Product Review: Amateur to IM by Jonathan Hawkins
(Mongoose Press USD 29.95)
I have spent much of my life telling people that the way to improve their chess is to study the endgame. Most of my listeners nod politely, assure me that they agree 100%, and then go home and spend the evening cramming their memories with some more opening theory. And few of them ever get any better at the game.
I have never spoken directly to Jonathan Hawkins, so he has never had the benefit of my sage counsel, but despite this, he took the advice anyway. As he explains in the Introduction to this book, about eight years ago, he decided that "being a (relatively) weak chessplayer wasn't for me", relatively weak in this context being about 2000 strength. He took the decision to do something about this, and to commit a large portion of his time to studying chess. Specifically, he started studying the endgame. Eight years on, he has gained 400 rating points, the IM title and has two GM norms.
This book presents a summary of much of the work he did. In some respects, it could be seen as an endgame textbook, although that is not really what it is meant to be. It would be a very incomplete one of those, since although it contains extensive sections on certain specific endings (R+PvR, and R+BvR, one particular K+P ending, some opposite-coloured bishop endings, etc) that is all it covers - the rest of endgame theory is not covered at all. The value of the book is in the way Hawkins summarises
how he studied, rather than
what. He shows how he gradually built up his understanding of the endings concerned bit by bit, how he drew the key lessons from each example, and how he summarised the essential points.
The most interesting question is why studying the endgame like this caused such a large improvement in Hawkins' play. Naturally, his results in endgames themselves improved - for example, after studying extensively the ending of R+B v R, which he describes as "My favourite ending", he subsequently earned half a point, when he defended the position successfully for 50 moves against Gormally at the 2008 British Championship. But that is only part of the story, of course. It was not just Hawkins' endgame play that improved, but his all-round play, middlegame as well. Precisely how this occurs has been written about by many authors - endgame study fosters a greater understanding of the capabilities of the pieces, helps one calculate better, etc, etc. These things are well-known.
But I think the really important thing about Hawkins' improvement is that in his work on the endgame, he
analysed. He says himself that "I filled notebook after notebook with endgame analysis". And elsewhere, he writes that, in this book, "I also wanted to spark the reader's interest in analysis and investigation of positions". And there is the rub. What Hawkins did
not do is what most amateurs do when they "study" chess, what Nigel Davies has described most aptly as "reading and nodding" - they open the book, play through the moves on a set, and nod sagely at the annotations, and assure themselves that they now understand and would in future play such moves themselves. They don't actually analyse positions for themselves, push the pieces round, investigate the moves that were not played in the game, etc. Grandmasters analyse games, amateurs play over them. Therein lies the difference.
Hawkins' book is a fascinating story of how an 18-year old 2000-strength player (and by definition, therefore, not a player blessed with exceptional natural talent, if he will forgive me for saying so) turned himself into a Grandmaster (he isn't one just yet, but it is clearly only a matter of time and opportunity) by a process of well-planned, assiduous work. As such, it is an inspiring story, and an example which any similarly ambitious amateur can follow, if he has the strength of character. "Amateur to IM" is a book which all those interested in chess improvement, be they players or trainers, should read, and I hope it sells as well as it deserves to.
You can buy the book
here.
