Ways of Reading

After finishing the process of going through every game in Irving Chernev, The 1000 Best Short Games of Chess (1955), I was motivated to tackle another classic. Now, I am following the same process with P. H. Clarke, 100 Soviet Chess Miniatures (1963). I downloaded the PGN file from Bill Wall’s Chess Page and opened it in tChess Pro on my iPad. During my morning coffee a day or two per week, I go through a game on the iPad, sometimes several times, then I go through the game while reading Clark’s annotations. Sometimes, I then find the game on chessgames.com and drop a note there.

Clarke’s book had some competition for my attention. Bobby Fischer, My 60 Memorable Games (1969) also beckoned. Wall has a PGN for that book as well. It, too, resides on my iPad. But as I was going through Fischer — Sherwin 1957, I had a strong impulse to set a chess board on the table for the purpose of studying Fischer’s annotations in a manner that is more difficult with tChess Pro.

Working through My 60 Memorable Games will be more work, but I also think it is worth doing. Perhaps I will do a quick orientation to each game in tChess Pro, then switch to a chessboard on the table and the book for further study.