I was playing in the U.S. Amateur Teams East this weekend past and bought a fantastic DVD that I think will be a must for a lot of serious players. It's called Winning Middlegame Structures by Ivan Sokolov(same as his book), and it is a near 4 hour lesson on pawn structures and how to play them. I highly recommend it to everyone.
Originally posted by sundown316 I was playing in the U.S. Amateur Teams East this weekend past and bought a fantastic DVD that I think will be a must for a lot of serious players. It's called Winning Middlegame Structures by Ivan Sokolov(same as his book), and it is a near 4 hour lesson on pawn structures and how to play them. I highly recommend it to everyone.
After reading your post i looked up the book on amazon (it's so great that you can 'look inside'!) I've been after a book on pawn structure for years, this is perfect, thanks for the tip. I remember seeing a video on youtube that someone had uploaded of Jeremy Silman discussing pawn structure and strategy and was really interested but unfortunately they only uploaded the first 'video' (ripped from VHS) so i only got the first little snippet. 🙁
Originally posted by Marinkatomb After reading your post i looked up the book on amazon (it's so great that you can 'look inside'!) I've been after a book on pawn structure for years, this is perfect, thanks for the tip. I remember seeing a video on youtube that someone had uploaded of Jeremy Silman discussing pawn structure and strategy and was really interested but unfortunately they only uploaded the first 'video' (ripped from VHS) so i only got the first little snippet. 🙁
Originally posted by robbie carrobie What's wrong with Soltis pawn structure chess?
Im working through that book now. So far it seems very incomplete to me. too little explanation, especially in the annotations. When he notates a move as a mistake he doesnt explain why and just in general very light notations.
Originally posted by iChopWoodForFree Im working through that book now. So far it seems very incomplete to me. too little explanation, especially in the annotations. When he notates a move as a mistake he doesnt explain why and just in general very light notations.
He provides at least six illustrative games in each and every section to illustrate the plans for black and white based on the respective pawn configurations. He skips most if not all of the the opening theory and gets straight to the critical point. You must remember he is covering at least 16 types of pawn configurations for both black and white with respective plans and illustrative games for each. He cannot afford to do a move by move account. That book added three hundred rating points to my game and took me from a 1200-1400 rated player to a 1700-1800
Originally posted by robbie carrobie He provides at least six illustrative games in each and every section to illustrate the plans for black and white based on the respective pawn configurations. He skips most if not all of the the opening theory and gets straight to the critical point. You must remember he is covering at least 16 types of pawn configurations for both black and white ...[text shortened]... three hundred rating points to my game and took me from a 1200-1400 rated player to a 1700-1800
I doubt that. This would only have any use for 1800+ as under that is strong tactics and a good opening repertoire. Unless you mean ratings on here... i dont know how they correlate to other ratings.
Originally posted by robbie carrobie What's wrong with Soltis pawn structure chess?
I haven't read any Soltis. what is your opinion of his writing? I decided to go for this book after flicking through some of the pages on Amazon. I really like the way it is structured and the fact it uses whole games.
I have recently bought a new phone and have an app which allows me to use the camera to do object character recognition of chess diagrams! It makes reading chess books SO much easier!! 😀
Originally posted by Marinkatomb I haven't read any Soltis. what is your opinion of his writing? I decided to go for this book after flicking through some of the pages on Amazon. I really like the way it is structured and the fact it uses whole games.
I have recently bought a new phone and have an app which allows me to use the camera to do object character recognition of chess diagrams! It makes reading chess books SO much easier!! 😀
Soltis writes great books when he confines himself to chess history. His books on Marshall and Botvinnik are excellent. But his books on openings are mostly hack work, to be honest.
Originally posted by iChopWoodForFree I doubt that. This would only have any use for 1800+ as under that is strong tactics and a good opening repertoire. Unless you mean ratings on here... i dont know how they correlate to other ratings.
I don't think this is completely true, at least not for everyone. I know too many player counterexamples.
I have no reason to doubt Robbies's claim, as I have seen similar examples in OTB play where one book seemed to be the missing link for a player to elevate his/her game a class or two.
Originally posted by robbie carrobie He provides at least six illustrative games in each and every section to illustrate the plans for black and white based on the respective pawn configurations. He skips most if not all of the the opening theory and gets straight to the critical point. You must remember he is covering at least 16 types of pawn configurations for both black and white ...[text shortened]... three hundred rating points to my game and took me from a 1200-1400 rated player to a 1700-1800
From what I read in the review the book is directed at 1.d4 players like yourself.
18 Feb '15 20:36
Fantastic DVD!
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