Applying Logic in Chess

I started reading the reviews for this book and there is no question, IM Kislik is the victim of some serious troll attacks. One guy even went so far as to copy a name of an excellent Chessable author, and pretend it was his. Then of course he attacked the book. He even accused Kislik of being a sexual deviant! HUH????I can not undo the negative comments Erik has gotten but they are completely false. By way of a short background, I am a USCF expert for the last 40 years but have not played much OTB (over the board) in the last 20. Instead, I was drawn into Correspondence Chess and am rated over 2500 in ICCF. I have one of the largest libraries in the world, and have most everything published since 1930. ( I have over 100 books that predate 1930 as well). In addition, I have all but 3-4 ChessBase videos, that means 400+, and everything published by Foxy, Roman, ChessWorld and I-Chess. I am leaving out dozens of other things. In short, I have been in chess for 50+ years, have bought almost everything, have seen it all, etc etc.I can not begin to extol the love I have for this book. I ranks right up there with Bronstein's Zurich 1953, Tal's book on his first match for the World Championship with Botvinnik, and just a few others. In plain fact, I have not been able to put it down since I got it. I take it everywhere. When you are waiting at the bus stop, I promise you will like this book more than any tactical app you have on your phone.Erik takes a fresh review of how things have drastically changed in chess with the onset of computers. While some of what he writes has appeared in other books (how could it not), I have yet to see any book that is so complete. To say it is loaded with practical advice would do the book a great disservice. It is so much more than that. It is hard to give examples, because there is just so much good stuff! It would take me more than the 320 odd pages to properly comment on everything!Example: We all know that in chess a pawn = 1, bishops and knights =3, rooks = 5 and queens are 9. Who hasn't seen this? Now if you are still using this as a comparative measure when you play, you are already in trouble. Computer analysis has shown (Thanks GM Larry Kaufmann) that these numbers while easy to use and remember, are just not correct. Erik explains the new system and this is just the start! I have found that every few pages, I learn something new, or just as important, something I have forgotten. This book is like getting a high level lesson every couple of pages. I can say this, there is NO BOOK that is this thorough and his explanations will create a lot of DOH! moments for you. He writes that well.The highlight of the book is his excellent comments regarding how to use computers to study, how to use them to learn, and in general incorporate them into a streamlined system to make serious progress in chess. If you are not doing this and your future opponent's are, god help you :) How do you think all these kids are getting so good so fast?For me personally his explanation of how to construct your opening repertoire from scratch makes this book worth 10 times as much as it sold for. There is no way you can get this information more clearly explained. If only I had read this 20 years ago.... I am not going to tell you here what the method is , but you should not buy another opening book until you read this one!Again, there is some serious trolling going on regarding this book. Amazon needs to change their policy regarding reviews. They allow some person with an agenda to really hurt sales of a book. It is like a review of a pillow. Five hundred people love the pillow saying it is the best night's sleep they ever had, and then the troll farm comes in and says this pillow broke my neck. Sheesh.I loved this book so much, that I bought 2 more copies, just to be sure that when I wear out one of them, I have a fresh one to use. It is that good. Trust me, you will not regret this purchase and hopefully you will come here and give it the review it deserves.I cannot resist this, but stay tuned. People take notice of authors this talented and you will see a LOT more of Erik very soon. Buy the book now before it goes out of print.

