Improve Your Chess Pattern Recognition

Sjakklæring er i stor grad mønstergjenkjennelse, og her går forfatteren i dybden på temaet, i stor grad basert på systematisering av moderne partier og med treningsoppgaver innen ulike temaer, altså mønstere. Opplagt en interessant bok.

Forlagets omtale:

Pattern recognition is one of the most important mechanisms of chess improvement. Realizing that the position on the board has similarities with something you have seen before helps you to quickly grasp the essence of that position and find the most promising continuation.

Improve Your Chess Pattern Recognition supplies a wealth of essential, yet easy-to-remember building blocks for your chess knowledge.

In 40 short, well-defined and practical chapters, experienced chess trainer Arthur van de Oudeweetering presents hundreds of examples of surprising middlegame themes. To test your understanding he provides exercises for every chapter.

After working with this book, an increasing number of positions, pawn structures and piece placements will automatically activate your chess knowledge. As a result, you will find the right move more often and more quickly!

Arthur van de Oudeweetering (1966) is an International Master and a chess trainer from the Netherlands. He has written regular columns for chess news websites ChessVibes and Chess.com, and is a frequent contributor to the New In Chess Yearbooks.

Fra forordet til Grandmaster Ian Rogers, Four-time Champion of Australia:

Most players begin to recognize standard combinational themes through puzzle books. But acquiring a knowledge of positional concepts which set up those combinations is harder to do. Players constantly ask ‘The opening is over; what do I do now?’ But apart from stop-gap principles like Improve your worst placed piece’, the task of finding a suitable plan is a mystery to many.

The 1980s volume Chess Middlegames, ghosted by Laszlo Hazai, covered multiple themes in 4,000 examples and was the finest reference book of its type. However the book is languageless, so a player needed to be dedicated to begin to understand the connections and differences between, say, the 100+ examples of both strong and weak isolated queen’s pawn positions.

Into the breach steps Arthur van den Oudeweetering, who has not only collected hundreds of examples, mostly recent, to illustrate many important middlegame themes, but has also provided new terminology to assist in the recognition of each pattern.

This book is not just a worthy new middlegame treatise but one which is fun to read. As a new chapter begins you think ‘What ever does he mean by “Inside the Chain”, or “Fishing for the Hook”?’ But enlightenment follows soon. After reading Improve Your Chess Pattern Rec og nition, a player will no longer miss opportunities to become a Bishop Snatcher or use the Second Option for their rook. You will also become more aware of obstacles preventing you from winning without opposition; if you have a Bulldozer you will look out for your opponent’s Runner.

Van de Oudeweetering’s coverage of the Killer Knight would probably find favour with Kasparov who, before the age of computers, was rumoured to have developed a sophisticated piece valuation system based in part on how close to the opposing king a knight could be posted.

In fact after I’d absorbed IYCPR it was easy to speculate that Caruana’s loss to Carlsen at the 2014 Tromsø Chess Olympiad could have been caused by the Italian overvaluing his Octopus. (This is not a phrase I ever thought I would find myself writing.) ..."

“Once the reader has started applying these patterns in their own games, they will find that the post-opening phase of the game becomes easier and they will more often build up a strong position.”