Improve Your Chess - by Learning from the Champions [Paperback]

Like Lars Bo Hansen's third book "How Chess Games Are Won Or Lost," this is not a book for everybody, and therefore it won't please everybody. But it is right for it's target audience. And if that's you, then any critism is irrelevent. The target audience are players of approximately USCF 1350-1650 playing strength, or players up to USCF 1850 who know little about chess history, but WANT to know more. This is the ultra user-friendly book on chess history that so many players never had. It reads much better as an experience to ENJOY, and not on worrying about whether it is improving your play.

One key aspect to point out is that while this book discusses players and schools of thought, the author frequently shows many of his own games that were influenced by the players or concepts he discusses, showing its relevence to practical play.

Chapter 1 covers the Romantic Era. It shows that Morphy was, and still is, the master of the open center. Before I became a strong player I disregarded chess before Lasker. And I didn't understand why Botvinnik took Morphy and the open center seriously. After reading a book on pawn centers, I do now. The open center is where you learn to play hardcore tactics, sacrifice, quick development, initiative, and outright attack. Studying Morphy teaches you what to do when playing an attacker who is masterful at opening up the center: attack him before he attacks you! Many strong players ignore Morphy, but it only handicaps them. Lars Bo Hansen compares the open center of the Romantic era, to the more refined open center of today. I commend him for showing that it is still relevant. And yes, there is a nice juicy open center Kasparov game, among many others. So one is to be advised NOT to skip the more important parts of this chapter.

Chapter 2 covers Steinitz through Botvinnik, except for the Hypermoderns. I had always heard of Steinitz's theories but never actually got to read them. With this book, it was all laid out crystal clear without reading some outdated, excessively illustrated material. It could be pointed out that understanding this doesn't improve your chess. But it did deeply influence Lasker, Capablanca, and others of that period, and will help you understand them.

There is a section on Lasker and how he understood that if a weakness can't be exploited, it's not a weakness. He won games because his oppenents were waisting time trying to exploit weaknesses that looked exploitable but could not be exploited against his accurate, tenacious, resourceful defence. The section on Capablanca showed that he was the master of transforming positional advantages into material (usually just one pawn) and transforming that into a win. The section on Alekhine was good, showing how dynamism confused the positional chess players. Capablanca didn't quite understand that when he took advantage of Alekhine's innocent looking mistakes he wasn't holding a clear advantage--it was an imbalanced trade-off. Alekhine in return recieved his own definite but quite difficult to evaluate set of advantages. But the key was that he knew how to use them.

Chapter 3 is on Hypermodernism. Now you can understand "My System" without having to read a confusingly written and excessively long book. Early in my chess development my chess couch advised against learning chess strategy from "My System" because it has a hypermodern bias. So I read Ludek Pachman's 3 volume "Complete Chess Strategy" series, which was much better. But I never got to understand Nimzowitch's theories in detail. And it consists of a great deal of valuable information. But through this chapter I got to learn the the aspects that were relevent with unparalled clarity.

Chapter 4 is about Dynamism, mainly Tal and Keres. I knew about Tal, but I didn't know as much as Keres as I should have. Now I do. Both would run with the initiative beyond insanity, and win. It's a shame that this book only breezes through Bronstein and Boleslavsky, and the Soviet School's development of the King's Indian, Grunfeld, Modern Benoni, and open Sicilians (Najdorf, Scheveningen, Dragon, Marcozy, Sveshnikov, Kalashnikov, etc.)

Chapter 5 is about the Universal age. Starting in the 1970's, chess became a blend all previous styles. Its leaders were Fisher, Spassky, Karpov, and Larsen. I didn't realize Karpov was closer to Fisher in generation than to Kasparov. Also, I didn't know as much about Larsen as I should have, and I do now. He was a great attacking player who loved the initiative, with the universal style as discussed.

Chapter 7 is about chess in the future. Lars Bo Hansen makes a lot of predictions, but they are vague. It's a very interesting chapter however. The general premise is that chess is becoming more about preparation, training, and memory rather than true talent like in the days of Morphy, Lasker, and Capablanca. That basically chess is becoming more of a science. I really wanted a lot more of it.

