Lessons with a Grandmaster, Boris Gulko, Joel Sneed · Chess Book Review

Описание: A review of the series Lessons with a Grandmaster.
Lessons with a Grandmaster 1: https://chessreads.com/review/lessons...
Lessons with a Grandmaster 2: https://chessreads.com/review/lessons...
Lessons with a Grandmaster 3: https://chessreads.com/review/lessons...
Buy the books:
Volume 1: https://amzn.to/42C7gau
Volume 2: https://amzn.to/4cEhJqM
Volume 3: https://amzn.to/4jcPnGp

Lessons With a Grandmaster bridges the gap between Grandmasters and amateurs, and it explains the differences in their thinking processes, the way they analyze and calculate, and how they see a chess position. A remarkable book and a refreshing concept that combines the chess expertise of GM Boris Gulko, and the scientific curiosity of Dr. Joel Sneed, a clinical psychologist. They have gone over 25 games played by GM Gulko against the world’s best at the time of his peak strength, Kasparov, Karpov, Miles, Yusupov, Korchnoi, and others. Each game is a conversation, a training session between the two authors, during which they share their thoughts on the positions, often vastly different, allowing the reader to see why and how a Grandmaster is able to be more efficient at finding the best moves. Lessons with a Grandmaster is like having 25 free lessons with one of the top Grandmasters.

Only recently has there been a great attempt at improving Gulko and Sneed’s concept, in Think Like a Super GM by Adams and Hurtado, where Hurtado has given the same positions to twenty or so players of varying rating, giving us an insight into how they think and analyze. Lessons with a Grandmaster is a conversation with immediate feedback, which makes it, in my opinion, more useful for adult learners than Think like a Super GM.
There have been two more volumes published; Lessons with a Grandmaster 2, which focuses on dynamic play, and Lessons with a Grandmaster 3, titled strategic and tactical ideas in modern chess. The second volume is structured exactly like the original, following GM Gulko’s games, and the third is divided into chapters by topic.

The sequel to one of my favorite chess books and the first chess book I’ve ever read. Lessons With a Grandmaster 2, just like the first volume, bridges the gap between Grandmasters and amateurs, and it explains the differences in their thinking processes, the way they analyze and calculate, and how they see a chess position. A remarkable book and a refreshing concept that combines the chess expertise of GM Boris Gulko, and the scientific curiosity of Dr. Joel Sneed, a clinical psychologist and a chess amateur. The first volume focused on positional concepts. Gulko and Sneed went over 25 of Gulko’s games played against the world’s elite together, discussing the positions. The second volume is structured in the same way. It covers 30 games in ascending order of complexity. As the subtitle, Improve Your Tactical Vision and Dynamic Play, states, it focuses on dynamic play, as opposed to the first book.

The only difference between the third volume and the first two is the structure of the material. It’s divided into themes such as “The Advantage of the Two Bishops”, “Piece Coordination”, and “Struggle in the Center”, as opposed to the previous two which were each focused on one specific area or style of chess; positional and dynamic, but were divided into separate instructive games.

The third volume combines what the first two had covered, so it may be slightly more advanced, as its purpose is to explain middlegames on a higher level, combining static and dynamic features of a position. It also covers chess psychology, which the authors have devoted an entire separate book to a few years after finishing Lessons with a Grandmaster, titled Analyzing the Chess Mind.




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