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| Jan-12-04 | | Benjamin Lau: This is the guy who wrote Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy I think. He also wrote several important opening books on the French and English I believe. His book on the French, whose name I forget, was so good apparently that it was nicknamed the "French Player's Bible." |
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| Jan-13-04 | | Calli: The book was renamed by the US congress as "The Freedom Opening Player's Bible." :-) |
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Feb-15-05
 | | offramp: Am I the only one who bought his 'Big Book of Busts' for entirely the wrong reason? |
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| Apr-22-05 | | AgentRgent: <Calli> LOL, that's great! |
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| May-30-05 | | Tigran Petrosian: BREAKING NEWS from the chicago open: John watson has just suffered a heart attack. |
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May-30-05
 | | cu8sfan: <Tigran Petrosian> Where did you get this news? I hope he's going to get better! |
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| Sep-19-05 | | domradave: One of the great chess authors!
When in doubt always play the English! |
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| Dec-05-05 | | Hesam7: I guess he is very famous for these two books: "Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy" and "Chess Strategy in Action". I have seen both and they are original and very nice books, nevertheless they overlap on some topics. It would be nice if he wrote one combined and revised edition. |
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| Dec-23-05 | | PizzatheHut: "Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy" is one of the most interesting books I've ever read. I HIGHLY recommend it. |
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| Dec-23-05 | | whiskeyrebel: SOMCS is absolutely loaded with thought provoking discussion. I hope he's recovering well from whatever health problems he seems to have suffered. Does anybody have an update? |
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| Dec-23-05 | | WMD: I've read it and can't remember a single word. Frankly speaking, I wasn't impressed. |
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| Apr-22-06 | | pazzed paun: Has anyone been able to use the ideas featured in "Secrets of Modern Chess Srategy" in their own games? |
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Nov-14-06
 | | James Demery: This is Jacob Aagaard`s favorite player. |
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Apr-20-07
 | | Joshka: He just did the Dan Heisman show on chess.fm. He's taking over as a new host, since Fred Wilson is not going to be on anymore. |
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Apr-20-07
| | Joshka: His new show is starting on May 8th 9PM ICC time, think he stated it will be a 90 minute show. |
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| Apr-20-07 | | whiskeyrebel: Wow, time for me to re-up my recently expired account. Watson is my idea of a brilliant man. |
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Dec-14-07
| | Joshka: <whiskey> And I just heard on his show today, he's a former baseball player. So he he's gotta be a good guy!;-) |
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| May-08-08 | | SomeoneElse: Today's puzzle was Watson v Z Fayvinov 1993, white to move at move 24. John is living in Lincoln, Nebraska, USA, and is very involved in the chess community there. A great chess player, author, and just a really nice guy to work with. |
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May-23-08
| | James Demery: I read a review that John Watson wrote about fellow author Bruce Pandolfini in which he said BP had never written anything original. It seemed rather mean. The same John Watson was shocked when Jacob Aagard slammed him in one of his books. Interesting. |
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| Oct-05-08 | | Karpova: From John Watson's book review #70 on Richard Forster's "Amos Burn: A Chess Biography".