My only complaints are that this book is only 192 pages, and that most of the players recieve only 4, and sometimes less, example games to illustrate their style. This is however counterbalanced by the generous proportions of high quality writing. I'm left wishing that it was 350 pages, more advanced, having more players, more games, and more information in general. Then it would be an instant classic for all players. But because of its lightness, it's an extremely well written not-too-difficult introduction to chess history for the improving class player.

Recommended.

The main 2 ideas in this book are:

1.Evolution of chess understanding.

2.How to improve your chess by study master games

What I like about this book.

1.The author elaborates both main ideas with great skill, your learn about chess evolution and at the same time you get useful chess advise on how to improve (for example,when a positional disavantage is compensate by "dynamic" factors).

2.The annotations are great, for example in Harrwitz- Morphy game 3 the author give you the "modern" idea behind g3 against the Dutch in 1 sentence. In other words at the same time that you go over an old game the author give you hints on current theory of that particular opening, so you can use it in your games.Comments like: In recent years this has emerged as the main line"(Sicilian Sveshnikov) p. 31 are a common in most of the games.

3.Positional themes (and not very obvious relationships among them) are discussed during the games, such as the
interplay between space, pawn structure and piece mobility. May be you already know this, but the game are really good ( new examples or with an unexpected twist)

4.The author has a preference for "fresh" games so you do not have the a Djvu sensation when reading the book (as we do when working in on tactical puzzles, that some authors? just copy and paste...) well may be couple of games were annotated before such as kasparov's scotch against Sokolov Ol 1996!, nice game to learn the interplay between pawn structure, space and piece mobility.

5.This book follows the same path that previous books from the same author. In other words, you can read this book without reading the other books, but if your read all his books you feel you are taking a chess improving program: strategy,endgames, transition between phases and now classic games.

I think that players between 1400 and 1950 USFC are the target audience, but players above that rating may get the book and enjoy the games!.

It's OK to be a fan of Lars Bo Hansen, but people reading reviews are considering whether to part with their hard-earned money. Is this book right for you?

Hansen reviews the evolution of the approach to chess in 6 stages (not counting the future stage, about which he speculates). He is surveying ALL of chess thought, mind you, so his coverage of many of the ideas is sketchy at best. However, he has done a good job of including all of the important approaches to chess play within one thin volume. He has also done a good job indicating whose games the reader should study further, in order to get more examples of the ideas in the book. For the first, romantic era, the player would do well to look at Morphy, but also Andersson and Philidor -- almost ignored today. These games do little to enlighten a player about modern openings, to be sure, but do a great deal to illustrate playing with the pawns or how to attack against imperfect defense. Steinitz and Capablanca for the scientific school, Reti and Nimzowitsch for the hypermodern, and so on. Hansen illustrates the key ideas that an ambitious player should try to master from each school, points toward a mass of historical games by key players, and moves on.

The games in this book I found not particularly well annotated. If you want truly educational annotations, better choices for the money would be:
Any game collection by Smyslov or Botvinnik
Igor Stohl's book of modern chess games
Tibor Karolyi's recent games collections (for very extensive and thorough annotations)
Keene and Simpole's book on Petrosian
All of these books contain highly educational annotations as well as presenting interesting games, and in fact anyone who carefully studied all of them in succession would probably come out a very strong amateur chess player.

This book by Hansen is probably best for players who want to become universal in style, able to handle any position, and thereby make themselves relatively bulletproof in serious play. People who have neglected the study of Steinitz or Morphy, for example, may find they are uncomfortable in semi-open and open positions, respectively; they may be devastating in the Queen's Gambit, Nimzo-Indian, or Closed Sicilian, but have problems if their opponent draws them into different types of games. By contrast, a player who uses Hansen's book as the springboard of a personal plan to study all of chess history will ilkely end up more or less comfortable in a wide variety of positions, which will make that person unusually hard to beat in tournaments, while giving the player a better chance of beating strong opposition. This appears to be the target audience: not HOW STRONG ARE YOU NOW, nor even HOW GOOD DO YOU WANT TO BE, but rather HOW UNIVERSAL? If you want true mastery of chess, this is probably a useful and indeed an important book.