|
||||||
|
|
||||||
|
Chessville
Advertise to Single insert:
|
Write Your Own Chess Book: Regardless of Your Strength Reviewed by Rick Kennedy
Patrick Whalen (http://patwhalen.com), a life member of the United States Chess Federation, enjoys - among many things - chess, math, running, computer programming and writing. He has a M.A. in English Literature and is a Certified Internet Webmaster. His first book was Brain Bombardment: A Runner's Diary (2003). He is working on his third book, Algebra Without Witches. Simply put, Whalen would like to inspire you to Write Your Own Chess Book. Lest you be overly modest about your place in the chess world, he would like to reassure that you can do this Regardless of Your Strength as a chess player. Whalen takes his lead in part from Mikhail Botvinnik who suggested in Selected Games 1926-1946:
The advent of affordable personal computers, word processing software, and chess-playing programs has made the idea of publishing far more accessible, especially in light of the emergence of print-on-demand publishers, who can take the author’s efforts and produce a few – or many – books at a time, as needed, making the initial investment in such a project far more practical. Write Your Own Chess Book is part an annotated collection of the author’s games, part chess diary. Whalen, a Class B player at the time he was writing the book (“…although I am not master strength, I am master potential”), believes “You can learn a subject while writing about it and by writing about it.” He offers his book as an example. The three main “characters” in Write Your Own Chess Book are Whalen, Pocahontas, his 486 laptop running chess software, and Debbie (otherwise known as Dreamland Debbie or Database Debbie) a newer and faster computer with stronger software. They all chew over and digest the human’s games. Whalen offers strategic, psychological, personal and publishing insights, while Pocahontas and Debbie either bash or back up his tactics. Sometimes the book makes me think of Mystery Science Theater 3000 – in a good way, of course. I can identify with Whalen, too. About 25 years ago I played a match with my boss, and memorialized it afterwards with a typewritten folded-and-stapled pamphlet appropriately titled Patzers Anonymous. I think there were three copies: one for me, one for Dr. Hinkle, and one to subsequently misplace. In 1988 Dale Brandreth published my (with Riley Sheffield) The Marshall Gambit in the French and Sicilian Defenses, which we had submitted to him in “camera ready” format. Both projects improved my chess play quite a bit, although the first could not fairly be referred to as having been “published” and the second received its feedback mostly via sales (it sold far better in Europe than it did in the United States). [Editor's Note: I wound up with a copy of Rick's book in my own chess library, having picked it up on eBay. It was through recognition of his name from this title that I first met Rick, in an email group we both belonged to. Small world indeed!] Write Your Own Chess Book is generally well laid out with text, moves and diagrams, on par with the average self-published book. (Maybe better than average: paragraphs are indented!) He purposely uses different layouts in Game 1 and Game 2, so readers can compare and decide which one is more to their liking for their future book. I did not notice typos or dypos in my readings. One small thing drove me to absolute distraction, however. (It was “small” only for the first dozen times or so. Then it grew.) Whalen – or rather, Pocahontas and Debbie – at different points in a game or line of analysis uses Informant-style symbols to make a shorthand comment or indicate an evaluation of the position. He (they?) gets most of the symbols right (e.g. “+-” for “decisive advantage for White) but gives “1” (superscript “1”) for “Better is…”; “2” (superscript “2”) for “Slight advantage for White”; and “3” (superscript “3”) for “Slight advantage for Black” when the appropriate symbols are respectively “ ¹ ”, “ ² ” and “ ³ ”. This occurs both in the text and in the “Code Symbols As Used in This Book” page at the front of the book. I’m still not sure what “TM” (superscript “TM”) stands for. My assessment of Write Your Own Chess Book is threefold. Whalen is correct: your first subject is yourself:
He shows a good insight into his play and models for his readers what they should be looking for in their own games. His wit and whimsy is always a plus. Secondly, dig deeply into your games and then seek Botvinnik’s “objective criticism” of what you played and what you saw later. Whalen received analytical criticism from Pocahontas and Debbie, and you can get yours from Fritz, Junior or other current programs. Mind you, those electronic beasts can be merciless, but the more that you are able to see of what they “see,” the sharper your play will be. This connects nicely with club players’ recent focus on tactical training (e.g. Michael de la Maza’s Rapid Chess Improvement: A Study Plan for Adult Players or Covkekta’s CT-ART 3.0). My suggestion is to stick mostly to words and explanations in your annotations, though, lest you fall into the trap of mistaking the various trees of analysis for the forest itself. In a couple of his games, Whalen comes close to going over to the Dark Side, presenting pages of computer-generated lines of play with only occasional breaks for breathing. My first thought upon reading them was to enter the game into my computer and see if my software could do better than his… I don’t think that was what he intended. Thirdly, you can also publish your own analytical work any number of ways, perhaps in the Club newsletter or online in a newsgroup, or on a chess blog, where people will be able to scrutinize it and appreciate it or deprecate it. You can create an eBook like Peter Tart’s Elephant Gambit - Hitting Back with 2…d5!? or you can produce saddle-stitched booklets such as David Robert Lonsdale’s The Elephant Gambit for Black – 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d5!? and Amar Opening: The Krazy Kat System – 1. Nh3 e5 2. f3 d5 3. Nf2!? and assorted Opening Monographs. Or you can commit your work between the covers of a book, as the author of Write Your Own Chess Book has (and recommends). Books have a certain gravitas that, say, magazine articles do not. Newspaper columns will come and go, but a book will stand solidly on the shelf for decades. As Whalen notes, for example, every Club should have a record of its annual championships – if not a club history, a collection of significant guest lectures, or games of up-and-coming players. This last publishing choice, though, will have to be the subject of a personal cost/benefit analysis, that is, what you can afford, what you want to do with your book, whose hands you want to get it into, and if you are considering it as a commercial enterprise. In the past, authors could spend thousands (or tens of thousands) of dollars to have their book printed – and ultimately have most of them, sadly, wind up stored in the basement or garage or attic, forever. With short run on-demand publishers like Infinity the author will spend more per unit, but ultimately part with only hundreds of dollars up front, and hopefully have no more than a modest cabinet of books stored at any one time. Patrick Whalen hopes that you take the same path that he did, and his enthusiasm for his project is boundless. He does not pretend, however, to provide book production and marketing basics, the kind that can be found in such books as Jennifer Sander’s The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Self-Publishing (2005).
So, if you’re interested in learning-chess-by-doing-and-writing, if you
believe you’ve got a chess book inside you but you need a bit of
motivation to get you going, or if you’re like me and want to encourage
the entire field of chess’ small press, short-run, eBook and self-publishing
endeavors – click on over to Whalen’s website and give his book a look.
It’s not for everybody -- he won’t be able to “sell the Catalan to a
dedicated 1.e4 player” – but he does have me wondering if “The
Kennedy Kids” and “Perry
the PawnPusher” might one day be content to find themselves perfect
bound and under cover.
|
The
|
||||
|
||||||
