Book Notice: Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual, 5th Edition

To paraphrase an old SNL gag, Mark Dvoretsky is still dead - the great trainer and author died in 2016 - but a new edition of his classic Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual is now in print. The mantle has been taken up by German GM and endgame specialist Karsten Müller, who made the revisions for this edition. When the first edition came out in 2003, Jacob Aagaard dubbed this the greatest chess book of all time, and while we live in a golden era of chess literature, I wouldn't be surprised if Aagaard still held that opinion. (It is at the very least on the short list for that title, and not just in Aaagaard's opinion.)

What's new? Not too much, which is what one would expect. Better engines and prolonged analytical investigations are bound to lead to little improvements on endgames that aren't within the grasp of tablebases, and some small changes in the organization of the material, especially in the rook endings section, has been done by American GM (and erstwhile Dvoretsky student) Alex Fishbein. There's also a pervasive formatting change. In earlier editions, the material that Dvoretsky considered essential was printed in a blue font. For this edition, the font is black, and the relevant text is highlighted in gray. It would be difficult for me to express how much I hate this innovation, and I hope it is banished forever not only in the sixth edition (which is now and for this very reason an absolute must), but in every future edition of every book that is to be written from now until the end of time.

I've reviewed earlier updated editions of this book, and in part out of laziness but mostly because it's especially apt, I'll quote myself: "if you don't have an earlier edition, buy this one; if you do, then don't." (Or better yet, find the fourth edition and send Russell Enterprises a note to say you bought that one instead of the 5th edition because of the gray highlighting. You'll also save yourself a few bucks.)

To be fair, your mileage may vary. You might not be bothered or distracted by the gray highlights, and might even like them. (Or may at least prefer them to the blue font.) If so, then by all means, go for it. And regardless, if you don't have any edition of this book, you should buy it - and you might as well buy the most recent one - if you are even slightly serious about the game and rated at least 1500-1600. This is too important and too good a book not to get if you're a student of the game.

An Amazon link is here, and you can have a look inside there as well.

One Last Dvoretsky Book

In stark contrast to the book mentioned in the preceding post, this is a book I'll get hot off the press. Granted, they are works in completely different chess genres, but the point is about price. If anything, this Dvoretsky book is underpriced if one compares the quality of his material with that of typical tactical books.

Those interested in getting the work should be warned that, as usual, his books are aimed at advanced players who have already achieved a fairly high level of tactical competence. If you're a master you'll find the easier problems a challenge (at least to get all the points right), while grandmasters will struggle with his more difficult material.

All the same, I recommend that everyone have a look at the excerpt and give the puzzles a try. In most of the cases the first move is pretty obvious, and when it is the difficulty comes in working through the details. In other cases the first move isn't as easy. But give it a shot; you'll find it rewarding even if you don't succeed. It's good exercise, and the aesthetic pleasure will be enhanced when it comes after you've put in an effort to solve the position for yourself.

Book Review: Chess Lessons, by Mark Dvoretsky

Mark Dvoretsky, Chess Lessons: Solving Problems & Avoiding Mistakes. (Russell Enterprises, 2018) 274 pp., $24.95. Reviewed by Dennis Monokroussos.

If you’ve been reading my blog since its inception in 2005, you know that I’m a big fan of Mark Dvoretsky’s work. Dvoretsky, who passed away in 2016, was a strong player in his day. (He was only an IM, but his FIDE rating was over 2500, and this at a time when that put him in the world’s top 50. He was in the USSR then, when it was very difficult for all but the very best Soviet players to participate in norm tournaments.) But he was even more successful as a trainer, a vocation he took up around the age of 30. His students/trainees won numerous junior world championships, frequently reached the Candidates stage, and achieved everything but the absolute world championship.

Dvoretsky’s work was not confined to face-to-face work with top-level students, however. He also published many books and articles with very high-level training material. His work wasn’t intended for anyone below around 2000, and that’s being pretty liberal. Most of his work is designed for masters, and a sizable chunk of his material is challenging even for grandmasters. It’s not all like that, but even his comparatively easy material isn’t designed to be read on the subway or in bed before falling asleep.

So what about this new book, which was written before his passing but had to be translated into English? Is it accessible to elites only, or can strong club players (with a strong work ethic and a high tolerance for pain and frustration) benefit from it as well? Dvoretsky suggests in the Introduction that the book is a sort of addendum to his Analytical Manual. That was one of the most challenging books I ever worked with – maybe the most challenging – so if his assessment of Chess Lessons is correct it’s not a book for the casual player – even if that player is rated around 2000.

