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Calculation
Have there been times during a chess game when you have calculated a position for half an hour, only to find out that most of what you were thinking about was of little use? If you have not, maybe the only way to improve your calculation is to upgrade your processor. But if you are human, then this book will offer you practical advice and an effective training plan to think differently and make decisions far more efficiently. In Calculation thinking methods such as Candidates, Combinations, Prophylaxis, Comparison, Elimination, Intermediate Moves, Imagination and Traps are explained to the reader, and ownership of them is offered through a carefully selected series of exercises. "There is no shortcut to the grandmaster title, but there is a well-known route that many people have walked over the years. Jacob offers to guide you on part of this journey and I hope you will take him up on the offer." From the foreword by Boris Gelfand
- GenresChessReferenceNonfiction
328 pages, Paperback
First published May 25, 2012
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
November 15, 2016
"After I told Jacob Aagaard that i worked with his book Practical Chess Defence, he started to send me exercise positions, some of which can be found in the Quality Chess Puzzle Book (co-written with John Shaw) and now this book. I have enjoyed solving these positions over the last few years and found them helpful. I am sure the same will be true of the reader. There is no shortcut to the Grandmaster title, but there is a well-known route that many people have walked over the years. Jacob offers to guide you of this journey and I hope you will take him up on the offer."
So writes World Champion Challenger Boris Gelfand in the foreword, and how can you ask for more as an author of such a book.
This book was just recently one of the finalists for the Chesscafe.com Book of the Year Award, but in the end it came up short. However, he has won it on an earlier occasion and several of his other books have either won or been short-listed for book of the year awards. His words and writings are sharp, occassionally fun but very, very, worthwhile. So I was obviously excited to receive the present book for review.
The material is split up as follows:
Key to Symbols used (1 page)
Foreword by Boris Gelfand (1 page)
Series Introduction (1 page)
Concentration, Concentration, Concetration (4 pages)
Calculation Theory in 60 Seconds (4 pages)
1 Candidate Moves (28 pages)
2 Combinational Vision (34 pages)
3 Prophylaxys (26 pages)
4 Comparison (20 pages)
5 Elimination (22 pages)
6 Intermediate Moves (18 pages)
7 Imagination (36 pages)
8 Traps (21 pages)
9 Tests (31 pages)
10 Difficult Positions (47 pages)
Name Index (7 pages)
This is the first volume in a series of five, the next volume is already out, Positional Play, and in the Series Introduction, Aagaard writes: "This is the most ambitious project I have undertaken in my professional life, and there is no escaping the unavoidable imperfection of the execution. I hope the reader will forgive me in advance for any mistakes, but at the same time offer me the confidence to believe in most of what I claim throughout these books. They are heavily researched and based on my own experience of working with close to a thousand individuals over the years: from my own daughters, who recently discovered the joy of capturing a piece, to friends who have been involved in World Championship matches. So, please develop your own understanding of chess by understanding everything I say, but at the same time, please never disregard anything I say as unfounded"
He continues later by writing "The ultimate goal for this series is to show a path towards playing chess at grandmaster level for those who do not have access to a good trainer."
Let me start out by saying, that if you are still under the illusion that chess books are easy to ready to study and that knowledge and understanding are easy to acquire. This book is not easy, in fact it is incredibly challenging and thorough study will be rewarding. As Aagaard writes "The best training material has a difficuylty level of 110-120%", continuing "what I mean by this is that we need to find exercises we can solve, but only with some (not enormous) difficulty."
In my opinion this goes for anything worth accomplishing, for it to be worthwhile, it has to be at least little difficult to accomplish. Whether your goal is to reach a rating of 2000 or become a grandmaster, there is work to be done depending of where you start from and how close you are to goal, but in any case, it doesn't come without work. And when working with this book, and work you will, it is reasonable to expect that your understanding and ability will improve solidly as you find your way through the book.
Each chapter has an instructional part and an exercise part. Each chapter as can be seen above has a separate theme, opening the readers eyes to an additional aspect of the process that goes into calculating better and more accurately as well as seeing more when calculating.
Much of what is written in this book goes straight against what is written in another recent, popular book Move First, Think Later! which has some interesting observations, but also is strangely sarcastic and critical, when itself is a fairly flawed, if entertaining, book. But then again, the books also should appeal to different levels of players.
After the first eight chapters you reach chapter 9 which have consists of ten sets of tests, each consisting of six positions. Unlike the exercises in the earlier chapters where you are asked to use no more than 30 minutes on a position before moving on, Aagaard in these tests allot you a certain amount of time based on your rating. These tests are very difficult and an excellent way to see how much you have progressed from the beginning of the book.
If you you have been a diligent student and taken your time, you should see that your score from solving these positions will have you performing better than your current rating. Then to take it yet another level difficulty, chapter 10 takes it to another level under the heading "Difficult Positions". After some decidedly impossibly complicated examples, he writes "Determination is the only thing that can carry you through the next 75 positions. But at the end of it you will be a changed man and ready for anything. You might even have improved your calculation!" Then follows 75 positions that are classified by the chapters they would have fallen under.
My only criticism of this book is a fairly simple one, I don't understand why the test positions have to have the players names listed. Especially stronger players will be able to recognize the positions based on the name references and thus know solutions. This is a minor gripe and one that it has in common with most books that have test positions or puzzles to solve.
