On chess books…

It took me a long time to learn the proper way to read a chess book. It was not an easy lesson.  The thing is that a chess book is different from , say for the point of argument – a book of mathematics – in that you don’t need to read the chapters sequentially in order to follow and understand what is going on.

In chess you can open a book right in the middle and start learning right away.  You can read the book backwards, forward or which any way you want.

In some ways this makes me recall that famous observation by Arthur Ashe when he was asked if there was a secret to becoming a champion:

Start where you are. Use what you have. Do what you can.