Garry Kasparov is certainly a superstar among chess players. I even knew his name well before I started playing chess. Therefore, I was happy to find his latest book, "How Life Imitates Chess: Making the Right Moves, from the Board to the Boardroom" in the local library. From the moment I saw the book I was very skeptical of it's content - usually I find books written by famous people that try to relate their field of expertise to something bigger, well, how should I say, anything from not interesting to exaggerated in the conclusions. However, this book came not only practically for free (long live the library!) but somehow also got onto the library's shelf before the official publication date (Update: apparently I read the British version which was published ahead of the US version). I simply could not resist to be one of the first bloggers to review the book while still being able to keep my quality standard of reviewing only books that I have read completely.

With "Everyone's Second Chess Book", National Master Dan Heisman tries to fill the gap between books for absolute beginners and texts written for intermediate players. I bought this book about 10 months after I started to play chess at a point where I was not sure if studying chess can make me a better chess player, or in plain English: during one of these phases where I wondered if I could get anything right during a chess game. The decision of buying this book was therefore very much based on the idea of "back to the basics" and even though I knew already most of the material covered in the book I do not regret buying it.

A while ago I played through the games in Irving Chernev's book "Logical Chess: Move By Move". Studying the games in Chernev's book was fun and made me want to read more annotated games. Therefore, I looked around to find another game collection with annotations that are written with beginner-level players in mind. After a little bit of research, I decided to buy "Chess Master vs. Chess Amateur" by Max Euwe and Walter Meiden. Almost all books containing annotated chess games focus on games played by master-level players. I still think that I learnt a lot by studying the games of chess masters using Chernev's book. My own games, however, are decided by mistakes that are far from being subtle. Euwe's book focuses on typical strategic mistakes chess amateurs make. By studying these less than brilliant games, I was hoping to learn to avoid mistakes and to exploit potential weak moves of my opponents.

"Bobby Fischer Goes to War: How A Lone American Star Defeated the Soviet Chess Machine" is not a chess book in the strict sense. In fact, it only contains few chess moves. Nevertheless, this book played a pivotal role in my relation to the game of chess because it contributed to my decision to finally spend some effort to learn to play chess myself.

Most commercial chess computer programs are only available for Windows. One exception is Shredder, the chess engine by Stefan Meyer-Kahlen that won the World Computer Chess Championship several times is now also available for Linux and Macs. I am using free software running Linux almost exclusively since more than 10 years and got curious on what I miss in the world of commercial chess software. Therefore, I gave ShredderLinux a try. There are currently 3 different Shredder versions available for Linux: Shredder Classic, Shredder 9, and Deep Shredder 9. Shredder Classic is based on an older and slightly weaker version of the engine but has the advantage that a free 30-day trial version is available for download. Shredder 9 provides a stronger version and Deep Shredder is optimized to take full advantage of multi processor machines. The Linux versions come with the chess engine itself and a java-based graphical user interface.

Many chess players seem to love books and I am no exception of that. So what could be better than a good chess book? As I started to play chess in January, I simply could not imagine that I would ever be interested in playing through other people's games. After a couple of weeks, however, I gave in to all the recommendations of going over games played by chess masters and got myself a copy of "Logical Chess: Move By Move: Every Move Explained New Algebraic Edition" by Irving Chernev, a classic collection of annotated chess games that is specifically written for chess beginners. I have to admit that I completely changed my mind: After playing through the first game, I was hooked and just finished playing through all the games.

Most people agree that studying tactics is probably the single most important task for the aspiring chess novice. Regularly solving tactics problems is the usual prescription for this, and there are both computer programs and websites such as the Chess Tactics Server to help with that. Tactics puzzles usually show a position and either black or white can gain a piece or mate by playing the correct combination. Solving many of these problems is said to improve board vision. A comment on a blog post about free chess software for Linux made me aware of a java program with a different approach. The Chess Visualization Trainer (CVT) written by Dietrich Kappe gives problems without actually showing the board. For instance, it lets you decide if "e6" is a dark square or asks you if the position "White: K c6, R h3, P f3, and g4; black: K h5, N g6, P g5, and h6" with black to move is a mate.