As a wrestler for 10 years, I always loved a good challenge. For me, like with many athletes, chess is our mental challenge. The biggest problem that everyone has is with motivation, hands down. If everyone could stay motivated to work towards their goals for 90 minutes a day, after a few years, they would see tremendous development. Most chess book authors forget what it was like to be a struggling, developing player, but this one is different. The author is well aware that motivation is the main issue facing most players, so he discusses the science between task-oriented motivation and results-oriented motivation early on in the book, explaining that being task-oriented makes you feel productive every day by completing tasks, and allows you to bounce back from bad results easily, while being results-oriented can crush your confidence and drive when you have bad results.How do you become task oriented though? In order to become task oriented in chess, the author discusses the skills you need to develop and the tasks to do so. Most books are very vague about what to study, just like most public intellectuals and speakers are extremely vague about what specific tasks to do to become successful. This author is not, which is a breath of fresh air and direction. He tells you exactly what he did to make record-setting strides in chess. For one, IM Kislik proposes studying at least 4 pages per day from a good chess book, which will allow you to study at least 7 big chess books a year. It adds up if you are consistent, focused, and targeted on useful tasks. The author explains that to maximize your effort, commitment devices help you stay committed, just like a reliable, measurable training plan you personally enjoy keeps you on track. He reminds us writing down your daily results keeps you honest and is empirically demonstrated to lead to the best results.For maximizing effort in your play, the author proposes the brilliant idea that to maximize your chess development, playing players approximately one class above yourself (around 200 elo) will maximize your effort exerted during the game, and the amount that you can learn from the game. This is consistent with the psychological research that to enjoy "playing," the weaker side should score close to 30% in order to stay motivated, and if they do, it will be the most fun and beneficial for them, allowing the weaker side to gradually catch up in skill over time. This is so much more than just a chess book, explaining how to develop skills in general, maximize your results in life, and develop in very difficult fields. The author discusses how he pursued Scrabble like chess: he contact the experts, figured out what the best training material was, then consistently kept learning by playing and analyzing with a high level of intellectual curiosity, developing at an outrageously fast pace in something completely unrelated to chess to prove that these methods are the cream of the crop. This is what happens when you start from first principles and have a very clear, logical approach to everything. In short, this book explains how a strong player who went from beginner to IM in 3 or 4 years as an adult would approach doing it all over again, explaining everything you need to know about all aspects of the game broken down logically -- and what he wish he knew as an amateur. This is the most useful chess book I have read before, with a super-learner explaining how to be a super-learner in chess. 5 stars.

I found the book mostly contained clear and implementable advice to improve one's chess. However, the author occasionally embarks on tangential rantings that spoiled an otherwise enjoyable read. The most annoying of which is found in chapter 7, where the author attempts to assert the superiority of chess to other games, claiming that "(chess) has the best elements of those games in better forms" and that (compared to Go) "chess is much deeper and more visually-appealing because of the piece paths and range of strategic ideas". A priori, this is nonsense. There's no inherent reason why traditional chess, as beautiful as it is, should be held in higher regard (in and of itself) to other games and chess variants. Any game with sufficient complexity will inevitably lead to innumerable strategic heuristics, of which the "superior choice" mostly comes down to personal taste. In support of his bias, he draws a distinction between "artificial" and "natural" complexity; in the sense of Go forcing complexity with the 19x19 board. This simply ignores the fact that plenty of people enjoy playing other board size variants (9x9, 13x13), and that each comes with a different flavor of play--which is the real purpose of the different sizes, and not to "artificially" inject complexity. One would imagine a parallel universe in which a mustachioed chess master bemoans the "artificial" complexity of the 8x8 board, compared to the pristine natural beauty of the 7x7. Aside from that, I would recommend the book for anyone looking for practical (if not conventional) advice. My favorite takeaway being to play people rated reasonably higher than you; I've been losing most my games since but learning at a much faster rate.

The author made it easy to understand how to play better chess without going too professional.

I liked this book very much! Thank you Erik for sharing your thoughts, it helps players to develop in the best way.

This is a unique book on the chess market. It discusses topics never touched on before e.g. the true value of pieces, the correct use of engines, evaluating the positions properly etc. It also nicely sums up the other good resources e.g. Aagaard's series "Grandmaster Preparation". Certainly it was an interesting reading that helped me to tune my training plans.The drawback of the book is the writing style of the author - many times he repeats himself, sometimes on the same page he speaks again about the same thing just chaning the syntax or word order. It is at times annoying. The book could have been 50% shorter if not for this.

When I started reading chess books 50 years ago there was a lot written about how to think about chess, general principles and planning, but there were gross omissions and misrepresentations. Most classic books like 'Think Like a Grandmaster' failed to tell the basic truth. You have to put in thousands of well guided hours of effort to achieve master or grandmaster status, in the same way that you need 4 or 5 years of full time apprenticeship to become an electrician or a session musician for that matter. This book eliminates the 'mystery' and gives the reader the surest explanation of what is really necessary to reach high levels of chess achievement that I've ever seen. Fascinating reading even if, like me, you don't have such lofty goals yourself. Essential for the young aspirant, or if you want to advise a younger person who is interested in going in that direction.

Excelente!