Herman Grooten wins ChessCafe Book of the Year 2009 Award
Herman Grooten's outstanding Chess Strategy for Club Players - The Road to Positional Advantage has won the ChessCafe Book of the Year 2009 Award. After four weeks of voting, Grooten's book beat Viktor Moskalenko's Revolutionize Your Chess and David Rudel's Zuke 'Em.
In what ChessCafe calls "a battle between Spain and the Netherlands", Dutchman Herman Grooten took an early lead over Viktor Moskalenko "and never relinquished it". Both finalists were reviewed on ChessVibes, while the third shortlisted Zuke 'Em author David Rudel published an article on our site about one of the book's main lines of the Colle, leading to interesting discussions in the comments. In our review of Chess Strategy for Club Players, we praised Grooten's ability "to explain things are that sometimes (or rather often) taken for granted in analysis. (...) Grooten does exactly what many students want from any author: give a clear and logical overview and subsequent evaluation of the position at hand." ChessCafe reviewer Steve Goldberg praised it as "an outstanding positional primer" and reknown chess author and book reviewer Jonathan Rowson said of it: "I like the book, which appears to be one of the best in its genre." We'd like to congratulate Herman Grooten and New in Chess for winning the ChessCafe Book of the Year 2009 Award with their wonderful contribution to any club player's library.
