| Review of Perfect Your Chess Ask strong players how to improve and you are likely to get many answers but a few suggestions will come up again and again: look for competition stronger than yourself, study endgames, analyze your games carefully, play over well-annotated examples of the masters and hone your tactical skill by solving lots of exercises. The latter in particular is very much in vogue and the trend is not just confined to double attacks and mates in three. Now you can find books full of training material on all facets of the game that strive to help one improve by direct engagement in the subject matter. Just this year New in Chess published My Daily Exercise by Heinz Brunthaler and Igor Khmelnitsky came out with Chess Exam and Training Guide: Tactics - both aimed at intermediate players (1400-1900) - and GM-elect Jacob Aaagard wrote the considerably more challenging Practical Chess Defence. Now super-GM Andrei Volokitin and his coach Vadimir Grabinsky have upped the ante with Perfect Your Chess (2007 Gambit Publishing: www.gambitbooks.com, figurine algebraic, paperback, 159 pages, $28.95). First a word about the authors. Andrei Volokitin is only 21 but he has already accomplished a lot, most significantly playing board three for the gold medal winning Ukrainian Olympic team at Calvia in 2004 - his score of 8.5 from 12 earning him a 2771 performance rating. His co-author, IM Vladimir Grabinsky, is probably only known in the Ukraine but I became acquainted with him this summer while playing in a round robin in Edmonton. One day I had the opportunity to ask the top-seed, 21-year-old GM Valery Akeskulov, how it was that the Ukraine produced so many great young talents. I had already factored in a tradition of excellence, government and private support, and an economically challenging environment in which being a chess professional did not look so bad, but Valery added one more key ingredient - good coaching. One of the best he said was IM Grabinsky of Lvov and then rattled off a list of teenage IMs and GMs over 2500 on a rapid course toward 2600. Perfect Your Chess is geared towards this level and many of the young talents Aveskulov mentioned have gone through this material which relies on the games of Volikitin and others . The 367 exercises are aimed at a minimum at what the authors judge to be Fide Master level and many are at the International Master and Grandmaster level. This is not to say that lower rated readers will find nothing of value here, but what it most certainly means is these are not easy. If you think you can solve ten exercises in half an hour forget it. Try one or two. Even if you fail, take heart, Volikitin and Grabinsky offer detailed explanations that add to the learning experience. As usual for Gambit Perfect Your Chess is cleanly laid out and easy to use with large diagrams ( 6 per page) to solve from. Those rated over 2000 who are ready to work will find much useful material. Highly recommended. |