This will be my first official book review and I honestly believe that I couldn't possibly pick a better book to start with. David Shenk has produced one of my all time favorite books period. His book the Immortal Game is so much more than the usual sterile collection of games. David was able to convey the majesty and contribution that chess has made in shaping our world. My only concern in doing this review is in unwillingly providing too much information so I will keep this short.

The book has something for anyone that loves chess. It very appropriately starts out with the origins of chess. He then takes us on an evolutionary tour that starts in the Middle East with the Muslim Renaissance and ends in the mid 19th century with Europe's love affair with chess. Throughout this half of the book we are also introduced to the participants in the immortal game, Anderssen and Kieseritzky.

The story then takes an unexpected, but pleasant turn exploring the psychology of chess. Alfred Binet's investigations into blindfold chess as well as Groot and Simon's investigations into how chess players think is fascinating. If you've ever wondered how or why a chess master can so rapidly dissect a position correctly then this section will provide you with the answers.

The remaining chapters in the book cover a wide range of topics. He describes some of the tragic figures in chess such as Paul Morphy and Bobby Fischer. And he explores the use of chess as a propaganda tool to promote a political agenda in Nazi Germany. These chapters touch on the dark side of chess and I felt that they are vital to gain a well rounded understanding of the game we love.

The last topic he covers, which was a favorite of mine, deals with computers and chess. David goes into great detail explaining the role of chess in the advancement of computer science. He covers the work of Turing and other early computer scientist. He even has a section devoted to Garry Kasparov playing against some of the best chess computers in the world.

Don't skip the appendix of the book. It is even full of delightful information. In it you will find the rules of chess, five other great games from history, Franklin's "The Morals of Chess", and a final section of sources and notes. It's a great source for further reading.

I did not do this book justice with my review, but I hope I provide enough information to get you to read it. It's difficult for me to express the importance of a book like this. As chess players we get very caught up with analysis and tactics, but chess has a wonderful history off the board that we should be aware of. When you read this book you will start to understand that you are part of something that is rich with tradition and history. You should take pride in the knowledge that with every move you make you are adding to the fabric of chess and that you're helping to perpetuate a game that has shaped and changed the world.

Below are two clips of David Shenk giving a talk about this book. Both clips are from the same talk, but the YouTube version is the short version. If you would like to see the full version just follow the appropriate link, but be warned it's 45 minutes.

David Shenk: Full Version Video

This post has very little to do with chess, except for the fact that there is a chess book involved. Let me start with the background information that leads up to the actual incident.

I ordered two books from Amazon.com and just like when I order anything the anticipation of its arrival is almost unbearable. So you can just imagine how disappointed I was when I got the tracking number and realized that my package was destined for the wrong address. I had accidentally had it shipped to my old address. But lady luck was smiling on me that day because when the postman attempted to deliver it there was no one at the address to accept it. I had another shot at getting it!

Here is where the story describing my interaction with members of the United States Postal Service (USPS) starts. After realizing that my package was going back to the post office the process of getting it appears trivial. All I needed to do was to go down to the post office and pick it up. Unfortunately I discovered a shortcoming in the USPS tracking system. You may not know this or even care, but their tracking system does not tell you which post office is holding your package. Not a big deal if you are able to get that little yellow sticky note they put on your door, but for my situation this wasn't an option.

Being an internet savvy guy I went to the internet looked up the USPS website and got the 800 number to their tracking department. I'm almost done, right? Well after giving the lady on the phone the 22 digit tracking number she proceeds to read back what I already found out from their tracking website. No harm in that, but when I explain that all I need to know is which post office is holding my package we hit a wall. She tells me that she doesn't have that information. I'm a little shocked to hear that they have all this data about it being in transit or that there's a note on the front door, but they can't tell me who has it. She does however provide me with three possible post offices that might have it. I call them all and eventually locate the package.

I want to thank you now for being patient and reading this introductory information. What follows is my conversation with the USPS employee. This is exactly how our conversation went:

USPS Guy: Hello, US Post Office.
Me: Hi. I'm calling about a package you are holding for me.

USPS Guy: Sure, how can I help you?
Me: (I go through the explanation from above)

USPS Guy: Will just bring in the yellow slip left on the door and you can get the package.
Me: I can't get the yellow slip I don't live there.

USPS Guy: Well there's nothing I can do if you don't have it. We will send the items back and you can have them re-shipped.
Me: Are you serious?

USPS Guy: Listen sir, without the slip I can't just give you a package. Is there anything else?
Me: Hold on a minute. What do you do if someone misplaces or loses their slip?

USPS Guy: When that happens we ask that the person bring in the tracking number and a photo id to get their package.
Me: Ok, then I lost the slip.

USPS Guy: In that case bring the tracking number and your photo id before 5 p.m. and you can get your package.
Me: Are you kidding?

