A large chess library can sometimes be more of a hindrance than a help. With such an embarrassment of riches, you’ll probably find yourself hopping from one book to the next without getting full value from any one of them. On the other hand, if you had only one book, gettting full value from it would be easier but you’d miss out on what the other books can offer.

What I want is a single chess book that meets nearly all my study needs.

It’d be the book I’d pull from my shelf if I had a whole month to study or just 15 minutes.

Sounds good so far, but the specifications are a teensy bit vague. Let’s try to pin down those specifications by examining how books published today fall short.

Opening books based on annotated illustrative games are the type many chess players find the most useful. Let’s start there.

Strong points:

The games cover an opening I play.

The games are complete so I get to see how the opening, middlegame, and endgame fit together as an integrated whole.

The games are carefully selected to illustrate the key ideas of the opening.

The games are annotated to help me understand the reasons behind the moves.

Variations to the game continuation are illustrated by partial or complete games.
Weak points:

Parts of the book are out of date. By the time the book is in my hands, some of those main lines may have become historical footnotes, and the obscure sub-variations may have become the new main lines.

Variations and sub-variations are hard to follow on a real board. I often have to back up all the way to the beginning of the game just to make sure I’m resetting the board correctly.
The book focuses on games and variations the author thinks are important and not on the games and variations I think are important.

The book completely overlooks the games I have played in this opening, including the games I played just last month. How am I supposed to improve my repertoire if the book doesn’t remind me what I’ve been playing?

Clearly these weaknesses are not the author’s fault. He’s constrained by the realities of the publishing world.

You, however, are not operating under these constraints. If you have a PC, you can correct these weaknesses and author your own personalized chess book that corrects these weaknesses.

The chess database programs Scid (free), Chessbase (commercial), and Chess Assistant (commercial) have all the authoring software you need.

The key is to use the „merge” function (called „join” in Chess Assistant). When you’re annotating a game in your database, the merge function allows you to include one or more games as variations, automatically inserted where they diverge from the main game.

Many chess authors make heavy use of this merge function when they’re writing a book. The book is essentially a printout of that part of the database that the author has selected to be the illustrative games. His annotations to the games become the text of the book, and all the merged games become the variations.

Since you’ll want to keep your personalized chess book up to date, don’t bother printing it out. Just leave it as a set of games in your database.

Note that because you’ll be „reading” your book by viewing the games and annotations in your database program, navigating through variations and sub-variations can also be handled with the database program.

Just deciding to maintain your personalized chess book in electronic form as a collection of annotated games in a database has automatically fixed two of the weaknesses: how to keep the book up to date and how to navigate variations.

Now the trickier question. How do you to select the illustrative games and the merged games that will become the variations? Don’t you have the same problem other authors have? Won’t you periodically have to update the book by replacing illustrative games that no longer reflect the main line you care about?

I chose a solution that doesn’t require any replacement of illustrative games.

I chose to make the games I’ve played be the illustrative games. When I play a new game, I add it as an illustrative game. I merge in appropriate GM games as well as previous games I’ve played in that line to serve as variations.

In principle I could periodically update my older illustrative games. That sounds like a lot of work, though, which means I wouldn’t keep doing it for long. It’s probably not worth the effort anyway since I’ll be focusing my study effort on my latest games, not the older ones.

To get started creating your personalized chess book, copy all of your annotated games to a new database that will serve as your book of illustrative games and variations. I call mine „rowan_book”.

When I play a tournament game, I add it to my „rowan” database and annotate it. Then I copy it to „rowan_book” to serve as my latest illustrative game.

Next I look for key games in that line that I might want to include as variations for the illustrative game. To find these „variation” candidate games I look through:

My earlier games played in this line. – This helps me review what I’ve played before.

My books about this opening. – The author typically selects important and instructive games. Nearly all of these games are in one or more of my databases, so I don’t have to re-enter the moves.

My databases of annotated games. – The Chess Informant and Chesspublishing.com collections are good resources if you have them.

My databases of unannotated games. The Week in Chess collection, updated weekly, is an excellent free resource.

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This article appeared in the August 2004 issue of Northwest Chess.