Let me extol the benefits of ChessCafe for one more week.
We’ve reviewed the three contributors I read seriously every month. I glance at most of the others, and there are occasional nuggets of gold in several others.
There is a book review column that changes much more frequently than once a month, and the reviews are quite good. I’ve read several that are right on the money.
My appreciation for Nigel Davies is moving up. His February 2005 article is one of my favorites. We have all heard (I hope!) that beginners should not spend a large percentage of their time studying openings – and I support that. The reason is that your sight of the board, your tactical acuity, and strategic knowledge have to be at a certain level before you can appreciate and understand the ideas behind the openings and why a particular opening has certain strengths – and certain weaknesses. Alas in chess, as in life, you don’t get something for nothing (unless you are playing me in a blitz game!) Nigel’s article presents a pretty well rounded opening repertoire that requires little theoretical knowledge. So you can start practicing openings without wasting precious study hours memorizing variations (which hardly ever helps).
There is a column from the Informant series every week. You may not be able to afford a subscription, but you have access to the best Grandmaster games – annotated! – at ChessCafe.
So let’s say that you have worked diligently through your favorite contributors this month, and have some serious study time on your hands. What then?
Archives!!
Current contributors have all their back columns a mouse click away. Non–current contributors have all their columns zipped up and available to download.
Who are these contributors?
The late Anthony Miles, an incredibly strong English GM has two years worth.
Lev Alburt (with Burt Hochberg) have almost that much.
Sunil Weeramantry and several others have a year or more.
Yasser Seirawan is recycling the best articles from Inside Chess (4 years worth now)
I am quite serious about the value of these columns. If you want to improve, there is no shortcut – you must work. ChessCafe ensures that you can get quite good without spending any money on books (as long as you have an internet–accessible computer!).
Try it!
Bob Wilder