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Title: The Q&A Way in Chess Author: Bruce Pandolfini Publisher: David Mckay, Random House Puzzles & Games Genre: General Advice Level: All Levels Contents: The book contains almost 300 pages of questions and answers taken from Bruce Pandolfini’s column for Chesscafe.com, a column that has the same title as the book. The questions in the book are divided to eight chapters according to subject: 1 Class Struggles 2 Teaching or Preaching? 3 Chess through the Ages 4 Mind Play 5 Tech Games 6 Culture, Place, and Time 7 Going through a Phase 8 Mishegaas: Rules, Etiquette, Notation, and More |
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What is it good for? When I imagine Bruce Pandolfini, I imagine the charismatic figure played by Ben Kingsley in the movie “Searching for Bobby Fischer”. Actually, on the cover of his book, the real Pandolfini looks no less impressive than Kingsley but the charisma does not follow into the book.
The first setback of The Q & A Way in Chess is that the book does not follow the basic expectations from a Q&A publication, i.e. easy navigation through the questions. Imagine for example that you surf the web to the Q&A page of a company called chess.com. What would you expect? A long list of short questions that you can read quickly until you arrive at a question that is of interest to you. Then you click on the question and read the full version of the question and the corresponding answer. Unfortunately, the expectation of en easy-to-navigate list of questions is not fulfilled in this book, and the division to chapters is not very helpful because if you have only one question on the opening you will still have many pages to flip through. You get some compensation for the extra reading from Pandolfini’s wit and sense of humor but it is not enough for you to really want to read the book from cover to cover.
The worst thing is that the answers are just not helpful enough. Pandolfini is not direct enough; he usually gives in his answer a few options without deciding among them, thus leaving his reader with the same dilemma that the reader had in the beginning. In fact Pandolfini’s anwers remind me of the oracles of Delphi, known for their obscure answers which bounced the question back to the person who had asked it. Still, you do not have to take my word for it and you may check Pandolfini’s column at www.chesscafe.com. If you like Pandolfini’s column, you have plenty more of the same in his book.
The Good Things:
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A good nighttime book, if you like dreaming about chess
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Pandolfini is at times quite witty
The Bad Things:
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Contents are organized in a time consuming manner – you have to read a lot until you get to a question that interests you
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The questions and answers did not go through descent editing. The questions are too long and the answers not as helpful as you would expect.
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Too many times the author says he does not have enough information to give his answer. If so why is the question published in the first place?
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The diagrams are completely unhelpful and in most cases show end positions of games where everything has already been decided
Quote: “
Q: In your opinion, is there an accepted advantage to playing either Black or White?
-USA
A: That depends what you mean. If you’re talking about the game’s start, when it’s advantageous to go first, it’s better to have White. But if you’re talking about a later stage in the game, when it’s mate in one move for Black, it’s better to have Black. Which of those situations were you referring to?”
The Bottom Line:
Q: Do I want this book in my library?
A: That depends what you mean. If you want a book that you will actually read then the answer is ‘no’, but if you just want to fill up some space on your shelf then this book may be helpful. Which of those situations were you referring to?
Rating: 6/10
Review written by Chessbug.