Understanding Your Chess: Learn from Your Games and Improve Your Results

Rating:
Summary: Very Instructive Commentary and Analysis
Review: This book contains some very instructive commentary and analysis. International Master James Rizzitano was a legend on the American Swiss-System chess tour during the 1980's. I saw him play in the US Open in Boston and at a couple World Opens in Philadelphia during the late 1980's and he was simply a ferocious, fearless player. His playing style can best be described as a cross between the Latvian attacking player Alexei Shirov and the Swedish endgame expert Ulf Andersson. I think he started out as a straight-ahead go-for-the-throat attacking player and evolved into a more positional style; the book contains some real strategic masterpieces. The book contains some great notes and instructional material; it is 192 oversized pages with very little white space, so it is really around 300+ pages of a typically sized book. I was unable to put this book down once I began reading it; the lessons and stories are very well-written and I enjoyed the games tremendously. Some of the world's best players are in here along with most of the top United States players of the past 20 years or so. I strongly recommend this book.

Rating:
Summary: Clear, Easy to Understand Lessons
Review: This book is outstanding! I am a Class A player (sometimes an Expert!) and Rizzitano's lessons really hit home. The prose is extremely well-written, the game selection and chess notes are fantastic, and there has been incredible attention to detail. The fundamental theme of Understanding Your Chess is that it is important to analyze your own games in order to improve. Some of the innovative features I really like about this book are: 1) The games are grouped together by various themes and ordered chronologically - a clear connection is drawn between games, including ones that demonstrate a different lesson. Also, the 64 complete games which comprise the main body of the book are given interesting titles (similar to Bobby Fischer's classic My 60 Memorable Games) to help the reader remember the themes. 2) The USCF ratings of the players are given so that you can see how Rizzitano (and some of his opponents) improved over time; the rating span is an 800 point range from 1800 to his peak of around 2600. I have never seen a book in which a strong player gives some of his games when he was relatively low-rated and pinpoints his weaknesses - the book is very compelling. 3) The notes are outstanding; Rizzitano typically explains the important themes to look for within the variations. 4) The notes are honest; there are many places where Rizzitano admits that he overlooked a certain move or couldn't calculate a variation correctly. In conclusion, a fantastic book.

Rating:
Summary: Good games collection
Review: This is a very dense book packed with analysis, mostly line branches but some verbal commentary also, of 64 of Rizzitano's games played in the 1980's. His rating rose 200 points in less than a year between 1978-1979 from 2000 to 2200 master strength, and continued to rise to about 2500 in the mid 1980's. As a games collection with the games arranged in thematic sections the book works well, however much of the advice and "lessons" contained in some of the games is already quite obvious, to me at least (Ive played more than 50,000 blitz games online and am rated nearly 2200). And what I find perplexing is that the cover of the book, and Rizz himself in the book states that studying your own games is essential for improvement, yet what we get in this book is a chance to study Rizzitano's games, not your own games. However this book is better than the following new books from Gambit- Secrets of Positional Chess (Marovic), Secrets of Chess Defence (Marin), Watson's new book, and just about everything else except Romero's Creative Chess Strategy.
Much high-level international chess is actually low-level tedium- I remember going over a game between Petrosian and Botvinnik played in 1963 and trust me these two were hackers, pretenders who played dull boring meaningless chess. What you get in this new book is real exciting chess played in cut-throat tournaments in America during the 1980's against highly rated and desperate-for-a-win opponents, not some yawn from Russia that was probably worked out in advance anyway. This is probably the best book by an American author since Bobby Fischer's great book from 1967. Reshevsky's Art of Positional Play has been butchered by Random House, which is a sweatshop operation. Random House pays yall 25 grand to start! Entry level wages for an amateur product.
But like I said its almost fraud to state you should study your own games and then subject the reader to Rizz's games. Why should I study Rizz's games if its MY own games that the book says I should be studying? The cover of this book states Understanding YOUR Chess so its not clear to me why Im studying Rizz's games instead of the games of Euwe, Alekhine, Botvinnik or judit polgar or my games!