Stigma wrote on 06/10/11 at 22:32:52:



I second Stigma's 3 books suggestions as they were the exact 3 that came to my mind.

He's "just" an IM, but I recently started watching Greg Shahade's videos recapping his tournament games and I think they're exactly what you want - really honest recollections of what he was really thinking and going through while playing the game.

One nice thing in particular, compared to a book, is that he'll talk about various variations he was considering, and then he'll go ahead and reveal that one of them was what happened in the game. In a book everything is artificially forced into a "main line plus variations" format so writers hardly ever say "Now I looked at the following line" if the following line turns out to be the actual one, because then it's redundant. (They do sometimes say things like "26.Bxg6! Of course this move had to have been seen in advance when I played 20.e5!")

Possible downsides: most of the videos cost money (though there are a few free ones) and his informality may turn some people off, both his speech patterns and the way he'll sometimes wing it by trying to remember what he was thinking on the fly. But I think overall the unpolished unprepared presentation is an asset, because you don't get a falsely smoothed-over sense of his thought processes.

If you're interested, go to http://www.chessvideos.tv/forum/viewforum.php?f=29 and look for the "T" games such as "curtains - T1-1".

Also, Colin Crouch's books are pretty honest from what I've read so far.

Rowson: "The Seven Deadly Chess Sins" and "Chess for Zebras". He uses his own games a lot and is not afraid to show both his good and bad games, and draw conclusions about his strong and weak points from them.

These books also have lots of Rowson's ideas on what players (especially adults) can do to improve. And also some philosophy thrown in, not all of which I cared for... but they are books that make you think, even if you don't agree with everything he says.

Yermolinsky's "The Road to Chess Improvement" is also a very honest book on Yermo's own improvement journey. He doesn't think the Russian "school" of chess helped him as much as you'd expect and so he had to discover a lot the methods that took him to GM on his own. Also has lessons on many of his favorite openings, presented through his own games.

Tal-Botvinnik is a classic. Get it. Only downside: a finite number of games. The Russell Enterprises edition is done very well, too.

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Wow, sounds very interesting, added to shopping list. Thanks !

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I will check some reviews and probably buy one of them.

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Yeah, it's not exactly what I want. I am looking for something which will explain GM's thinking process/knowledge/difference to me rather than the game of chess itself

For honest commentary on games I can recommend Kingscrusher's youtube channel, it's not exactly what you asked for though. Kingscrusher is far below a GM, but this means I can understand him (and he beats GMs sometimes).