11-08-2019, 11:35 PM
(This post was last modified: 12-08-2019, 06:03 PM by donaldheron.)
I am getting older but even when I was younger I had the same complaint against almost all chess books written in algebraic: the font - the small c with its blob at the top end of the c looks almost identical to the small e with its very faint horizontal line. I think what moved me to finally complain about this was Bologans books on Ruy Lopez and Black weapons in the open games where he takes it a stage further by, in headings, having moves in pale white on a black background - almost unreadable! (revision 12/8/19 - New in Chess books do not have the problem with the font making it difficult to tell c from e this only refers to the moves in white on a black background especially the figurines.) So why bother with books? Why not just use chess databases? OK for actual games data they are fine but they are all based on a false premise that I first saw in a real book whose title (I think - if my memory serves me well) was the blue book of chess. That premise was that you could determine the best move by finding the one with the highest percentage score. In the blue book this method showed 1.g4 to be white's best move. Another situation is where a move might have done well then someone discovers a refutation and no one plays it anymore and it still shows up as a good move statistically. In other words they can be misleading.
Good sense is of all things in the world the most equally distributed, for everybody thinks himself so abundantly provided with it, that even those most difficult to please do not commonly desire more of it than they already possess. Descartes