Author: Bob Durrett
Date: 06:49:30 03/10/04
Go up one level in this thread
On March 10, 2004 at 01:28:01, margolies,marc wrote: >http://www.chesscafe.com/Reviews/books.htm > >this seems like an accurate appraisal to me. But I only looked at CK's book in >the store--because of its chessbase bias I did not purchase it. >I thought that the best part of kongsted was the how computers think section >with game analysis. But mig is a bit of a hotspur about this because it is >atopical to the book title. >-marc I did buy the book and take it home, and yes I did read every page. I was not interested in writing a book review for money as MIG did but was only looking for new information and insights which I could use. The mistake MIG made was to read the book from front to back. That is NOT the correct way to read such a book IF you want to obtain useful new information from the book! [When searching for useful information in a book, there is a better way to conduct the search.] MIG apparently was only reading the book to make more money for MIG by writing a book review. I first scanned the table of contents and then found the most interesting chapter and quickly read it first, making notes in the margins. Then I went to the second most interesting chapter and read it. Before I was done, I had quickly read the whole book, but in MY order, not front to back. I then went back to the places I had marked and studied those sections more carefully. A serious mistake MIG made was to decide, before even opening the cover of the book, that the author was required [by MIG] to provide only the information MIG wanted to read and to only present the material in the manner MIG preferred. That is a little bit childish, if not downright arrogant. The author did the best that he could, given the fact that he is obviously not an amateur chess programmer. He is a user of chess software. I agree with MIG that it would be nice if certain sections were expanded in future editions. The key "bottom line" question has to be: "Was the book was worth the reader's time?" In my case, it was. In someone else's case, who knows? It depends on how much the reader already knows. Bob D.
This page took 0 seconds to execute
Last modified: Thu, 15 Apr 21 08:11:13 -0700
Current Computer Chess Club Forums at Talkchess. This site by Sean Mintz.