Link: http://www.chess.co.uk/twic/jwatson... This part interesting with regards to time controls:
John Watson: <If nothing else I was impressed with how early players resigned in the midst of a winning combination by their opponent. This indicates a high level of calculational skill. It also reminds me of how sad the influence of fast time controls can be. In today's 1 hour games (and 30 minute games, etc) there's often not even time to verify whether a combination is good. Even at 40/90 with sudden death afterwards, only the superstars would be able consistently attack with the combination of subtlety and accuracy that marks great attacking chess. To my mind, high quality requires at least 40 moves in two hours; let's hope that many events with such a time control survive the onslaught of modern impatience.> |
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| Oct-06-08 | | Karpova: IM John Donaldson's article "John Watson: Check, But Not Mate": http://www.chesscafe.com/text/watso... IM John Watson did have a stroke but no insurance and that's why Hanon W. Russell asked John Donaldson to write an article about Watson. Donaldson describes Watson's approach to chess and his work ethcis first, then turns his attention to Watson's chess career and annotates a game from Watson at the end. An excerpt:
<Of course anyone who has ever read any of John's books, from the
opening tomes on the English and French to his recent classic Secrets of
Modern Chess Strategy, knows that he is a perfectionist. A more
pragmatic view would probably have led to the Grandmaster title (John
had one GM norm long since expired), but pragmatism is not a word in
John's vocabulary The number of beautiful games that he has lost or
drawn in time pressure numbers in the hundreds. Anyone who has ever
listened to him in a post-mortem realizes that this is a guy who really
understands chess. His friends just wish he would move a little faster!John is not a materially motivated individual. While some authors seem
to belong to the book of the month club, churning out potboilers left and
right, John puts his heart and sole into everything he writes. Check out
his 6...Nc6 in the Saemisch King's Indian or his work on the Chigorin
(long before it became fashionable). The guy could have made better
money flipping burgers at McDonald's, but John never cut corners and
never complained. Watching him write a long book review over the
course of several days earlier this year, it dawned on me that he might
well be spending more time on his review than the author did writing his
book.>
And that's the game:
[Event "Paul Keres Memorial"]
[Site "Vancouver, Canada"]
[Date "1976.??.??"]
[Round "-"]
[White "John William Donaldson"]
[Black "John L Watson"]
[Result "0-1"]
[ECO "B08"]
1.d4 g6 2.Nc3 Bg7 3.e4 d6 4.Be2 Nf6 5.Nf3 c6 6.O-O Qc7 7.a4 e5 8.dxe5 dxe5 9.h3 O-O 10.Bc4 Nh5 11.Qe2 Nd7 12.Be3 Nf4 13.Qd2 Nb6 14.Bxb6 axb6 15.Rad1 Ne6 16.Bxe6 Bxe6 17.Qd6 Qxd6 18.Rxd6 Rfd8 19.Rfd1 Rxd6 20.Rxd6 Bf8 21.Rd3 f6 22.b3 Kf7 23.Kf1 Bc5 24.Ke2 Ke7 25.Nb1 Bb4 26.Nbd2 Ra5 27.Ne1 b5 28.axb5 Rxb5 29.c4 Ra5 30.Nc2 Bd6 31.Rc3 b6 32.Kd3 Ra8 33.b4 Kd7 34.f3 Ra4 35.c5 bxc5 36.bxc5 Bb8 37.Nc4 Ba7 38.Nb2 Ra5 39.Ne3 Bc5 40.Nec4 0-1 |
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| Oct-06-08 | | gus inn: "Secrets of modern Chess strategy" is THE best book i have ever seen.
Kudos to Watson:No doubt that his chessunderstanding is extremely high - and might likely be a great part of explaining why he so often came into timetrouble.
Sometimes it is more pragmatic not knowing so much.But someone had to write this book - which IMO could as well be ranked as the real follower to "Mein System". |
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| Oct-06-08 | | ughaibu: Did he really write "heart and sole"? |
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| Mar-28-09 | | theagenbiteofinwit: Watson is brilliant at expounding on positional chess. He ignores a lot of the tactical side of the game. If he devoted as much study to tactics as he did position, he would surly have rated higher than 2345. Nevertheless, I owe him much for his study of openings. |
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| Dec-06-09 | | nummerzwei: I'm currently reading his "Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy". Although some of the content is far-fetched or too abstract to be useful, in my opinion,the book seems to contain a lot of worthwile ideas. However, today I've found what seems to be an outright mistake. In Part 2,chapter 4 ("The Modern Bishop"; please note that I'm retranslating from the German edition)
he quotes Spielmann's opinion about the fianchetto:
"For the defender, whose aim is equalizing, it is a good weapon, but for the attacker it has little merit for the purpose of development." However, later in the same chapter he notes that "the various Indian Defences conceal a latent tendency towards dynamism, which refutes Spielmann's thesis that fianchettoes are only suitable for the attacker." But didn't Spielmann express exactly the opposite? And did this contradiction already exist in the English edition? |
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