But let me suggest that it’s not that bad. There’s a good deal of “talk” in the book, both to explain what’s happening in the position and to offer general advice. There are lots of challenging questions from Dvoretsky, but not all of them require a trained professional to find their solution. More importantly, not all of them are capable of being understood only by trained professionals. A comparatively lower-rated player can learn from the book, even without managing to solve any of the tasks posed. (It isn’t a puzzle book, but Dvoretsky will put a question mark at a diagram in the course of a game or game fragment to indicate a challenge, along with “W” or “B” to indicate whose move it is and 1-5 asterisks to indicate the position’s difficulty.)

Still, the book is designed for players who are professional or aspiring to it. To go through the book as intended will require a good deal of time and effort, and as noted above, a high tolerance for pain and frustration. As someone who has worked a little with Dvoretsky, mostly with his books but also in person, I can assure you that you will grow from his books if you use them in the right way. Whether you have the time, ability, and inclination to do so is a question you’ll have to answer for yourself.

Thus far I’ve said almost nothing about the book’s contents. With some books that would be inexcusable, but with Dvoretsky’s works it’s pretty normal. A lot of his books are collections of complicated positions where one must work through concrete details and figure out the truth; they’re very rarely about general chess understanding or solving positions based on stock tactics. He trusts that his readers have already learned these lessons and are trying to achieve the highest levels. The are hundreds if not thousands of tactical primers and dozens of books on typical positional themes, standard pawn structures, and so on. To go from a competent master to a world-class player involves skills that go beyond what we can all learn by rote learning, and his exercises are pitched accordingly. (There’s nothing wrong with rote learning; without that foundation a player is unlikely to become a competent club player, let alone a professional. It’s not sufficient for those who want to become IMs and GMs, but it is necessary.)

Lest you think that I’m kidding about the very concrete nature of what Dvoretsky is (or rather, was) up to in his books, here are the seven parts of his book:

Part 1: Lessons from a Certain Game

Part 2: Positional Games

Part 3: Discussions in the Opening

Part 4: The King in Peril

Part 5: Under Fire

Part 6: Games with Questions

Part 7: Playing-out

Helpful, right? (Not really.) It doesn’t get any better when you dig into each part. For instance, the sections of Part 3 are titled “Fascinating Classics”, “Two Failures of Eugenio Torre”, “A Stumbling Block”, and “Unobvious Candidate Moves”. The first section begins with the famous Rotlewi-Rubinstein game and examines other games with a similar structure. Torre’s failures are both on the Black side of the Classical Slav. The “stumbling block” focuses on Nadanian’s treatment of the Basman-Sale Variation of the Sicilian, and the last section looks at a mind-bending and wild Slav sideline. But don’t be misled: in none of these cases is Dvoretsky offering anything like opening advice. It’s all about problem-solving, which is the primary focus of all his chess works. It could be an ending, a middlegame, or an opening – whatever. We as chess players have to solve problems. We can’t move pieces, can’t consult books, can’t consult engines (unless we’re correspondence players or cheaters). We memorize and study, but ultimately, we have to figure some things out for ourselves, and training ourselves in that ability is what we have to do to get really, seriously, meaningfully good at the game. Dvoretsky isn’t trying to teach us any of the variations covered in part 3. He has simply found a fresh batch of games with deep problems to solve. In some cases there are positional ideas or opening variations we can reuse, and in other cases – most, I’d say – the analysis will have no direct application. But building up skill by deep analysis of challenging positions? That’s the ultimate reusable benefit.

In conclusion: if you’re at least 2000 (maybe 2200, and certainly above) and ambitious, the book is worth your while. If you’re below 2000, the exercises will be far too challenging; and if you don’t have the time, energy, or inclination to really work at the book it’s not worth your while either. Of course, one can buy the book and replay the games and analysis just for pleasure, and to learn a bit here and there en passant. There are better books for that purpose, however, and if you go through the book in this way you’ll lose its main benefit – you’ll already know the solutions. So I recommend the book to higher-rated players with ambition, and as something ambitious lower-rated players can work towards.

(Amazon link here; publisher's excerpt here.)

Book Notice: Dvoretsky's *Maneuvering: The Art of Piece Play*

Mark Dvoretsky, Maneuvering: The Art of Piece Play. Russell Enterprises 2016. 215 pp., $24.95.

