Gm-Ram: Essential Grandmaster Chess Knowledge

Rating:
Summary: Perhaps IM-Ram?
Review: GM-Ram is a fantastic guide to what one should study. Many people complain that Mr. Ziyatdinov offers no analysis with the book. In today's society of easy answers and laziness, what do you expect? You can use Fritz to check your OWN analysis...
WORKING carefully through these positions, and memorizing the collection of classic games, will dramatically improve your ability to think at the chessboard, and give you a collection of standard techniques and methods that is not to be sneered at.
It is also a very nice feeling to KNOW a good collection of classic games. This is a true yardstick of one's love of chess.
If you love chess, and are willing to work to improve, then this book, coupled with extreme tactics traing, offers an incredibly fast route for anyone. My own strength and speed have been dramatically changed by working through this book.

Rating:
Summary: Work that pays...
Review: GM-Ram is a fantastic guide to what one should study. Many people complain that Mr. Ziyatdinov offers no analysis with the book. In today's society of easy answers and laziness, what do you expect? You can use Fritz to check your OWN analysis...
WORKING carefully through these positions, and memorizing the collection of classic games, will dramatically improve your ability to think at the chessboard, and give you a collection of standard techniques and methods that is not to be sneered at.
It is also a very nice feeling to KNOW a good collection of classic games. This is a true yardstick of one's love of chess.
If you love chess, and are willing to work to improve, then this book, coupled with extreme tactics traing, offers an incredibly fast route for anyone. My own strength and speed have been dramatically changed by working through this book.

Rating:
Summary: Perhaps IM-Ram?
Review: The 300 essential position method seems to have been used successfully by many Soviet players. This book only has 250 positions with the rest for you to fill in with your own positions (I don't like this and would rather have had 300 of the author's original positions). Additionally there are some really good classic games in algebraic notation but without move explanations. I believe that the positions here will make you a strong player and memorizing the games as the author suggests would probably reward the effort. Ultimately the book hinges on whether these are indeed important positions for you...I can't answer that. It is far better than Albert's 300 both in terms of content and w/o the tacky cover too. I do find it funny that an IM would write about essential GM knowledge. Perhaps IM-Ram would have been a more accurate, if less catchy, title?

I like the book, but I don't think that having no text is an advantage. If you want to figure things out for yourself, then show some willpower and don't look at the answers! I prefer Kosteyev's 40 lessons for the Club Player, Nunn's Understanding Chess Move by Move, Howell's Essential Chess Endings, and Pongo's Tactical Targets Series. I should also mention that I'm ~1900.

Rating:
Summary: Approach to Teaching Chess Unlike Anything I've Seen Before
Review: The creative format intrigued me, and I bought it immediately. I later read some unfavorable reviews but after going through the book, I decided that most of the reviewers didn't get the point. For instance, one reviewer said he wanted an indicator of which side was to move.

I have owned the book for two days, and have studied just the first 11 positions. However, despite 3 years of reading and playing chess, only now do I understand the pawn-king-king endgame. The original format forced me to work through the options for both sides, preventing me from being lazy and "skipping to the answer" in the back of the book. I work through what I think is best play for both sides, then run the position through Chessmaster 8000 to check. Without words, the book taught me to get my king to sixth rank ahead of the pawn and to move the pawn to the seventh rank without check to queen it. I also learned, however, that a rook pawn is basically screwed. So, not only can I now win quickly with an extra pawn, I can quickly spot and take advantage of an error by an opponent who has the extra pawn.

I look forward to mastering the rest of the book's positions, and the ideas they teach.

Rating:
Summary: The Building Blocks Of the Grand Masters
Review: When I decided to dig my heels in and get serious about chess, this was the first book I bought, mainly because the author connected chess to language (I'm a painter, using "visual languge", so I was intrigued by the annalogy).

