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 There are many practical suggestions throughout the book, ideas for things to do (methods and procedures) that will certainly make you a better player. Some are quite obvious and you may have done them or something similar already, while others you'll have wished you had thought of before.
Reviewed by P.P.O. Kane
Studying Chess Made Easy
By Andrew Soltis
Batsford, April 2010
ISBN: 9-781-9063-8867-6
For ambitious club players especially, this is an invaluable book.
Soltis sets out to answer the question, 'How can you best and most effectively study chess?' He devotes some chapters to specific topics such as how to approach the opening and the endgame; how to learn from master games; how best to go about improving your calculation of variations and, of course, acquiring the concomitant skill of accurately evaluating the various visualised position(s). Also, he addresses issues around just choosing a move, which one would have thought would be quite simple -- though it rarely is.
It is the more general chapters that are the most interesting though, as these reveal the author's pedagogical approach. He believes that learning is best when it is hands-on (practical and involving play and competition in some form); and that to be effective it must be involving: fun and fascinating for the learner. It is in the nature of chess, according to Soltis, that most learning must take place independently and that information is often absorbed subliminally. On reflection, this is hardly surprising, since any one aspect of chess will necessarily touch on others.
There are many practical suggestions throughout the book, ideas for things to do (methods and procedures) that will certainly make you a better player. Some are quite obvious and you may have done them or something similar already, while others you'll have wished you had thought of before.
Studying Chess Made Easy is a very interesting book, written in Soltis's characteristically engaging and accessible prose. If you are at all serious about improving your game, you're sure to find it useful.
About the reviewer: P.P.O. Kane lives and works in Manchester, England. He welcomes responses to his reviews and you can reach him at ludic@europe.com
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