The (F)utility of GM Writings?
I’ve been doing a lot of thinking and research lately on the idea of teaching chess, and I’m rapidly coming to the conclusion that there are few things more generally useless to the developing player than books written by GMs. There are a few exceptions to this rule, but the exceptions are very few indeed.
As I look to my own shelves, I see the vast majority of books that I have benefitted the most from were not written by GMs, and I suspect I’m not alone in that. I could name half a dozen or so GMs who have written some very useful books, true, but at the same time I’m sure the total doesn’t rise above 2% of the GM population over the years.
Some of the most useful books in chess written today come from the pens (keyboards?) of John Watson and Jacob Aagard, neither of which has reached GM status. And the top level of instructional material comes from IM Mark Dvoretsky’s “School of Excellence” series.
I think part of the reason is that it’s hard for a GM to think back to the days of being a club player, to remember what is known by the average club player, and what is only remotely suspected. Also, success on the GM level requires different skills. For example, opening preparation plays a large part in a GM’s success. But on the club level, opening prep is a far less significant factor. (One year, in an effort to prove that point to my students, I dug out the entire batch of my wins from the previous season and assessed the openings. It was a bad year for the opening phase of my game, I guess, because in over 75% of the games I won, I was doing significantly worse coming out of the opening than my opponent. I haven’t studied openings with any sort of dilligence in over a decade, and it shows, I guess.)
That leads GMs to write about what they find most important, and true, once the student has reached 2000+ (perhaps even 2200+) those factors will become important to the student as well, but when their opponents are all rated under 1700, it’s the fundamental chess skills that matter, not the ability to memorize 37 moves of the latest theory in the Arkangelsk Ruy Lopez.
I think in many ways its the same reason that great baseball or basketball players generally make bad managers. The fundamentals came easy to them, and are second nature to them now, so it never occurs to them they might need to be taught to someone else.
Don’t get me wrong; I’m not saying we should never buy books from GMs, or that GMs should just shut up and play. I’m just saying don’t make the alphabet soup in front of the name more important than the content of the book.
September 2nd, 2006 at 5:19 pm
You are true in many retrospects. There are a few gems for the beginning player though. If I may start up a list here:
Logical Chess: Move by Move: Every Move Explained - Irving Chernev is amazing well written considering it introduces many concepts and explains every move as if you were just starting out playing chess
Winning Chess Series - Yasser Seirawan - I have found this series to be great for the younger audience who wants to learn chess. The examples are clearly defined and the way he has written the books comes out in an almost Childish Nature
Comprehensive Chess Course - Lev Alburt - If you have been in the chess world for any period of time, you know that Lev Alburt is by far one of the best teachers of chess in the world. Personally I almost own the entire series.
Art of Attack in Chess - Vladimir Vukovic - I read only the first part of the book, and I found my attacking ability to increase greatly. Not for the beginner player though. If you do decide to pick up this book, I suggest you at least have all your basic endgames, tactics, and strategies down.
Those are probably the most well known books. Add to this list if you may!
September 2nd, 2006 at 7:28 pm
Sure thing, there are some (though I kind of wonder if you’re overrating Alburt, and I, too own the entire series). You’ve hit on just about all of the GMs, though. Max Euwe has some, as does Znosko-Borovsky, but was the latter ever acknowledged as a GM? Then there’s Purdy, and perhaps Emanual Lasker. So, out of the hundreds of GMs through history, we’ve come up with 8 names. We could add Fischer but I have to wonder how much of “Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess was him and how much was Leslie Ault, a fairly underrated author. So, maybe if we worked really hard we could raise that to a dozen. Out of a century of chess writing. I think the point still stands.
The chess author that’s done the most for my game (so far) is C. J. S. Purdy. And that’s because he specifically spurns the typical annotation style GMs seem attached to, and writes for the average player (and doesn’t hesitate to criticize his brethren that seem unable to do so). Unlike most, he seemed to understand what the average player needed. Then there’s IM Jeremy Silman. And from that stable of IM’s has come as many or more valuable books than the stable of GMs, though there are three times as many GMs as IMs in the list.
I guess I’m getting particular, after years of book collecting. I just pulled a few hundred off my shelves, because they were useless. I still see hundreds left, whose utility has yet to be demonstrated, at least to me.