GRIND LIKE A GRANDMASTER by Magnus Carlsen & David Howell, New in Chess, 205 pp., publ. 2023.

Another book version of a Chessable course, covering what the title implies and the sub-title says – how to keep pressing in apparently dull and lifeless positions. As the back cover blurb puts it: ‘It is amazing how much play you can create in seemingly dull and equal chess positions – if you persevere...Carlsen and Howell show how you can keep a game alive, how you can keep posing problems to your opponent, how you can recognize the first small mistakes, and how you can grind your opponent down until he cracks.’

As you might surmise, the material is based largely on endgames: ‘...after the opening phase and the twists and turns of the middlegame, very often we will reach an endgame where we could be slightly better or worse, or perhaps it’s a draw. That moment is the starting point of this course...’

There are twelve illustrative games, of which Carlsen is involved in six, Howell in five and the other is – what else? – Carlsen-Howell from the World U-12 championship in 2002 (no spoilers re the result). The material is divided into eight chapters:

·Legendary endgame grinders

·Origin stories

·Accumulating small advantages

·Outgrinding fellow grinders

·Turning draws into wins

·Defensive grinding: saving the half point

·Tiring out your opponent

·Transformation of advantage types

The style of the book is conversational, as Carlsen and Howell discuss the games, making for instructive and often entertaining reading (you’ll learn about the Toblerone Gambit), as it permits insights into how a grandmaster thinks that bare variations alone cannot do. It is interesting to see how often a major decision is made on what can only be regarded as intuitive grounds, as opposed to the crisp calculation and assessments GMs are usually credited with. Carlsen often says something like ‘As for the queen exchange, I don’t know. I figured we would just make the trade and play on’, or ‘...whether this ending is winning or drawn is beside the point. The point is there are practical chances, and we have to make the most of them’, or little exchanges like (Howell) ‘...did you even think about winning chances here?’ (Carlsen) ‘Not really,just took it step by step.’

Other factors also play their part in inducing a player to play on, as referenced by body language, signs of nervousness, tournament situation etc. As Carlsen comments, having just saved a R v R+B ending v MVL where the latter agreed a draw after trying for only about ten moves, ‘I think you should in principle always play until you reach the 50 moves’. And in a game against Tari he notes that ‘...he made a huge mistake. Not chess-wise, but psychologically’.

The dozen games provide plenty of inspiration and advice in terms of trying to get blood from a stone; you will encounter, for example,

·don’t play for a draw, play the position

·induce small concessions

·choose a line you feel comfortable playing

·improve your pieces before going for forced lines

·push if there’s zero risk

but there is a huge difference between these master games and those of average players. Fast time controls and having to pack up and be off the premises before the janny starts to get annoyed render the chances of a long, satisfying grind highly unlikely. Howell talks on one occasion of holding an eight-hour, 142-move marathon. That is not going to happen in a club game.

This is not the authors’ fault, of course, and there is much to be gleaned from their tips and wisdom, but it is an inescapable fact of club/weekend life that endings are often blitzed out with the seconds ticking (or whatever digital clocks do) down, and this is worth bearing in mind. The authors’ teachings obviously lend themselves much more to slower events with a generous, less stressful, time control.

That said, Grind Like a Grandmaster is a very enjoyable and entertaining read. The informal yet serious approach makes it all the easier to follow and take in the material, and will (or should!) give you some ideas about how to approach stodgier, duller positions – a lot of what the authors say could be applied to middlegames as well as endings. If nothing else, it will provide you with, as Howell says in his preface, an insight into how players think and that in itself can only be a good thing.

Ian Marks

June 2024