Chess Kaleidoscope

Quite an interesting book. I especially loved the totally outdated section on computer chess. I'm a software engineer and I have been following the development of chess playing software for a few years. Its rather amusing to read the naive predictions(from the 80s) of how computers will never beat a grandmaster. Now computers are thrashing grandmasters by the dozen and even Kasparov is not spared. Well to give Karpov credit at least one of his predictions came true : chess software can now play 5 - 6 piece endgames perfectly. The first part of this book is just a bunch of chess puzzles(some really interesting ones) with annotations by Karpov (and co-authour Gik). Once in a while Karpov throws in some endgame wisdom such as triangulation(losing the tempo) and the rule of the square which might be of interest to the beginner. There is a section (letter) about the best games from the World Championships.(from Steinitz until Karpov)There is also a letter on Karpov's best games and a story on how he met his co-author Gik. Overall an interesting book to read (like a trivia book) but quite useless for serious study. As its title suggest it gives you a kaleidoscopic survey of diferrent areas of chess interest.

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