That aside, but it doesn't affect how I feel about this book as a whole, this book is truly excellent. Studying it carefully will make you a much stronger player, open your eyes to new possibilities and allow yourself to emerse yourself into positions from completely different angles and see possibilities that would have surprised you before. This book teaches your mind to think differently and solve complicated tasks. But this is provided you have taken the time to work your way through this book, which is written for serious players and those that are serious about improving their chess understanding and their ability to calculate accurately. To benefit from this book you should probably be rated at least 2000, but in the other direction, there is really no limit to how strong you can be to benefit from studying the material made available by Aagaard.
So writes World Champion Challenger Boris Gelfand in the foreword, and how can you ask for more as an author of such a book.
This book was just recently one of the finalists for the Chesscafe.com Book of the Year Award, but in the end it came up short. However, he has won it on an earlier occasion and several of his other books have either won or been short-listed for book of the year awards. His words and writings are sharp, occassionally fun but very, very, worthwhile. So I was obviously excited to receive the present book for review.
The material is split up as follows:
Key to Symbols used (1 page)
Foreword by Boris Gelfand (1 page)
Series Introduction (1 page)
Concentration, Concentration, Concetration (4 pages)
Calculation Theory in 60 Seconds (4 pages)
1 Candidate Moves (28 pages)
2 Combinational Vision (34 pages)
3 Prophylaxys (26 pages)
4 Comparison (20 pages)
5 Elimination (22 pages)
6 Intermediate Moves (18 pages)
7 Imagination (36 pages)
8 Traps (21 pages)
9 Tests (31 pages)
10 Difficult Positions (47 pages)
Name Index (7 pages)
This is the first volume in a series of five, the next volume is already out, Positional Play, and in the Series Introduction, Aagaard writes: "This is the most ambitious project I have undertaken in my professional life, and there is no escaping the unavoidable imperfection of the execution. I hope the reader will forgive me in advance for any mistakes, but at the same time offer me the confidence to believe in most of what I claim throughout these books. They are heavily researched and based on my own experience of working with close to a thousand individuals over the years: from my own daughters, who recently discovered the joy of capturing a piece, to friends who have been involved in World Championship matches. So, please develop your own understanding of chess by understanding everything I say, but at the same time, please never disregard anything I say as unfounded"
He continues later by writing "The ultimate goal for this series is to show a path towards playing chess at grandmaster level for those who do not have access to a good trainer."
Let me start out by saying, that if you are still under the illusion that chess books are easy to ready to study and that knowledge and understanding are easy to acquire. This book is not easy, in fact it is incredibly challenging and thorough study will be rewarding. As Aagaard writes "The best training material has a difficuylty level of 110-120%", continuing "what I mean by this is that we need to find exercises we can solve, but only with some (not enormous) difficulty."
In my opinion this goes for anything worth accomplishing, for it to be worthwhile, it has to be at least little difficult to accomplish. Whether your goal is to reach a rating of 2000 or become a grandmaster, there is work to be done depending of where you start from and how close you are to goal, but in any case, it doesn't come without work. And when working with this book, and work you will, it is reasonable to expect that your understanding and ability will improve solidly as you find your way through the book.
Each chapter has an instructional part and an exercise part. Each chapter as can be seen above has a separate theme, opening the readers eyes to an additional aspect of the process that goes into calculating better and more accurately as well as seeing more when calculating.
Much of what is written in this book goes straight against what is written in another recent, popular book Move First, Think Later! which has some interesting observations, but also is strangely sarcastic and critical, when itself is a fairly flawed, if entertaining, book. But then again, the books also should appeal to different levels of players.
After the first eight chapters you reach chapter 9 which have consists of ten sets of tests, each consisting of six positions. Unlike the exercises in the earlier chapters where you are asked to use no more than 30 minutes on a position before moving on, Aagaard in these tests allot you a certain amount of time based on your rating. These tests are very difficult and an excellent way to see how much you have progressed from the beginning of the book.
If you you have been a diligent student and taken your time, you should see that your score from solving these positions will have you performing better than your current rating. Then to take it yet another level difficulty, chapter 10 takes it to another level under the heading "Difficult Positions". After some decidedly impossibly complicated examples, he writes "Determination is the only thing that can carry you through the next 75 positions. But at the end of it you will be a changed man and ready for anything. You might even have improved your calculation!" Then follows 75 positions that are classified by the chapters they would have fallen under.
My only criticism of this book is a fairly simple one, I don't understand why the test positions have to have the players names listed. Especially stronger players will be able to recognize the positions based on the name references and thus know solutions. This is a minor gripe and one that it has in common with most books that have test positions or puzzles to solve.
That aside, but it doesn't affect how I feel about this book as a whole, this book is truly excellent. Studying it carefully will make you a much stronger player, open your eyes to new possibilities and allow yourself to emerse yourself into positions from completely different angles and see possibilities that would have surprised you before. This book teaches your mind to think differently and solve complicated tasks. But this is provided you have taken the time to work your way through this book, which is written for serious players and those that are serious about improving their chess understanding and their ability to calculate accurately. To benefit from this book you should probably be rated at least 2000, but in the other direction, there is really no limit to how strong you can be to benefit from studying the material made available by Aagaard.
January 9, 2026
Pain. But if you're an advanced player who struggles with calculation, I recommend it
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews