Chess Cafe Correction
I normally don’t note things like this here, but since Chess Cafe provides no way to either:
- Link directly to the review for more than a month
- Post a comment to the article or forum
I’m not left with many alternatives.
In a review of Maxim Blokh’s excellent book Combinative Motifs, Eugene Manchester makes the claim that it is the hardcopy form of CT-ART. This is factually incorrect, though I can easily understand how it may seem true. Maxim Blokh has a tendency to release books which contain much of the content of other books he has released, and there is a good overlap between the material.
The hardcover version of CT-ART, though, is The Art of Combination, a slim green volume which is currently extremely overpriced at the internet bookshops that offer it (prices range from $99 to $325 for a softcover book that is only 10 years old and retailed for less than $20).
Because of the absurd prices for it, though, I would recommend buying the more recent Combinative Motifs (Amazon $18). It has much of the same material, presented in a slightly different manner, and is far cheaper. Or you could go for “600 Combinations”, a still smaller and cheaper volume which is a subset of the larger works.
Maxim Blokh, like all good teachers, continuously reworks his material to improve it, or perhaps just to keep it fresh. The books should be considered simply snapshots of the material he is using at that particular time.