USPS Guy: No sir. Just be here before 5 if you want it today.
Me: Ok, thank you.

USPS Guy: Anything else?
Me: No, that should do it.

Amazing!!

I found this on YouTube.com and couldn't wait to post it. As a short introduction I would like to point out that chess should be fun first a foremost. This clip I thought was a great parody of a strange, but enjoyable movie. If you've seen the movie Fight Club then go straight to the clip, but if you haven't here's a short no spoiler introduction.

Fight Club is about a lonely, isolated thirty-something young professional who seeks escape from his mundane existence with the help of a devious soap salesman. They find their release from the prison of reality through underground fight clubs, where men can be what the world now denies them. Their boxing matches and harmless pranks soon lead to an out-of-control spiral towards oblivion.

The fight club is about bare-knuckle fighting and is controlled by a set of eight rules:

1. You don't talk about fight club.
2. You don't talk about fight club.
3. If someone says stop, goes limp, even if he's just faking it, the fight is over.
4. Only two guys to a fight.
5. One fight at a time.
6. They fight without shirts or shoes.
7. The fights go on as long as they have to.
8. If this is your first night at fight club, you have to fight

Chess Club – the movie

If you want to see the real thing.

One pillar that I believe most aspiring chess players lean on is the idea that some people have a natural gift for the game. The patzers that stumble and thrash around like dieing fish on the beach are just doing the best they can with the limited resources that they were born with. It's the classic debate of hard work verses God giving talent. The implications of answering this question are unnerving to anyone that invests any serious time in the game.

Why should the answer bother chess players? Well for those of us that are not Grandmasters it means we are either not working hard enough or the level to which we can rise is predetermined. Both these answers are unsatisfactory, but most people are not comfortable or willing to accept that they are in control of their own destiny. The truth is that it's easier to blame fate for our situation. So we simply accept that some people just have it. Through no fault of our own we are just missing "the chess gene". I find this line of thinking absolutely unacceptable.

As a disabled child I recognized very early that I was going to have to work harder than most to achieve my goals so I naturally fell into the camp of hard work is the key. This belief was constantly reinforced by my love of chess. Through chess I could quickly see the correlation between hard work and success. When I was five or six years old I loved playing chess against my uncle, but he always won. One day after getting beat, again, I was complaining about how it wasn't fair that I always lose. My uncle said something to me that day that has followed me ever since. He asked me what I did before we played to win. My answer was a simple, I didn't do anything. Then it hit me. I understood even at that early age the point of his question. Success in chess is directly linked to the amount of work you are willing to put into it. Life is exactly the same way. What better lesson could a child possibly learn?

This idea of hard work sounds plausible, but do I have anything to backup these claims besides my own inclinations towards controlling your own destiny. This debate between nature and nurture has been going on for a long time, but with current advancement in the area of psychology we are finally gaining some scientific evidence. K. Anders Ericsson at Carnegie-Mellon University did several experiments to examine if the age old adage of "practice makes perfect" is true. He studied musicians in there 20s that attended a music school in West Berlin. He had the instructors at the school group the students into three categories. First group was the students that appeared to have the gift for music, the second group were good, and the final group was adequate to below average. Ericsson asked each group how many hours they practiced each week since they started their musical training. The first group averaged about 10,000 hours, the second group 8,000, and the third group about 5,000 hours. This experiment also had each group keep track of how many hour they were practicing now and the top performers were still practicing more than the other groups. But what about people like Mozart, right? Well it so happens that Mozart's father was a great musician himself and placed a very hard musical regiment on the young Wolfgang. (Ericsson paper) The relationship between practice and success was later confirmed by John Sloboda and Michael Howe with a similar experiment where they interviewed parents of kids that were categorized as "gifted" to see if they need to practice less than the "normal" kids to reach the same level of play. There experiment showed that if both students practiced the same amount of time they both progressed at the same rate. (Howe and Sloboda paper)

To complicate this debate even further the talent myth is unknowingly perpetuated even further by the very people involved in the "talent" search. Here's the scenario that was found to be very common. For example, a chess instructor sees a young player involved in a game. The young player makes what appear to be some extraordinary moves so the instructor labels the child as having talent. This label causes the parents and instructors to focus more energy in cultivating this gift. The child, who's getting this special treatment, likes this attention so they work harder at chess. It's a classic positive reinforcement scenario.

I think that we confuse ambition with talent. From all the things I've read the one constant seems to be a personal drive to excel in a specific field. There are no free lunches in life. The people that are at the top didn't get there easily. Years of hard work and sacrifice are the ingredients for success.

Below are some of the source sites I used to generate this post. They are worth a read.

Outstanding Performers: Created, Not Born?
Scientific American: The Expert Mind