It seems as though everyone today uses either a chessplaying program or an analytical engine or both. If you're like me, you don't understand much about what goes on behind the interface of these programs, and you may not know HOW TO USE COMPUTERS TO IMPROVE YOUR CHESS, which is the title of Christian Kongsted's book.

Typical programs that Kongsted tests are Shredder, Fritz, Nimzo, Chess Tiger, Hiarcs, Chessmaster, and Junior. The very first page that I turned to had an interesting exercise for the computers: an endgame position with a White having a rook versus knight, but Black having a pawn for the exchange with an advanced b-pawn on the seventh rank. Kongsted explains why, although the rook is going to help in creating a zugzwang to eventually force the win of a Black pawn (or the shattering of his structure), these powerful programs are at first unable to come up with the right assessment (i.e., that White has a winning advantage). 8 programs assessed Black as having an advantage (in one case by almost a full pawn), and 2 gave White an advantage. I was happy to see that a favorite program of mine, HiArcs, gave White a 0.55 pawn advantage (Shredder was the other, giving +0.23). Kongsted points out that although these are just "first impressions" by the computer they are important because, while calculating a longer sequence, they could be decisive for whether the program goes into a superior or inferior endgame.

Encouraged by this informative beginning, I wandered through the book and read something from each chapter. Their titles explain most of what's in the book:

Part 1 "How the Computer Works":
1. The History of Computer Chess 
2. Inside the Machine (search methods, evaluation functions, etc.)
3. The Blind Spots of the Computer  (there are surprisingly many of these, e.g., fortresses, positional draws with unbalanced material, materialism, endgame knowledge, calculating long lines that include sacrifices, and closed positions) 
4. How to Beat Your Computer. This is a great chapter, based upon the author's experience. Not surprisingly, he recommends a lot of closed and slow positions. Thus he likes Stonewall positions, English Openings with c4/d3/e4, the King's Indian Attack and Defense, the Schmid and Czech Benonis, the Gurgenidze, French Defense and Berlin Defense! He has no less than 12 tips for beating computers (or drawing if need be), and it may be that some readers will buy the book for that reason alone.
Part 2 is called "Improving with the Computer." It's mainly about how to about set up databases, optimize your playing programs, and study and analyze with computers:
5. Hardware, Software, and Databases
6. Computer-Assisted Analysis
7. Improving Your Opening Play 
8. Improve Your Tactics 
9. Improve Your Endgame Technique
10. Playing Chess on the Internet 

I didn't read as much of this material because I already know how to handle most of this. A final chapter is called "Computer Chess in the Future." There are also four pages of Websites about related chess subjects, e.g., Database programs (both commercial and free), News, Chessplaying programs, both commercial and free, electronic chessboards, Internet chess clubs, and so forth.

I think that most players will like this book, if only because it has so much relevant material in one volume. I should mention that there's a strong emphasis on ChessBase and its playing programs in this book. So although the theoretical sections are unbiased, the practical ones are probably most useful to those who work with ChessBase.

Click HERE to see Donaldson's review of this book.