Unfortunately, Mark Dvoretsky is with us no more, but he has left the chess world a rich literary legacy. When it came to finding top quality training material for strong, ambitious players, his work was unsurpassed (at least among those who published their findings), with probably only Jacob Aagaard nowadays giving him a run for his money.

This book, his latest and probably last effort, is also one of his more accessible works. His most challenging material could leave even titled players screaming in agony, but the topic of this work, maneuvering, is one where the ability to think in pictures is more important than the ability to find incredible tactical resources in the middle of long variations in a thicket of analysis. The key idea in maneuvering is simply this: to find better squares for one's pieces, both individually and as a whole, in harmony with each other. This can be build on in various ways (e.g. by thinking about ways to transform the structure to make this harmony possible, and of course considering how to ruin the opponent's harmony), but that's the heart of the matter.

There are 10 chapters of exercises, with 10 accompanying solution chapters, plus a Foreword and an Introduction. It's a slim volume, but not too expensive and well worth it: the material is excellent, and what's just as important, there aren't many (any?) other books on the topic - certainly not puzzle books.

This Week's World Chess Column: Remembering Mark Dvoretsky, the Player

The late Mark Dvoretsky has received lots of praise this week for his work as a trainer and author, and rightly so. He was also a very strong player before he essentially gave up active play to become a full-time trainer around the age of 30, and it's this part of his legacy that is examined in my latest column.

Mark Dvoretsky (1947-2016), R.I.P.

The famed trainer and author Mark Dvoretsky unexpectedly passed away earlier this week at the age of 68. He had been actively engaged in his usual occupations with no clear signs that anything was too terribly wrong, having published a book earlier this year and recording a couple of video series for Chess24 in the last couple of months.

I've mentioned Mark Dvoretsky many times on this blog, generally and maybe invariably praising him for his work as a trainer of serious students. Many of his students reached a very high level, including Artur Yusupov, Sergei Dolmatov, and Alexei Dreev, all of whom reached the Candidates on one or more occasions. He worked with many other great players on a more occasional basis, including Peter Svidler, Viswanathan Anand, and even Garry Kasparov.

His publication legacy is also quite impressive. His books were never derivative, but covered new topics with fresh examples, always very carefully examined. Where some authors barely review their work before sending it out into the world, Dvoretsky always analyzed it carefully and then checked it in training sessions as well. Even then, after it was published, he would engage in further revisions and produce new editions of his books. His magnus opus, Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual, was dubbed the best book of all time by Jacob Aagaard. Certainly it is the most influential book in this century, at least among professional players.

While not what he's going to be remembered for, he was a fine player as well, at one point in the top 50 in the world (and apparently ranked as high as #20 on the ChessMetrics scale). He never got the GM title, but that wasn't due to either a lack of strength or rating. During the period when Dvoretsky was an active player, there weren't many opportunities for Soviet players to get the grandmaster title, and by the time there was more access he had essentially retired from play.

The original posting of the bad news was here, and there are some nice tributes to Dvoretsky collected on this page.

Mark Dvoretsky Endgame Videos

There's a nice video series by Mark Dvoretsky (hosted by Jan Gustafsson) on endgame play (on Chess24) that's worth your while, especially (as is generally the case with Dvoretsky's material) if you're at least 1800-2000 in strength. (Of course you can learn plenty from him even if you're not yet of that strength, but he does pitch his material higher rather than lower.) His elocution could be better, but the material is excellent.

Dvoretsky Q & A

Should you watch this question-and-answer session with IM and famed trainer Mark Dvoretsky? It depends. What is the weather there, what is your personality, what are your strengths and weaknesses...you'll see.

Book Notice: Dvoretsky's *Recognizing Your Opponent's Resources*

Mark Dvoretsky, Recognizing Your Opponent's Resources: Developing Preventive Thinking. Russell Enterprises, 2015. 355 pp., $24.95.

Describing this book is very easy: there are four chapters, each beginning with a few examples illustrating the theme followed by a long series of very challenging exercises. In three of the chapters the focus is on what one's opponent can do, and in one we are given a technique for handling what our opponent is up to.

Chapter 1 (I)  has almost the same title as the book: "Pay Attention to Your Opponent's Resources". Dvoretsky helpfully elaborates in the chapter introduction:

The key word in the title of this chapter is "attention." It is no accident that a significant proportion of the mistakes (we call them "oversights" and "blunders") are by no means associated with your own failed ideas, but with strong opposition on the part of your opponent. You do not notice them because your attention is mainly directed towards looking for and studying your own strongest moves. You should put yourself in the position of your partner a little more often, and think about how he is going to react to the idea you have in store for him. However, this very important skill that forms the title of this chapter (like any other skill) does not appear by itself.

