New Year’s 2012 Book Reading Resolutions

Musikamole could you explain how you are uploading stuff to the Kindle...I had no idea this was possible.

Nice.

Yes, I use flashcards for chess study. I have several sets: some were made with ink stamps (USCF sold a stamp that makes a board, and a set of stamps that has two of each piece, one for red, one for black), others with Publisher, Word, and Open Office. I've made diagrams that can be inserted in these documents with Chess Captor, Fritz, and ChessBase 11.

My Chess Skills blog will likely have a post concerning flashcards sometime in the next week or so. I was thinking about it while writing "Improving Tactics: Training Resources."

Happy to help.

I use the free Mobi Pocket Creator to convert PDF and Word documents into the Kindle format.  It can be found here: http://www.mobipocket.com/en/downloadsoft/productdetailscreator.asp

There are several youtube sites that will teach you in just a few minutes how to use Mobi Pocket Creator. I suggest watching the tutorial. It's a lot easier than reading the instructions. Here is one tutorial site: http://www.mobipocket.com/en/downloadsoft/productdetailscreator.asp

Once you have converted a PDF or Word document, or some other format into the Kindle format, you can then use the USB cord that came with your Kindle to transfer the files converted with Mobi Creator from your PC to your Kindle.

I have saved Wiki chess documents into PDF or Word, and then converted them into a Kindle fromat for reading on my Kindle. If you have a computer scanner, you could scan chess books into your PC and convert them to Kindle files.

Anything that I own can be converted to Kindle.

Ziryab sent me a self-published book on checkmates that I converted from PDF to Kindle, so I have his book on both my PC and Kindle.

Last, you can convert any document from Word, for example, into PDF for free. Why is that important? Because your Kindle can read PDF files. Files converted from PDF to the Kindle format work even better, as you can change the size of the text.

Here is one of the sites to get a free PDF creator for the PC.  It comes in handy for many things, not just the Kindle. Most people don't know about this, and it is 100% legal. Apple computers already have a built in PDF converter.

http://www.pdf995.com/

To created a PDF document, after creating a Word document, go to File-Print, and you will see one of the printer choices as PDF995. Click on print after selecting PDF995 as your printer, and a PDF document will be created.

Hope all of this helps.

@ Ziryab - I really enjoyed your blog!

Perhaps.

I am not going to argue the point, as you may be right, but here is how I see the two books.

There have been misconceptions regarding How to Beat Your Dad at Chess. It's not a book for little kids. I wouldn't recommend giving this book to elementary students, unless 1. they are highly motivated 2. have already received instruction from me or someone else 3. played chess for two to three years 4. are good readers.

I have taught this age group for over 20 years and wouldn't hand out copies to my 4th - 6th graders. At least not as the FIRST book on checkmates. It would overwhelm them. This book is perhaps best suited for teenagers and up.

The book contains 50 need to know checkmate patterns along with the attacking ideas, with a healthy amount of text and examples, as it is not only a puzzle book, like John Nunn's 1001 Deadly Checkmate Patterns. I have Nunn's book on my Kindle, and it's awesome!

How to Beat Your Dad at Chess is a book with 50 chapters that can't be completely digested and mastered in a few reading sessions! It's a lot of content, with a comprehensive test at the end of the book.

I don't see Art of Attack in Chess as a more difficult book to read or understand, since at least from a tactical standpoint, it's not any harder to understand than How to Beat Your Dad at Chess.

Vukovic's book does cover more attacking ideas in much greater depth, with analysis on how to attack both the king in the center and the castled king, using illustrative games.

Sure, I can see one book as being a primer for the other, and purchased How to Beat Your Dad at Chess a year before buying Art of Attack in Chess, but never got around to finishing either book. Thus, the New Year's 2012 Book Reading Resolutions! I find both books to be equally challenging and perfect for study and improvement for 2012.  That's just me.

What did you expect? He's a college profesor, historian and pro writer who would rather be fishing!

... or learning about God's gift to man: the rain that waters vitis vinifera (see "Ben Franklin on Wine" [my history blog]).

