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Thursday, March 11, 2010

Curse of the Chess Expert

Daaim Shabazz, Ph.D. wrote an interesting little article on a site named The 65th Square entitled The Curse of the Chess Expert. What made it interesting to me was the comment:
Despite the wide variety of chess literature, it has become common to hear many young players show a deep disregard for studying classic chess books. Most would rather make extensive use of audio/video media and computer databases.

Food for thought! To that I would add a trend I’ve noticed in recent years and that is the glut of How to Win With the ….. opening books which promise quick and easy wins. These books are easy to produce and do nothing to teach aspiring players the finer points of chess like positional understanding and endings.

And of course there are the tactical servers. These sites are fun and sometimes frustrating but they offer no instructions on HOW to spot tactics in your own games so their value is somewhat limited.

Chess is not a video game but a lot of players brought up on the Internet play it like it is. You can’t beat a good chess book and the feel of a real plastic chess set as learning tools.

1 comment:

  1. Really amazing !

    "You can’t beat a good chess book and the feel of a real plastic chess set as learning tools."

    That's the real thing, I love to study chess OTB, I love to read printed books ( pdf's are some sort of "try before you buy" stuff ).

    Following your blog on my RSS feeds daily and enjoying your opinions fully.

    Thanks, Mr. Tartajubow, have a nice day !

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