Bruce Pandolfini is one of the best known chess teachers in the US and also a pretty prolific chess writer. Among his most acclaimed books is "Pandolfini's endgame Course", an introduction into chess endings for beginner-level players. "Weapons of Chess: An Omnibus of Chess Strategies" aims at the same audience: beginner to intermediate level chess players who want to improve their play by learning the basics, in this case of chess strategy. The back of the cover calls it the "[...] most accessible and easy-to-use chess strategy book ever." Most of the time, the cover text of books is anywhere from completely useless to totally exaggerating and chess books whose title/cover design is often chosen by editors with little knowledge about chess are no exception. In this case, however, I wholeheartedly agree with the description. The text is easy to understand and a pleasure to read.

"Weapons of Chess" explains all the major concepts of chess strategy from the exchange of minor pieces to doubled rooks. Throughout the book, Pandolfini emphasizes pawn structures, a topic which until recently seemed totally incomprehensible and out of reach to me. Every concept is explained using one or more chess diagrams and words, there are no variations shown in the book. The diagram on the right shows one example from the book. The topic is fixed strongpoints and Pandolfini explains "Fixed center pawns guard two key squares, or strongpoints. A point or square is strong for you if your fixed pawn guards it. For each side, a fixed center's strongpoints are always on the center -file and the bishop-file next to it. In diagram 80, White's strongpoints are c5 and e5. Black's are c4 and e4. The basic plan for a fixed pawn center is to occupy the strongpoints. Once again, the knight is an excellent piece to do this. [...]" The whole book is basically a collection of chess diagrams and explanations of basic positional features and plans.

After all this praise, is there anything this book won't do? Of course. Getting back to the claims on the book cover, Weapons of chess "[...] doesn't rely on the usual baffling chess notation." The book shows many diagrams but does not contain variations or full games. That makes it an easy read and great for getting a first impression of basic concepts in chess strategy. However, most players, particularly the beginner-level ones the book is aimed at, will have trouble finding the moves to exploit their opponent's weak spots, even if they understand that there is a weak square or backwards pawn. Further study with detailed examples will be necessary to gain these skills, something that is not covered in this book. The book gives a good introduction of the basics and makes appetite for more. After studying "Weapons of Chess", the reader will know what the talk about good and bad bishops or fixed pawn centers in game annotations is about. And at least for myself this has been extremely helpful in my attempts to learn more about chess strategy.

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written by Christian, November 15, 2007

I use the book principally to derive "mottos", as I like to call them, i.e. general guidelines/commandments which I try to learn by heart and incorporate into my game. For example, "calculate concrete variations when it's your move, ponder strategy and general weaknesses/strengths while you wait for your opponent's move". I found the section on doubled rooks particularly helpful in that respect: "Try to double your rooks on open and half-open files. Then move your rooks to the seventh rank, doubling them there if possible." At the moment, I'm working on a list of such "mottos" for all kinds of situations.

Sometimes, though, Pandolfini's book seems unnecessarily wordy. To wit: "If you capture the enemy queen and your opponent captures your queen, you have exchanged queens." Duh.

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written by Sciurus, November 15, 2007

Christian-
deriving general guidelines is certainly a good use of the book. Right now it is more like a dictionary to me but I hope to incorporate more of the strategical concepts explained in "weapons of chess" in my analysis during games.

The example with the queens sounds funny, indeed. Must have overlooked that one. Do you think the same can be said about rooks?

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written by Blue Devil Knight, November 15, 2007

His book, Russian Chess (my review at that link) contains six heavily annotated games that goes in detail over the same strategic concepts in the context of the games. I found a fun way to consolidate some of what he said in Weapons. They complement each other wonderfully.

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written by Christian, November 15, 2007

Well, it's really quite hilarious. The whole paragraph in his "Exchanging Pieces" chapter is a magnificent tribute to redundancy: "If you capture the enemy queen and your opponent captures your queen, you have exchanged queens" is preceded by "If you capture an enemy rook with a rook of your own and your opponent takes your rook in turn, you have exchanged rooks", which is followed by the illuminating "If you give up a bishop and gain one back, you have exchanged bishops. If you lose a knight and win an enemy knight, you have exchanged knights."

And don't get me started on Pandolfini's Chessmaster commentaries.

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written by Sciurus, November 16, 2007

BlueDevil-
thanks for the link to the nice review. I actually think I saw the book in the local library so I will check it out soon.

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written by Sciurus, November 16, 2007

Christian-
that is really hilarious. I am wondering why I did not notice these - may be I shouldn't have read it late night before falling asleep? That is a general problem with books that seem to be almost too accessible: I reserve them for the time when I am already tired to save my awake time for more strenuous study.

