Wednesday, January 5, 2011

Book Review



I recently finished reading the book,"The Ten Most Common Chess Mistakes". This book was written by the renowned chess player and chess author, Larry Evans. I found it a slightly strange coincidence that I was reading one of his books when the news of his passing was announced.
The book is the second edition published by Cardoza Publishing. The book has 218 examples of typical blunders separated into groups of similar theme. There are ten chapters of these different themes. Larry has given each one of these different examples an interesting yet descriptive name followed by a brief story or explanation of the game or position at hand. The majority of these examples are only one page long, making this a perfect book for down time in the throne room.
While I found this book very entertaining and easy to read, I think the most important stuff to be learned out of this book comes from the Introduction and the first two pages of chapter one and all of the last chapter, chapter eleven. Chapter eleven is particularly interesting because it explains the importance and how to retro-analyze games and positions. Lastly, I was surprised to see, as I turned the page, an example from a local game with both names recognizable to me as patrons of tournaments from my area! You guys are famous now! Congrats!