Science of Strategy (Chess Classics)

This book is written in a very similar style to his earlier works Think/Play like a Grandmaster. It's a pity that this book was not translated and published back during the late 1970s/early 1980s. This book is a much better tribute to Kotov than his last book, "Train like a Grandmaster." Even though this book was originally written back during the late 1970s, it has a lot of lessons that are still relevant today. Anyone who works through this book should see their ratings improve.

"The Science of Strategy" is an excellent addition to the "Chess Classics" series. I like how analytic Kotov is relative to many of the other classics. Kotov attempts to deconstruct various elements of chess planning (starting with pawn structure) and explain them analytically. It's not unusual for him to spend multiple paragraphs of text deconstructing a pawn structure. The analytic introductions are to themes and pawn structures are followed up by relevant annotated games. This book is well structured and the game annotations are very instructive. There are some errors in analysis, but that doesn't make this useless to study. Kotov's long-term ideas are generally correct, even if he got the implementation incorrect. This generation of GMs is able to play with a higher degree of accuracy because they built on the ideas of previous generations. Let's not forget that Kasparov and Fischer took the classics very seriously, as do many top players today. Turn on your engine if you insist on looking for improvements, but first learn from Kotov's annotations. Another possible flaw is that sometimes a position is declared equal and some moves later Kotov claims that one side is better without explaining where the mistakes were. This sort of book is not the best for absolute objective evaluations about where all of the mistakes were, but it does a reasonable job for it's time. The primary value is in the positional ideas and analytic explanation, I can forgive this style and use a computer to help know where the objective errors were if I need to. It's worth mentioning that there is some overlap between this book and "Think like a Grandmaster", especially in the annotated games at the end, but the majority of the book is fresh content. Highly recommended.

I now realize, who cares what Kotov said in the 60’s? He wasn’t even that strong. This book is a money grab with outdated analysis way before the computer age. Waste of money.

Libro perfecto para temas de estrategia. Muy buenas explicaciones y recomendable para jugadores de club.