Aagaard's "Attacking Manual" (Volume 2)

[Arshad Ali]

I wonder if Karpov (and Spassky in later years) ever thought of writing a book called "attacking chess" perhaps how to "grind out a win with a micro edge".

This is actually a serious point that deserves its own thread. All the time one is seeing GM assessments expressed as += or =+. What exactly do they mean? More latitude in possible plans? Less restricted pieces? Easier development and more natural moves? Maybe all these factors are related? And how is a club player to play such positions? Reading a game in Informant, the positions morph effortlessly from slight advantage to clear advantage to winning advantage. How do the winners know how to play such positions and why does their opponent stumble at critical junctures? To my knowledge, except for Gufeld's pathetic book (titled "Exploiting Small Advantages"), there's no book that treats the subject matter of small edges and what to do with them. Maybe the small edge only becomes evident in hindsight, in the postmortem? During the game, the player may be too busy calculating to determine who exactly has the microscopic edge and how to use it.

Maybe someone like Nunn, Marin, or Dvoretsky could write a book on this.

[Andrew Farthing]

I noticed in the latest Chess & Bridge catalogue that there is a book by Karpov called "Find the Right Plan" due in March '10. This might touch on the sort of topics you mention.

I have no idea whether the book will be any good - regrettably the quality of books appearing under Karpov's name has been pretty variable. I think his natural feeling for where the pieces should go often means that he can't explain his thinking in a way that might be helpful to average players.

It's a shame because I like Karpov's best games a lot and I believe he's unjustifiably suffered from poor PR in the past, but I can't avoid the fact that his writing tends to be a bit bland.

[Arshad Ali]

It's a shame because I like Karpov's best games a lot and I believe he's unjustifiably suffered from poor PR in the past, but I can't avoid the fact that his writing tends to be a bit bland.

I like the book that contains Karpov's 300 Best Games, even though it's languageless. And in some of the games the assessment of a slight advantage can even be deciphered: the positions lend themselves to such assessments. Maybe his new book will shed some insight into how to play such slightly superior positions. Such assessments are also possible in, say, many of the games of earlier masters such as Rubinstein, Capablanca, and Smyslov because of the kind of chess they played. But in my exceedingly humble opinion it becomes an exercise in futility when applied to many of the games of Tal, Kasparov, and Shirov. The assessment cannot be arrived at, in particular not in the hurly-burly of battle, and in any case it would be a waste of time to finding good moves in complex positions. Usually the players themselves do not clearly know what's going on and the situation only becomes clear with computer-assisted analysis when it's seen that particular moves radically changed the situation.

There was a good piece in "Chess Instructor 2009" (don't remember the author's name), where the idea of static assessments without concomitant possible plans and variations was dismissed. That makes sense. In the past second-rate annotators have made plausible but superficial static assessments of positions and then suggested that such initial assessments by the players dictated the actual game continuations. When in fact the players have just been analysing variations, mini-strategic operations, and fluctuating plans rather than who stands better. But surely static assessments of initial positions often suggest what and where to dynamically calculate? I remember Karpov (in a book on the Spanish, I think), once saying he had started with a favorable static assessment but as he started calculating variations, he came to the conclusion that the initial assessment was misleading. The point being that strong players do often find it useful to make an initial static assessment. Anyway, this has been on my mind for a while and maybe some worthy pedagogue like Nunn, Marin, Dvoretsky, or Stohl can shed light on it.

[Kevin Thurlow]

"There was a good piece in "Chess Instructor 2009" (don't remember the author's name), where the idea of static assessments without concomitant possible plans and variations was dismissed. "

This is a good point. I recall looking at a position with a GM, and he suddenly said, "Assess the position", and made it very clear that he didn't want to know the next move, but the right plan. So you look at the strengths and weaknesses in the position for both sides then decide what sort of position you want, then work out how to get it. Then try to get it... Actually explaining to someone how you do it is difficult. Someone like Karpov just seems to KNOW where to put the pieces. If you asked him why he did something, he would probably say, "It's the right move."

[Arshad Ali]

This is a good point. I recall looking at a position with a GM, and he suddenly said, "Assess the position", and made it very clear that he didn't want to know the next move, but the right plan. So you look at the strengths and weaknesses in the position for both sides then decide what sort of position you want, then work out how to get it. Then try to get it... Actually explaining to someone how you do it is difficult. Someone like Karpov just seems to KNOW where to put the pieces. If you asked him why he did something, he would probably say, "It's the right move."

Among other writers, Silman says the same thing in his "Reassess Your Chess," and Danny King and Chris Duncan say the same thing in "Choose the Right Move." Mind, having read this stuff and grokked it in fullness hasn't made me any stronger as a player. The rapid sifting of moves, mini-plans, and evaluations is taking place at a subconscious level and is either the consequence of intensive early training or is just part of that enigma we call "talent."

The differences between decent club players, county strength players, and masters is something I find interesting -- where the differences lie, and how they manifest themselves. Dan Heisman has taken a stab at this issue in his recent "The Improving Chess Thinker," but he spends too much time at the lower levels of expertise.

[JamesMurphy]

You might want to check out "The Art of the Middlegame" by Paul Keres or "Questions of Modern Chess Theory" by Isaac Lipnitsky. I've found those two to be the most instructive so far.

Personally I learn a lot from going through famous game annotations like Fischer's "My 60 memorable games". Best way to learn how to attack is to play through games watching how other more attacking players like Tal / Fischer or even more modern chess players do it. Purchasing a book which provides a background into their thought processes will probably help a lot too.