Chess Book Face Off: Best Lessons of a Chess Coach Vs. Pandolfini's Endgame Course

In my recent efforts to continue to improve at chess, I've read through a couple more books on the subject. As always, I read books in pairs so that I can get multiple perspectives on a topic and learn it more thoroughly. Sometimes the books cover nearly the same material, and other times—like in this case—the books are only loosely related. The first book is Best Lessons of a Chess Coach by Sunil Weeramantry, a FIDE Master and highly successful chess coach. This book is the kind of book that explains a handful of games in intimate detail. The second book is Pandolfini's Endgame Course by Bruce Pandolfini, a USCF National Master and a more famous highly successful chess coach. Being a book about endgames, it does not go through full games, but contains an extensive collection of endgame positions to study. So both books were written by accomplished chess masters and coaches, meaning they have at least that in common.

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Chess Book Face Off: The Development of Chess Style Vs. Chess Endings

I've been getting back into chess lately, after taking a break for a couple years, and to get back up to speed, I've been reading quite a few chess books. I thought it would be fun to review and compare some of them, which is why I explored how to add JavaScript chess boards to the blog in my last article. Now I'll put that new feature to use while discussing a couple of chess books I've read recently: The Development of Chess Style by Max Euwe and John Nunn and Chess Endings: Essential Knowledge by Yuri Averbakh. Both of these books are somewhat older, being written in 1997 and 1993, respectively. That doesn't mean they're obsolete, because plenty of good chess books are also classics. Chess as a game is still progressing and theory changes, but the fundamentals are solid. Besides, one of these books is more about the history of chess, so it's only downside to being older is that it doesn't include more current developments.

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A Barely Adequate Guide to Displaying Chess Games with JavaScript

I've done a few of these Barely Adequate Guides in the past, the idea being that I want to explore how to do something with code that I've never done before, and I'll figure it out while writing the post so that we can all see my thought process as I go about solving the problem of getting something new up and running. This time I want to bring together two things I love doing in my free time: programming and chess. I wouldn't say I'm an especially good chess player—I'm quite mediocre actually—but I love the game, and I love learning it and reading books about it.