Different approaches to the same material

When I sat down to write the Attacking Manual 1 the main goal for me was to make the book very readable. It later made me very happy when Slovakian GM Jan Markos (author of the underrated and generally excellent Beat the KID) said that he had read the book like if it had been a novel. This was exactly the flow I wanted to achieve; the focus being on recurring strategic themes, rather than on calculation.

This does not mean that the material could not have been used in a different way. Chess is a complex game and our minds are complex tools. Obviously they will offer different ways to achieve the same goals.

In his latest post on ChessCafe.com Mark Dvoretsky uses one of the positions from the book to look into calculation. His goal is quite different from mine and the end result is therefore quite different as well. Not better or worse, just different. To my relief the analysis I did six years ago have not been spanked by today’s much faster computers and Mark talks very nicely of my writing, which shows that he is a good friend, as well as awfully kind to youthful amateurs like myself.

If you at all feel inspired to do some heavy calculation, then you should check out his article here.

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