Lotus960
I don't play on this site. I only play people I know in real life. I come to this site to read news, blogs and - occasionally - the forums, though the latter have now degenerated into a middle-school graffiti board and are mostly nonsense. I started playing chess as a kid in 1979. I have collected and read a large number of chess books and (in recent years) pgn files, which include enough tactical and positional puzzles to last me a lifetime. I also enjoy playing through the great games of the past. I'm particuarly interested in nineteenth-century chess. Two fascinating books I've read recently: 1. "Re-engineering the Chess Classics" (Sadler-Giddins) looks at 35 classic games in the light of the latest engine insights. The author do this in a respectful way, not falling into the trap of jeering at earlier players because they didn't have the benefit of a superhuman bit of silicon to help them. 2. "Think Like A Computer" (Manella & Zohar) examines how computers can make better moves because they are not limited by human mental ruts and blind spots. It contains lots of puzzle positions from modern games. Both books show us that trying to see all the creative possibilities in a given position is an enormous challenge for us carbon-based lifeforms. Chess is truly depth upon depth. 🙂