Tuesday, November 10, 2015

ATTACKING GAMES 101
BLOG REVIEW OF VOLUME #002




I am so excited about this new chess book, Attacking Games 101 Volume #002 that instead of a boring old book review, I'm going to turn this into a blog review. I bet that's never been done before. Well maybe it has, but the idea is to go through this book one blog at a time.

Why am I so excited about this book? Because it was written with a chess player of my strength in mind, Not just in the content but in the structure of the text. Johnson annotates move by move the plans he uses to destroy his club player opponents. This is like the enemy sharing his secrets of attack. Most high level players aren't willing to look at the games of peasant club players. But peasant chess players, let's face it, constitute most of us.

As the co-author of Tactics Time, I am a firm believer in the usefulness of studying the games of average players in order to improve your chess, if you are an average club player.That doesn't mean I don't study the games of great players. That is very useful as well. But I learn more from seeing the mistakes and consequences of players like me, for the simple reason that these are going to be the types of mistakes I will most likely encounter at the local chess club, or tournament which is where I play. And I usually play in the U1800 section although I have occasionally peeked over the clouds into the open section, usually as a result of studying books like Attacking 101 by Joel Johnson.

This is just the introductory post, explaining what I will be doing. I will take short segments of the book, not even full chapters, study them, and then blog about what I learned. I mainly do this for selfish reasons. When I try to tell others about what I have learned, it forces me to put it into my own words, and therefore is more likely to stay with me.

So stay tuned and I will post study session 1. soon. Maybe even today.



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