Saturday, December 22, 2012

Amateur to IM (Jonathan Hawkins)


Mongoose Press sends me their books, very kindly, sometimes. Most of the time I look at them and think they are ok but ignore them, because I'm really not studying chess. I received Amateur to IM a couple months ago and put it on my bookshelf.

Yesterday, the last day of school before break, I was looking through my classroom library for books to take home and read over Christmas vacation. (Last summer, I did enormous amounts of prep work, and it got me through the whole fall planningwise, so I was thinking to do that again.)

I opened Amateur to IM and immediately got sucked in. I was so absorbed that I didn't notice during the holiday party when my homeroom put half a tube of Mentos in a 2 liter bottle of Sprite. It exploded/sprayed the contents around the room, and while many sets/desks/chairs are now coated in a fine sugar syrup-resin, it was undeniably impressive/hilarious. Amateur to IM is a surprisingly enjoyable book that concentrates on a few endgames and explains them really well. You can literally feel your understanding of chess growing as you read-- I learned 4 new things I'm excited about from one chapter yesterday. I'm hoping to finish the book over break and use it in class in the spring.

I bought Jonathan/us a food dehydrator for Christmas.
My USATE: Matan Prilleltensky, Isaac Barayev, Matheu Jefferson, me.
Happy birthday Greg!

3 comments:

Philip Sells said...

The resin will make the pieces shiny! (maybe; at least until it oxidizes)

Have a nice time in Parsippany! We'll bring a team, looks like only one this year.

gurdonark said...

It sounds like a good book. It would be fun to launch a mentos propulsion rocket and send up a cheap digicam set on video to record the flight. Have a great boxing day.

Unknown said...

I want to invite you to speak at Tel-Aviv U. Engineering Alumni Club in Israel about your work.
via video of-course...
Yariv Lotan
Chairman (Voluntary)
ad@value-focused.com