HOW TO USE COMPUTERS TO IMPROVE YOUR CHESS by Christian Kongsted represents something new. Mark Crowther (Everyman) and Sarah Hurst (Batsford) have written books about chess and computers, but their works were primarily aimed at chess opportunities on the Internet. Mr. Kongsted has chosen to go in a different direction and offers some interesting observations. I would imagine that most chess players in the world, when asked to recommend a data based program, would recommend ChessBase, but Konngsted makes a case that both ChessBase and Chess Assistant each have their own advantages. Not only in the fact that ChessBase is the standard and Chess Assistant more economical, but also the programs themselves each have their own strengths and weaknesses.

Kongsted, in eleven chapters entitled The History of Computer Chess, Inside the Machine, The Blind Spots of the Computer, How to Beat Your Computer, Hardware, Software, and Databases, Computer-Assisted Analysis, Improving Your Opening Play, Improve Your Tactics, Improve Your Endgame Technique, Playing Chess on the Internet, and Computer Chess in the Future, covers pretty much everything you would want to know about the Silicon monsters. He explains why computers will inevitably get stronger and stronger and yet humans will still be much better in certain areas of the game, such as long-term strategic thinking. One example given in this book is the difficulty programmers face in defining what is a bad Bishop. Kongsted shows positions with White pawns on c2, c3, and d4 (Anand, Timman, Dortmund 1999 and Fedorowicz-Rey, San Francisco 1998) where the computers have trouble appreciating just how powerful White's dark squared Bishop can be.

The author has plenty of good thrashings by GMs against their Silicon counterparts using the time tested anti-computer opening The Stonewall Attack, but he doesn't limit himself to advocating that as humanities sole weapon against the machines. In his chapter on Blindspots in the Computer, he shows not only the vulnerability in the closed positions, but the difficulties in certain endgames where the horizon effect comes into play. Anand's famous escape against Fritz 6 at Dortmund 1999, where the computer walks into an unbreakable pin certainly gives cause for hope.

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