experience and the lessons they can glean from it. In such untilled soil, a little grandmaster knowledge sprinkled in here and there can do wonders. Yasser Seirawan is an American Grandmaster, a former World Championship candidate, a four-time United States chess champion, and a ten-time member of the U.S. Chess Olympiad team. Equally important, he is a fine communicator who has plenty of wisdom to impart, and who hasn’t forgotten what it was like to be a learning and struggling chessplayer. He is both informative, and, well, reassuring. Tactics is what you do when there is
something to do; Strategy requires thought; tactics
require observation.
So what am I supposed to be doing when there’s something to do?
Winning Chess Tactics starts out with a short chapter of definitions
– including the helpful “Silman’s Rules of Recognition” that cue the player
that a combination might be “on” – followed by a dozen chapters, each
devoted to introducing a tactic or combination or related issue: The Double
Attack, The Pin, The Skewer, King Tactics and Combinations, Deflection,
Battery on an Open File or Diagonal, The Power of Pawns, The Decoy,
Clearance Sacrifice, X-Rays and Windmills, Zwischenzug and Other Kings of
Draws. After an explanation, a chapter will have several diagrams with
positions that are discussed, followed by several Tests, each with a clue or
question (answers are in the back of the book, and at the end of this
review.)
It’s kind of like learning vocabulary words back in high school – you see the word, you learn its definition, you see it used in a few sentences, then you get a chance to write your own sentences with the word in them. Sometimes a Test question builds upon or extends a previous position, a nice feature. Part Two has chapters that cover Great Tacticians and Their Games – Anderssen, Morphy, Spielmann, Marshall, Alekhine, Tal and Kasparov. Each contains from one to three games annotated at the post-beginner developing-player level. Following the vocabulary word analogy above, you can think of this as a collection of tactical “essays”. Certainly most readers cannot be expected to immediately produce such fighting gems, but Seirawan gives a clear picture of what lies ahead for those who do seriously master the art of tactics. Part Three finishes up with 15 more tests of Basic Tactics, 15 tests of Advanced Combinations and 15 examples of Professional Combinations. The last group must be there, not only as a stiff challenge, but as a warning: you may have studied the tactics in this book, and play better for it, but it’s really only the beginning of your journey… (Luckily, answers to the tests are provided. They are expansive enough that they provide a way to evaluate the position, as you work your way to the answer – always a plus.) A Glossary of chess terms and an Index finish the book. Winning Chess Tactics, as can be expected from Everyman Chess, is well laid-out, with clear diagrams and good use of fonts, white space and bolding. I encountered few typos. With Winning Chess Tactics the author has met his goal “to enlighten beginner and tournament player alike.” He even gives a further nudge down the road: if you’ve developed a taste for tactics, Seirawan recommends Silman’s Reassess Your Chess and Averbakh’s Tactics for the Advanced Player for further learning (not just rote practice, as you can find with Reinfeld’s still useful and inexpensive 1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations and 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate.) Winning Chess Strategies adopts a similar format. Like Tactics, it is geared to the player who (a) knows the rules of the game, (b) knows the relative values of the pieces, (c) is familiar with basic chess terminology (although, again, there is a Glossary provided), and (d) can read algebraic notation. Seirawan writes:
After an opening chapter on The Importance of Strategy (the role of strategy, Seirawan professes, is to create an advantage in material, piece mobility, pawn structure, territory or King safety) there are chapters on Making the Most of a Material Advantage, Stopping Enemy Counterplay, Understanding Where the Pieces Go, Superior Minor Pieces, How to Use Pawns, The Creation of Targets, Territorial Domination, and Attacking the King. As if that were not enough, there is even a chapter on Faulty Strategies. That’s a lot to digest, but the author reminds us that few amateurs work at improving their understanding of strategy, so that learning about it has a pleasant side-effect, “…your chess-playing friends will come to think you as an intellectual giant” (!) Seirawan again introduces his material (annotated games or positions) and explains it effortlessly. He will sometimes accentuate a point by developing an aphorism –
– and
then return to it in a Test, as the following illustrates:
Followed by the echo...
The chapter on The Great Masters of Strategy gives annotated games of Steinitz, Rubinstein, Capablanca, Nimzovich, Petrosian and Karpov. The focus is more on explanations than deep variations. Readers will not immediately metamorphose into the next Botvinnik, but using what they have learned about strategy in the preceding pages, they will better understand and appreciate what is going on in those master games – and others they encounter. Perhaps your next games will begin to make a bit more sense, too, and not just look like a series of strung-together moves…. Winning Chess Strategies closes with a chapter on Solutions to Tests, the Glossary, and the Index. As mentioned above, it’s layout and design are pleasant and serviceable, like Tactics. Wandering the Internet chess newsgroups, I have seen new and developing players ask: what should I read to understand chess strategy? For each one who has followed the advice, for example, to “read Nimzovich!” and later responded “I have done so, and am transformed!” there is at least one who has admitted, “I have done so, and am befuddled!” My recommendation: read Winning Chess Strategies. You may still want to go on to read Nimzo at a later date – but that’s the point: you may want to. Flip the two books around in reading order, and you may want to take up checkers instead. Props to the “with” author, Jeremy Silman, whose already-mentioned Reassess Your Chess also gives a great foundation for strategic play. The members of any chess club would benefit from having the Winning Chess series on its shelves. For those lunch-time warriors in the buildings of glass and steel, however, I would recommend tucking the Tactics book, and especially the Strategies book, amongst a few years of annual reports – no need to give away any secret weapons just yet!
Answers to TESTS
From the Publisher's website - Author Biography and Booklist Yasser Seirawan
Other titles in this series are also available in the Chessville Chess Store:
Winning Chess Brilliancies
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