chess combat simulator

THE CHESS COMBAT SIMULATOR
Author: Jeroen Bosch
New In Chess (www.newinchess.com)
262 pages
$23.95

Reviewed by John Donaldson

When discussing chess training these days, two themes that come up all the time are the importance of the student being engaged and that the activity should mimic skills needed in an actual game. The old notion of going through books without trying to actively work with the material is finished. Today it's expected that the student will play a game of "chess solitaire" in which they try to predict the next move for one side, training their calculating ability and improving their intuition to handle certain types of positions.

This is hardly a new notion, many chess magazines have had such columns in the past and some do today, but this time in THE CHESS COMBAT SIMULATOR, Dutch IM Jeroen Bosch has produced a superior format that has considered some of the negatives of this type of training.

First and foremost is that in the past most types of "chess solitaire" only gave points for one move. This is all well and good if the position is tactical in nature and there is only one solution, but not so helpful when there are several reasonable moves often of similar value, as is often the case in an actual game. Another problem of several "chess solitaire" columns is that the notes are often quite skimpy and don't do a good job of addressing questions that might have occurred to the student while going through the game.

IM Bosch has addressed both these concerns in THE CHESS COMBAT SIMULATOR. He typically awards points to three or four candidate moves at each move and provides detailed annotations that are primarily prose but also contain concrete variations as needed. The fifty games are primarily between two strong GMs and mostly post 2000. The format of the "chess solitaire" is easy to follow. All you need is an index card to cover up one side's moves and a notebook to record your predictions.

A regimen of going through a game a day with a chess clock ticking in the background to keep one honest cannot but help to improve one's skills and practical results. This book will not be easy going for many, especial those below 2000, but if they keep at it improvement will come.

Recommended.

Click to buy (or get more information about) THE CHESS COMBAT SIMULATOR