Best Play: A New Method For Discovering The Strongest Move Paperback – July 16, 2013

GM Bronstein once said "The essence of chess is thinking about chess."Alexander Shashin has thought deeply about the essence of chess, and has analyzed it with the methodology of the nuclear physicist which he is.This book presents a coherent and logical method for analyzing ANY chess position.The problem is, the presentation of the material the book contains could have been better.Much much better.Instruction by practical game-analysis begins in the text on page 18, where we are introduced to a method of determining the material value, or "m", of the position on the board...count White's developed pieces, add "one" for having the move and subtract the counted number of Black's pieces (don't add one, as Black hasn't the move).The numerical value obtained is referred to the simple Algorithmic Drift-Chart (which may be intuitive for a physicist to understand how to read, but equates to two days worth of daunting to a determined layperson/chessplayer to decipher. Clues as to how to read the Drift-Chart are buried in the text of the book, a bit here, a bit there, rather than having a page opposite it devoted to explaining it's methodology--annoying.)But..wait...this methodology isn't to determine "m", but refers to "tempi"-(-not tempo, but tempi)...but..it's not how you determine parameter "t", Time...either--there's another methodology for that, counting all possible squares one's pieces can move to and dividing by all-possible-squares the opponent may move to, deriving a value from that to be compared to the Drift-Chart...the count of developed pieces ("tempi"/tempo) methodology is suddenly dropped without another useage until much later in the book, when it's suddenly resurrected with pronouncement regarding its crudity as compared to the Count All Squares method.Delta K and Delta(move) are presented quite intelligibly, and "m" itself is presented intelligibly, once you realize that the tempi-thing ain't it--confused yet?the parameter of "Safety"--which doesn't have any signifier (Greek letter, or otherwise) attached to it is deemed to be a matter of art and intuition (as it says in the text)Yeah, this book will do that to you. No page listing all formulas--a simple addition SOMEONE should have thought of, eh? No glossary of terms.The book reads very much as if it were cobbled together, and this analyst finds evidence supporting that hypothesis within the very structure of the book.There's several online interviews/articles of A. Shashin's translated into English online. They bear evidence of his useage of the term "p" to signify Time, years ago. My guess is that his methodology has gone through a number of refinements and modellings over the years, and that this book isn't made of whole-cloth, but of a pastiche of previous writings.The translation into English is superb.It sounds like I'm ripping on this book--I'm not. It's a great book, an interesting book, Shashin is an amiable writer, and--as I said--the translation is impeccable.The book has its structural flaws, which will confuse and bewilder the reader newly come to it. These are flaws in editing the substance of the book, not flaws in the material Shashin's presenting.Most chess books are bought and left unread--we all know that. This book, because of its unfortunate structuring, will too-often suffer that fate.It deserves a read; Shashin's a thinker. He's also played against some world-famous players, and was chosen by Korchnoi as a training-partner...certainly no light-weight chess-player!Physically, Mongoose had an excellent job done of printing the book. Very nicely done, very readable type, nice paper, nice cover.My paperback copy is now heavily annotated in the barely two weeks I've owned it--I intend to purchase a hardcover version, if that becomes possible.Buy this book if you're interested in thinking about the ESSENCE of chess...don't buy it if you're only interested in increasing ratings--it'll take you too long to understand it's contents for it to be of use in that tournament coming up in three weeks.I like the book. I recommend it with only the above caveats.

Incredible book. Very deep and hard to follow but if you ever wondered how a computer analyzes and values positions this book will give you an exact scientific idea. Great tool for studying games and positions but I am still not too sure if this would be applicable to tournament games when you are under time constraints to think and make your move.This is a book to really study for a long time before you can really begin to use it but a wealth of ideas on assessment of positions.

