Carlsen: Move by Move

by Cyrus Lakdawala

Despite his relatively young age, Magnus Carlsen has already secured his place in chess history as a legend of the game. In a short space of time his accomplishments have been extraordinary. In December 2012 he broke Garry Kasparov's record to become the highest-rated chess player of all time. He followed up this achievement in 2013 by defeating Vishy Anand to become World Chess Champion. Carlsen's universal style, positional mastery and incredible mental strength add up to make him a formidable opponent. In this book, former American Open Champion Cyrus Lakdawala invites you to join him in a study of his favourite Carlsen games. Lakdawala examines Carlsen's skills in attack and defence, exploiting imbalances, accumulating advantages and endgame play, and shows us how we can all improve by learning from Carlsen's masterpieces.

Move by Move provides an ideal platform to study chess. By continually challenging the reader to answer probing questions throughout the book, the Move by Move format greatly encourages the learning and practising of vital skills just as much as the traditional assimilation of knowledge. Carefully selected questions and answers are designed to keep you actively involved and allow you to monitor your progress as you learn. This is an excellent way to improve your chess skills and knowledge.

* Learn from the games of a chess legend
* Important ideas absorbed by continued practice
* Utilizes an ideal approach to chess study

Genres: Chess

565 pages, Kindle Edition

First published November 7, 2014

Reviews

[Serge Pierro · Rating 3 out of 5]

Having recently finished GM Andrew Soltis’s book on Carlsen’s games (“Magnus Carlsen: 60 Memorable Games”), I was looking forward to continue to study Carlsen’s games and thought it would be a good idea to check out the Carlsen entry in the excellent “Move by Move” series.

Where as Soltis’s annotations and analysis proved to be a positive contribution to his book, Lakdawala’s bizarre style of writing left a lot to be desired. It unfortunately overshadowed the excellence of the material. I’ve seen his name before, but this is the first time that I’ve read any of his stuff, so I guess he has fans and a following, but I found his drivel to be a distraction and annoying. Which is a shame, because he provides some good analysis and insights, but his ridiculous attempts at humor/writing style seemed out of place for the subject at hand. Not a fan…

Otherwise the book contained many excellent games. Carlsen continues to be a chess player that marches to his own beat, as his choice of moves are often a complete surprise and his ability to see further in his analysis gives him an edge over his opponents. I’m looking forward to going over more of his games - hopefully written by someone else.

[Joseph Wurtenbaugh · Rating 5 out of 5]

Good collection.

As Magnus Carlsen seems ill disposed to publish his own collection of games, someone else will have to. This is a good start.

[Alberto · Rating 4 out of 5]

Lakdawala's analysis is good, and his Q&A insights are very instructional, but he will NEVER get a 5 star rating from me as long as he persists in his "witty" nonsense.