I do think that How to Beat Your Dad at Chess is more kid-friendly than my self-published "Checklist of Checkmates," but  agree with your assessment that kids need be strong readers to get help from it. As for my blog, it is a labor of love, but real labor to keep it fresh and up-to-date. From time to time, I put more effort into my history blog and neglect my chess blog. Coaching at two elementary schools does force me to attend to chess a bit, but these holidays are given to working on a history course for future elementary school teachers.

 Yes it does, thanks a lot!

Is this available via e-mail? :)

Very nice Musik.  Now you can add to what you already have in Nunn's book.  I like the flash-card idea, but it looks as though it will be harder to do on a Mac.

Mike

As a public school music teacher, I have worked with Macs since 1985. The Mac comes loaded with a PDF creator, not the pro version, but at least something where you can create PDF documents which can be imported into your Kindle.

Perhaps try starting simple, right-clicking on internet pages of interest, copy and paste them into Office Mac, select "print" in Office Mac,  select "create PDF", click on "save".  Connect the Kindle to the Mac with a USB cable and transfer the PDF file to your Kindle. You can also convert a PDF file to a Kindle file, which is even better, because then your self-created documents can be viewed/adjusted like any other Kindle edition publication. If you don’t want to spend the time to covert the file, or don’t have the necessary software for the Mac,  Amazon will do it for you, and the last time I tried that, it was free.

That’s how I got started with creating my own Kindle books, by converting Ziryab's self-published Checklist of Checkmates with Exercises from PDF to Kindle.

I own at least ten books on checkmates, from beginning to advanced, including the new one by Garry Kasparov, and I still find Ziryab's booklet (82 pages) to be the most comprehensive and useful. This booklet comes with a handy checklist, where you can check off each checkmate after it has been mastered.  It makes me feel like I am making progress. 

Does everyone have the Arabian mate down cold, or the Epaulette mate, or Mayet's mate? In this booklet the instruction is excellent, the diagrams are clear, the x's helpful (denoting escape squares) and the historical references a delight to read.  

Chess coaches all over the country need to distribute this checkmate booklet to their students,  so that their teams can rack up points with brilliant mates!  Ziryab  - When will this booklet be released to the general public?  I have several elementary GATE kids that could handle the text, so I will be happy to purchase ten copies for my Elementary School Chess Club.

There are two major ones for me:

First is "The Middle Game in Chess" by GM Reuben Fine. I've tried this one a few times, and never made it more than thirty or so pages in. That was mostly because I wasn't really serious about chess back then though, so I'm thinking I'll be able to get a bit more out of it now!

Also, I have a paperback copy of Capablanca's "A Primer of Chess." I've really wanted to go though this one, but the trouble is, it's the old school notation, and I struggled with it as a teenager because that system of notation can become very confusing. So, I've resolved to go through and transcribe it each section/chapter at a time, and then go through and read/play through the commentary.

And good luck with the resolutions everyone, reading the previous posts has got me chomping at the bit to get to Barnes and Noble!

 Being an old dog I am familiar with both so it always surprises me to find someone who struggles with one or the other. Understandable, but surprising.

I prefer algebraic. However, there is one way I prefer descriptive, and that is if I want to play from black's side of the board. The handy thing about descriptive is this requires no adjustment whatsoever. With algebraic I have to keep reminding myself "ok, the alphabet is running backwards, and the numbers go down, not up."

Chris and Duck,

You both have very valid points. I can read descriptive, I just find it a bit confusing from time to time. However, to be fair I haven't touched the book in a few years, if I give it a go, I may not have quite as much trouble as I'm expecting. Thanks!

Renaud and Kahn, The Art of the Checkmate sets the standard for checkmate texts. It is available in descriptive only (at least the English version; I have not examined the original French).

Thank you! The book has received many five star praises from chess players at Amazon and makes the same claims: both comprehensive and the best. It's only $9.95, and definitely destined for my collection after Christmas.

It would be nice if John Nunn or someone else updated the notation from descriptive to algebraic. I own a few classics that Nunn has updated, and they are all excellent.

I am greatly enjoying John Nunn's Kindle edition of his book, 1001 Deady Checkmates. As I said before, the easy flashcard format makes it so I can't put it down, and am thrilled that I will most likely finish all 1001 checkmate puzzles in a few months. After that, I will rinse and repeat, and then I will rinse and repeat again, until I can solve all 1001 checkmate puzzles at 5 seconds per puzzle.