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Book Description
Jonathan Rowson, author of the highly acclaimed Seven Deadly Chess Sins, investigates three questions important to all chess-players:
1) Why is it so difficult, especially for adult players, to improve?
2) What kinds of mental attitudes are needed to find good moves in different phases of the game?
3) Is White's alleged first-move advantage a myth, and does it make a difference whether you are playing Black or White?
In a strikingly original work, Rowson makes use of his academic background in philosophy and psychology to answer these questions in an entertaining and instructive way. This book assists all players in their efforts to improve, and provides fresh insights into the opening and early middlegame.
1) Why is it so difficult, especially for adult players, to improve?
2) What kinds of mental attitudes are needed to find good moves in different phases of the game?
3) Is White's alleged first-move advantage a myth, and does it make a difference whether you are playing Black or White?
In a strikingly original work, Rowson makes use of his academic background in philosophy and psychology to answer these questions in an entertaining and instructive way. This book assists all players in their efforts to improve, and provides fresh insights into the opening and early middlegame.
Rowson presents many new ideas on how Black should best combat White's early initiative, and make use of the extra information that he gains as a result of moving second. For instance, he shows that in some cases a situation he calls 'Zugzwang Lite' can arise, where White finds himself lacking any constructive moves. He also takes a close look at the theories of two players who, in differing styles, have specialized in championing Black's cause: Mihai Suba and Andras Adorjan. Readers are also equipped with a 'mental toolkit' that will enable them to handle many typical over-the-board situations with greater success, and avoid a variety of psychological pitfalls.
Chess for Zebras offers fresh insights into human idiosyncrasies in all phases of the game. The depth and breadth of this book will therefore help players to appreciate chess at a more profound level, and make steps towards sustained and significant improvement.
From the Publisher
Gambit Publications specialises in chess and has an unrivalled reputation for originality and editorial excellence. The company is owned and staffed entirely by leading chess masters and grandmasters.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Thinking for humans,
By
This review is from: Chess for Zebras: Thinking Differently about Black and White (Paperback)
You love chess and you want to improve your skills. You see an interesting chess book. You buy it. Nothing really happens with your game..
Sound familiar? So is this yet another promosing-but-will-languish-at-your-bookshelf-chess-book? Not at all! The best books make you think and this certainly makes you think a lot (and not only about chess). It will not improve your game as per see, but it will make you think about improving your game in new ways. Buying this book means you can take a few years pause before even considering buying another chess book - the material covered is vast in scope and rich in ideas even though its "only" about 250 pages. The ideas-to-pages ratio must be the highest I have ever seen in a chess book! The only thing you should be aware of though is that I would not recommend this book to chess beginners - it is too complex and abstract if you have just played chess for a year or two (or less) I think. Frankly, I do not see how a chess player can be disappointed by this book. Highly highly recommended - though I reckon adult players will gain the most from the book.
14 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Weird title but great book!,
By
This review is from: Chess for Zebras: Thinking Differently about Black and White (Paperback)
Some authors are better at writing than others and Jonathan Rowson is up there among the very best. This book is a genuine pearl and should have a place in your chess book treasury. I speedily read through "The 7 Deadly Chess Sins" and have not paced down with this "Chess For Zebras". What you get here is really a continuing investigation in the why-do-we-act/play-the-way-we-do? that was begun with "7 deadly chess sins". And again Rowson is showing us by way of example how chess players make blunders, pursue wrong strategies or simply fail to live up to the tension at the appropriate moments. The examples are discussed in lenght - from the critical (or interesting) position the moves are usually explained in great lenght which is really beneficial for understanding many middle game strategy concepts. From these examples alone you are bound to learn a lot. But the real beauty of Rowson - from my point of view - is that he combines the chess part with an insight into human behaviour and human thought processes. And as he did in "7 deadly chess sins" here too he offers many advices and intriguing information that I personally found profoundly interesting. I cannot help compare him to Yermolinsky (whose book "The Road to Chess Improvement" comes highly recommended) - Yermolinsky is the practician and Rowson the academic. Both are really good at choosing examples that are realistic chess battles and therefore highly rewarding to study.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Good material, but poorly presented,
By
This review is from: Chess for Zebras: Thinking Differently about Black and White (Paperback)
This book talks about chess players. How they think, how they react, what are their feelings that ultimately affect the way they play chess. The author shares his experience regarding these matters with the ultimate goal to help the player be cooler while playing chess. Lot's of games of famous Grandmasters are analysed in which the author tries to illustrate his ideas. This "emotional" perspective of chess play which is being analysed is very humorous at times, especially when the cooler-minded approach of Grandmasters is contrasted to the greatly emotional approach of most amateurs. The book in general tries to help the player by informing him about the emotional pitfalls of the game so that he can remain cool from start to finish of a chess game. What seems strange nevertheless, is that although the purpose of the book is to teach calmness it is written in a very enthusiastic - novel like way with expressions like "Wow!" being common. This is a very poor choice by the author since this works towards the opposite direction of the book's purpose. This choice, in combination with the humourous nature of some of the author's observations on chess players, makes the whole work have more of an entertaining than an instructive value. Overall, I'd say that the book contains good material but this material is poorly presented.
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