This is a very peliminary review. Take this in account, please.From time to time there are people who think have the secret for chess (I can recall Moskalenko "revolutionize your chess" series - see my review). The new book of Alexander Shashin, a physicist and chess trainer, looks to me a new approach to analyse chess positions. He works in three chess models: Tal's, Capablanca's and Petrosian's styles of playing, to try to find out how they think to find their moves and how to teach people to use these "chess algorithms" in our games.Shashin's style of writing is like having a chat with him. Sometimes he is trying to convice the reader about the benefits of analysing a chess position using the "principles" of Tal's algorithm. He spend a lot of time working on very difficult positions from Tal's games, to convince the reader about his method to find the strongest move. The examples are really amazing and you can see the magnificent Tal in action. He was one of a kind and in fact, I don't think you can dissect this style of play, because is not only about concepts (or rules) of what to do, is about deep calculations and an amazing chess imagination of the former world champion. Tal is unique and certainly, to try to put in pieces how he plays chess looks, I repeat, a good idea to try, but I think there is no proactical algorithm to mimic Tal's style if you don't know how to calculate so deeply in the position.(By the way, I found in three games, three typographical mistkes in Tal's games. Surprising because with all these wonderful tools to edit chess contents, to make these sort of errors looks absurd).The author works in the same manner with Capablanca and Petrosian. He tries to dissect their style and propose some sort of Capablanca's algorithm and another one for Petrosian. They are very similar in conception to Tal's algorithm but in some way, Shashin adds some peculiarities of simplification of Capablanca's style. He does the same with Petrosian's algorithm, adding the profilaxis style of the former world champion. Shashin's algorithm is some sort of an spectrum of the three analysed styles.Shashin uses Rybka and Fritz as chess assistants, and the engines reveal many times holes in previous analysis, even from Kasparov's Great Predecessors books. This is pretty normal: chess engines are really improving since Kasparov's work.Because Shashin is a physicist, he add to his algorithm some mathematical notation. In my opinion this is good for a computer model of trying to find the strongest move, but I don't think is very useful for a OTB player. In fact, with some friends (FMs and IMs) we tried Shashin's ideas and even with open mind from my colleagues, we didn't find a practical method for finding the strongest move.The second part of the book is some sort of training his approach to find the strongest move on the board. He starts with some simple positions and ends with complex positions. Finally Shashin have a chapter called "Positions for self-study". I am starting this second part of the book and I want to give some credit to Shashin idea, but to me, the first part, where the author describes his method, is useless. No chess player analyse the way Shashin recommends and in fact, I don't think is a human approach. I will -anyway- give a try and I hope to rewrite soon my findings in this second part of the book.So far, I think a good test for Shashin ideas is to program them in a real computer and see if the machine can find the strongest move using the algorithm proposed. But for a real OTB players, this books seems to be a waste of time.

This is a preliminary review. I have admired and followed Sashin's writing over a number of years. He conceptualizes three types of chess positons: The Petrosian (defending); The Capablanca (positional maneuvering) and Tal (attacking). After leafing through the book and reading the first couple of chapters, this is my conclusion. This is a great book if you are into Chess Computer programming. In fact, Shashin has produced and sells, download only I believe, his own computer program. Otherwise, the material is unwieldy. I am anxious to see some other reviews by stronger players. As indicated, this is a preliminary review.

The book is entertaining to read and slightly original.I liked it enough to make a chess program based on what was read.The 5 criteria values for any position is just a gauge (like gas, tire pressure etc).Useful for finding candidate moves.The book is slightly Tal biased.More work is needed.

It is one of the best books ever written in chess in all time! No explanations necessary. Just read it!

BS book. Don't waste your time.

Buon libro

Es un tema muy específico sobre el que yo personalmente quería profundizar; quizá a otro tipo de jugador o aficionado no le pueda interesar. Aun así, es perfecto para jugadores de nivel medio-alto... altamente recomendable

Ce livre est vraiment excellent ! M. Shashin a démontré qu'on pourrait avoir une vision scientifique de cet art que sont les échecs. Ceci dit, je suis sûr qu'on pourrait améliorer son idée en rajoutant d'autres paramètres !J'attends la suite avec impatience !

good book but will take some time to digest

I am reading with pleasure and interest this book. I am a correspondence chess player and I am improving my understanding of chess with the book of GM Shashin!