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THE 10 MOST COMMON CHESS MISTAKES … AND HOW TO AVOID THEM (2nd Edition)
Author: Larry Evans
Cardoza Publishing (2002)
256 pages
$14.95
Reviewed by Donald K. McKim
Grandmaster and chess book writer Larry Evans provides here his usual intriguing approach to chess. This book focuses on the most common chess mistakes with 218 diagram examples drawn from a wide array of games and players. These are “misplays, oversights, and outright blunders” which “not only show you the price that great players pay for violating basic principles, but how you can avoid these mistakes in your own game.”
The chapters showing the most common mistakes are: Bad Development; Neglecting the King; Mis-Judging Threats; Ignoring Pins; Premature Aggression; Miscalculation; Impulsiveness; Pawn Snatching; Creating Weaknesses; and Inattention. A chapter on “Anatomy of an Error” concludes the book. Along the way, Evans’ analysis is insightful, as always.
Each chapter begins with a short description of the mistake being described, introduced by a quotation or chess adage. Each diagram is given with two potential moves listed. The reader is challenged to choose between them: the right move, or the move actually played in the game. The book’s purpose is to analyze how the mistakes were made. Evans is not bashful in admitting – and showing – that a number of examples are drawn from his own games where, he says, “I was just as often the victim as the victim.” The ten different themes often overlap. But the effect of this approach is to allow us to “match wits with the masters.” Evans hopes the book “enables you never to make the same mistake once”!
Studying this book will bring fine rewards as one is challenged throughout to choose between alternative moves and then to see what the implications of each move are. Recognizing the patterns that recur as mistakes in the categories Evans lines out will increase one’s abilities to spot potential problems as well as to sharpen one’s own tactics, strategies, and abilities to find game-winning traps. If one does not go in for such careful study, the book is a delight to read casually with Evans’ easy to follow analysis as well as memorable quotes from chess immortals and others with nuggets of wisdom.
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