If there is anything true of Dvoretsky's books, it is his belief that skills can be developed with suitable training, and he aims to provide it. Even the positions given in the introductory portion of the chapter are in effect offered as exercises (diagrams have W? or B?, sometimes with a question below the diagram), and then there are 180 "official" exercises after the ten or so "friendly" pages. Even the initial exercises are moderately difficult, but by the end they are really, really, extremely tough. Dvoretsky's books are meant for very strong, serious and ambitious players - I'd say 2000 at a bare minimum, with 2200 or so probably a more suitable entry level for this work. Of course, anyone who wants to see for himself ought to do so, and at worst those who buy the book will be treated to some fantastic ideas and variations.

Chapter 2 (or rather, Chapter II), "The Process of Elimination", is the one chapter that is more focused on one's own possibilities than the opponent's. The technique in question is especially useful for perfectionistic time-trouble fiends, but we can all benefit by it regardless of our skill at handling the clock. There's a famous Sherlock Holmes quote that offers an apt analogy: "When you have eliminated the impossible, whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth." Sadly, we're not always right when we evaluate this or that thing impossible, but in the chess context we don't have to analyze a particular move very deeply when we know that all the alternatives lose, particularly if they lose pretty straightforwardly. If the idea isn't clear yet, it will be after his intro and another 107 exercises.

Chapter 3 (III) is on traps, a skill that also takes one's opponent into account in that a good trap is based on trying to anticipate what our opponent wants to do. A particularly subtle sort of trap occurs when one appears to miss the opponent's trap; this sort of trick was one of Mikhail Tal's specialties. (Indeed, two such examples are given in the introductory part of the chapter, with one more in the exercises.) As the subject of traps is already very well-known, there are only 36 exercises this time around.

Finally, chapter 4 (oddly, the Roman numerals cease, and it's given as "Chapter Four"), "Prophylactic Thinking", centers on a concept that Dvoretsky didn't invent, prophylaxis (the term goes back to Nimzowitsch, I believe, and the reality described by the term surely goes back to the first great players), but no one has done more than he has in recent decades to bring this term into the general consciousness of the chess community. One need not always prevent the opponent's ideas; additionally, sometimes the prophylaxis is against an idea that will only arise after we execute our own plans. Nevertheless, it is crucial to think about what one's opponent wants to do and will be able to do, and it's often very helpful to snuff out those ideas before they see the light of day. This concept is one of his favorites, so it's no surprise that there are 154 exercises this time around, bringing the grand total to 477, not counting the implicit exercises in the chapter intros.

A note on sources: some of the material, but (I'm pretty sure) not all of it, came from articles published in his monthly Chess Cafe column from July 2010 through November of 2012. (More specifically: chapter 1 material came in part from columns from July-September 2010, Elimination material from August-October 2011, Traps from March-June 2012 and Prophylactic Thinking from September-November 2012.

Highly recommended to the relevant audiences!

Book Notice: Dvoretsky's For Friends & Colleagues, Volume 2: Reflections on My Profession

Mark Dvoretsky, For Friends & Colleagues, Volume 2: Reflections on My Profession. (Russell Enterprises, 2015.) 257 pp., $29.95.

About eight months ago I wrote a short notice on the first volume of this series, which was more straightforwardly autobiographical. This second volume isn't autobiographical at all, at least not in any overt sense. What we have instead is a collection of articles, many previously published in Russian and/or English over the last decade or so, offering both training material and reflections on training, training material, chess literature past and present. If you've read and enjoyed his Chess Cafe articles over the past 10-15 years or so, you'll enjoy this work, too, and if you're just interested in some fascinating and challenging material to enjoy or work on, this is a book you'll like.

As usual with Dvoretsky's material, it's pitched at a very high level, so unless you're over 2000 and maybe at least 2100-2200, you're likely to find most of the analytical material a bit too challenging. (Sometimes IMs and GMs say that about his exercises, though most of the material in this book is only set to "stun", maybe "maim", but not "kill" or "vaporize".) There is a lot of "talky" material though, so some of his suggestions and reflections may be of interest even if you don't intend to work through the games and game fragments.

In general though, I'm sticking to what I've written above. If you're a Dvoretsky fan, you'll probably like this book; if not, and you're not a strong (at least near-master and up) and ambitious player or a trainer, it's probably not the book for you.