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written by Christian, November 16, 2007

I do exactly the same! And the question that's been bothering me lately is: "How much do I study in earnest and how often do I just flush information through my brain?" It's easy enough to read a chapter in a chess book, look at opening ideas, watch a chess video -- but such consuming often doesn't translate into actual learning. Apart from turning abstract knowledge into practical experience, I really need some sort of broader context to effectively absorb and retain information, be it topical, e.g. "Lucena position" as one aspect of rook endings, or anecdotal, "fixed pawns and zugzwang, like that one time when I won against the funny-looking dude with the glasses". That's part of the reason why I like blogs; they add a personal flavour to pure knowledge, which helps me recall stuff more easily. Which is one reason why I love your friggin' squirrel.

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written by Sciurus, November 20, 2007

Christian-
I sometimes write about things just to remember them better but of course it is nice for the ego if somebody actually finds it useful!

Putting things in context certainly helps to store it in memory. It is well known that people who show some special prowess to memorize things use context or patterns to help their memory. It is sometimes hard for me to remember chess related things and the big difference between me and a master is certainly that masters have many more "chunks" or pattern stored in their brains. They can relate a new position on the board to previous games they played while most positions are brand new for me, with just a few exceptions where I, like you described, can say "so-and-so tried this trick on me and I won't fall for it again." Only too bad that I usually fall into the same trap more than once before learning sets in...

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written by likesforests, November 20, 2007

Nice review! What's bewildering is how many exceptions there are. In the Scandinavian Black wants a 'bad bishop' and in the English Black often tries hard to lose the 'bishop pair'.

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written by Sciurus, November 21, 2007

likesforests-
I started to take lessons by a chess coach to learn more about strategy a few weeks ago (more about that later). It seems that there is almost always more than one "rule" that can be applied to a given position. Then you have to decide which one is more important in that position. For instance, you might want to weaken your pawn structure if you get more active pieces in return.

Getting back to your examples, I guess the 'bad' bishop cannot be really 'bad' if Black wants to keep it, can't it?

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written by likesforests, November 22, 2007

The Scandinavian Bishop is bad by definition since most of Black's pawns are on the same colour as the bishop. But of course as you suggest it's really quite good because those pawns rarely impede the movements of the bishop and Black often gets a strong bind on the light-colored squares.

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written by likesforests, November 22, 2007

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written by Sciurus, November 23, 2007

Likesforests-
thanks for the illustrative positions. I think I understand now what you meant earlier. I am using the Scandinavian quite often myself, however, up to now I was rarely able to effectively use that bishop. But that is more due to bad technique from my part than anything else...

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written by likesforests, November 28, 2007

Emms wrote, "One of Black's principle ideas in the Scandinavian defense, particularly in the 2...Qxd5 lines, is to take command of the light squares, using the queen, light-squared bishop, knights, and also the pawns, which are usually predominantly fixed on light squared."

To be honest, this was the first game where I put that idea into practice. I think that's because two weeks ago I played through an annotated game dealing with color domination.

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written by Sciurus, November 28, 2007

Likesforests:
interesting! I have a book on the ...Qd6 variation which consists mostly of variations. Still have to find a useful comment like the one you cited in there, but that is something I miss in most opening books. They could be a bit more wordy for my taste. How do you like Emms' book?

I personally find it very hard to apply things I learned 'theoretically' from studying to my games. There are just so many possibilities and I feel I lack a lot of experience. One thing where I see most improvement is my correspondence games, where I have ample time to think. In the end, it all comes down to practice, practice, practice... I am afraid that I study too much and play too little, but there is only so much time for chess.

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written by likesforests, November 30, 2007

Emms' book is fine if you like the Qa5 variation. He begins with 5 pages on the ideas behind the Qa5 variation and 3 pages on the ideas behind the Nf6 variation. Then, he delves into variations and sample games like most books.

I think knowing the first 4-6 moves of your opening cold is important, but beyond that it's more important to study the sample games than to memorize variations. Let's face it--our opponents usually leave book by then or even sooner.

When looking at sample games I pay particular attention to how they choose to develop their pieces, and how they seem to handle the problems their opponents set for them.

I then play some 3/0 blitz games against a medium-strength computer opponent to see if I learned anything, then I return to the annotated sample games and compare.

My 'Black 1.e4' repertoire once consisted of 500 positions. Now my entire white/black repertoire hs 34 positions which I am slowly becoming more familiar with.

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written by Sciurus, November 30, 2007

Thanks. I also like to look at complete games when studying openings. Remarks of the kind "and Black converted his advantage..." without showing how to exploit the advantage or often not even explaining why Black has an advantage are really useless for me. My opening repertoire consists only of a couple of example games I found in books.

I hope by studying strategy I will finally be able to understand why somebody has an advantage or a weakness such as a weak square or the inferior bishop.

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written by Jagadish, December 03, 2007

For those who complain that the book is not good enough, there are enough sites to start with, that give basic knowledge for free. After that, this book looks like a good read.

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written by Sciurus, December 04, 2007

Hi Jagadish,
I agree, "Weapons of chess" is definitely a good read, particularly for chess players who are new to chess strategy. All other books I have browsed through so far are less comprehensible for beginners.

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