Keep up the many (see how simple it is?) good and entertaining reviews; I agreed with your review of Revolutionize your Chess, by the way.

Here’s more indication of lack of organization: Daniel Kelner points out that “The System” is not elaborated during the games. It actually is, somewhat, but not a lot. The notes seem written for more advanced players than for whom the thinking technique is written. There is some other interesting stuff thrown into the notes, like discussion of bias. But where’s the context for this topic? In Chapter 2, Hortillosa starts getting excited about “tactics theory” and how it relates to his system, but this relationship is never shown in the rest of the book. All of these disjointed parts contribute to the lack of organization. All this could have been cleared up with a decent editor.

I think that EC took very little risk with this book. It was cheap, because the author was non-titled and probably did not demand a large advance, and there was zero editing. If the book got bad reviews, the publisher could just blame the author. But I think the blame goes to the publisher, because I think that this MS had promise, and was not handled correctly by the publisher. Instead of taking their time organizing the book properly, adding or omitting content as necessary, and copy editing for clarity, EC seems to have published the MS “as is.” EC has a good enough reputation that they can put out duds and still be okay with the next book. These duds don’t make a lot of money, but they’re not expensive to whip out, either, if no effort goes into the production. It’s really not fair to the author.

Every 2100-level player has something to write about and offer to the below-1600 crowd, otherwise they would not be 2100. I really like the idea of sub-master writers, but they must make up for their low rating with excellent prose and content. This book showed promise in content, but the prose was wanting. I admire EC for giving 2100-level players a chance. But EC is stopping short of the finish line.

Arne, I don’t know if English is your first language, but you sure write in English well enough for it to be your first language, and I’m surprised that you did not notice how many commas were absent from Hortillosa’s prose. Problems are everywhere in the book. Copied here is the first sentence of the second paragraph of the Intro (taken from the EC Web site): “Some unwilling to give ground to the possibility that what I am proposing deserves their impartial investigation reluctantly characterized my offered proof as luck.” First off, this sentence is confusing and overwritten! Better would have been, “Some skeptics considered me lucky.” I will not even begin to explain where commas might have made Hortillosa’s prose better. Every page had opaque writing like this. The ideas are not bad, but the book needed an editor — badly. Anyone reading just the publicly available excerpts would probably agree.

Howard

But lack of (at least sustainable) results is not the only problem. In chapter two the writer elaborates on his system of thinking. And I expected him to follow up on this system in the next chapters to tell us how he has used it in his own games. Even though he keeps telling us he did use it, he never makes clear how he did. This is really a crucial ommission.

It is a matter of taste whether or not one enjoys the book. But let it be clear that there is very little that one can learn from it.

@Peter G: totally agree (about both the cover and contents!) of Forcing Chess Moves.

Although you did not like it, I enjoyed very much his thoughts about Ngf6 or Nge7, because I remember a lot of my games, in which I have the same thoughts about similar positions, which are completely senseless, but they are reality.

I also read most of the other mentioned books on this page. Do you know any book or web page, where you can find a summary of middle game and opening rules of thumb?
For the endgame such a summary is in my point of view the Endgame book from Dvoretsky (in German the translation means Endgame University), but I do not know any similar book about the middle game and the opening. All the mentioned books only show some rules of thumb, but they are not a real summary in a structured format. In most of these books you have tons of analysis of a specific position, which you could never do yourself during a game. Moreover the conclusion of all these books is, that nothing is clear and it depends on the specific position. This is correct, but not helpful.