How and when to break the Rules in Chess

En prisgunstig og innholdsrik kombinasjon av de to tankevekkende bøkene "Break the Rules" og "Play Uncoventional Chess and Win". Sannelig en inpirerende bok for å komme videre til mesterstyrke i sjakk.

Forlagets egen omtale:

The computer has changed the way top players think about chess. The silicon mind has no psychological barriers. It is "willing" to check moves that most humans, including top players, consider absurd and reject instantly. Thus this brave, new computer era inevitably leads to a reassessment of old axioms, principles and evaluations.

In Play Unconventional Chess, the reader will discover the incredible power unconventional moves can have. These moves contradict the most fundamental principles of the "old chess", and yet most of them played by leading grandmasters.

At first sight these moves look so strange that the reader can not avoid asking, "Was this grandmaster was inspired or drunk?" The answer will definitely surprise you.

Omtale av boka Break the Rules in Chess:

As we progress as chess players we quickly learn a set of guidelines which help us to formulate plans, develop typical strategies and recognize key tactics. However, chess is not an easy game, with fixed 'rules' that can be applied to every single position. In fact, blindly following such rules proves to be counterproductive and prevents a player from moving on to the next level, whereas knowing when to 'break' these rules is precisely the skill which separates the best from the rest.

In Break the Rules!, Grandmaster Neil McDonald studies in depth the key components of successful rule-breaking in chess. Drawing upon his own experience and using illuminating examples from modern grandmaster chess, McDonald examines how to avoid stereotypical thinking, how to exploit typical thinking patterns, and how to confuse and beat opponents with surprising ideas.

Starten av forordet til McDonald:

I wish to define breaking the rules as follows: allowing our intuition, calculation or reasoning about a position to look beyond the rules and precepts we have im-posed on ourselves. These rules and precepts have a vital purpose: they cut down the number of things we have to examine and so save us from drowning in a sea of possibilities. They might have been built up and refined over many years, and chess would remain a baffling world without them to guide us.

The rules of positional chess are essentially designed to prevent one of the following:

a) Jeopardizing your king’s safety; b) Losing material; c) Ruining your pawn structure; d) Being outnumbered in the fight for central or other important squares; e) Putting or leaving the pieces on inactive or exposed squares.

It stands to reason that, everything else being equal, precepts and laws that warn us of the dangers of the above five scenarios are of great value. The problem is they become like a second nature, and we can’t see excellent possibilities that lie beyond their reach.