After a few introductory pages on "Chess as Language" and a very interesting chapter linking chess to the strategies of Sun Tzu (another interest of mine), the book finishes with its basic positions: king and pawn endings, minor piece endings, rook endings, etc. This is followed by key tactical middle game positions, along with about 60 classical games from which the middle game positions are derived. You are expected to memorize the games!

Now, these positions have no explanations (except for a few rook endings used as an example of how well you need to know each position.) The book, then, is essentially useless unless you have the End Game books Ziatdinov used to gather the positions (they are listed in the book's bibliography).

What is one to make of this? The answers are not given. There is so much work to do! You have to memorize games? Nearly 300 positions? Well, this is one of the most honest chess books ever. The author makes no appologies: this is the work you must do to master chess.

Between 1997 and 1999 Ziatdinov won 200 tournaments (about two a week) and was the winner of the USA Grand Prix. He currently has 5-7 Grand Master Norms, so do not let his title of "IM" fool you!

I should mention after working very hard, I fell flat on my face in chess and was about to quit. I decided to try to contact Mr. Ziatdinov--he is one of the most generous teachers I have ever encountered, and I believe his method of teaching (and playing...every game, every move he uses the positions in "GM: RAM") is the best. His way is challenging, but as he often says, "There is no King's Road in chess," no easy fix.

So far, I have found using "GM: RAM" in conjunction with "Fundamental Chess Endings" to be _very_ beneficial. My favorite part of "GM RAM" is the fantastic collection of classic games.

"GM RAM" is _not_ an instructional book. To me, it is almost a puzzle unto itself, yes, a challenge. Track down the positions, or even similiar positions that illustrate the same key _ideas_, analyze them with a teacher or a powerful chess program (like Fritz). These positions are the basic building blocks GMs use in all their games--learn them _cold_.

Good luck!

Rating:
Summary: GM-RAM: Great Method - Road to Achieve Mastery
Review: Ziyatdinov's message is clear: if you aspire chess mastery at any level, a previous mastery of the fundamentals is required. The sole vehicle to achieve chess mastery is hard work and this book is a tool. GM-RAM could also become your favorite self-evaluation and review tool.

According to Ziyatdinov, GM-RAM is a knowledge review aid that covers the chess vocabulary. The book is not meant as an introductory manual or even a training aid, but more as a workbook, or "final exam", of distilled chess knowledge. Ziyatdinov makes an analogy between chess and language, where mastery of each requires a prior mastery of the fundamental elements: if you will, chess pieces are letters, their interactions constitute words, combinations and positions constitute sentences, and a game represents an essay on chess.

GM-RAM's fundamental proposition is that chess mastery requires a finger-tip knowledge and understanding of elemental positions and principles of the game in all its stages. The message is that master-caliber players cannot expect, much less attempt, to decipher chess principles or outcomes of typical positions over the board, but should know these beforehand and by heart so as to free the creative element without the added distractions of its mechanics.

Ziyatdinov's proposes a method of learning the fundamental chess elements through multiple positions in the middlegame and endgame and rote "memorization" of exemplary (i.e., classical) games where the implicit principle is that memorization of chess games is impossible on wrote memory alone, but on the logical understanding of the positions, tactical themes, etc. that arise within games. The effect is that the you are encouraged indirectly to understand the principles that, eventually, lead to the facilitated memorization.

GM-RAM's diagram-only format forces you to analyze the fundamental chess elements on your own so that you may "discover" the principles and techniques through your own thought process. GM-RAM will help you check that you know the elements of the language of chess by heart. If you realize you have yet to learn the letters, syllables and words of chess, the lack of written analysis in GM-RAM will only make you work harder so that you may become a better chess "writer".

Readers that express discomfort with the book's diagram-only design would benefit by working first on tactical/combinative exercises and introductory books on opening, middlegame and endgame theory. Most of the exercises are far from simple, require careful analysis and sometimes research, and each should be studied as "White to move" or "Black to move".

P.S.
The book indicates that IM Ziyatdinov had already achieved his first Grand Master (GM) norm.