This book is unique and very thorough on its examination of very specific patterns. Though specific, the author does a good job of explaining each type of pattern so that even an amateur can understand. It really does expound upon a unique way of assessing the board.

I am happy to write this review and I am excited about this book. When I found it, I was looking for a comprehensive guide to positional chess. I had been disappointed by other books that I had tried, prior to this book. It gives a comprehensive break down of common positions that are reached in chess games. It tells you the strengths and weaknesses of many common positions, that you may encounter or decide to play, that aren't necessarily easy for the average player to understand. It will give you the values of those positions, in terms that allow you to incorporate engines into your analysis and it will make sense. It doesn't just tell you it wins or loses, it will help you to understand why. It has helped me understand more about why I won or lost my games, than any engine by itself, or any commentary I have read about my games, or similar positions.

Most books I have studied in the past, either show you a few diagrams that show you why positions succeed or fail tactically, in various games. They don't necessary nourish the part of your chessic mind that sees a different winning idea or that desires to avoid complicated tactical messes.. Those types of books lead you down a road that keeps you dependent longer, on the teachings of a coach. I find this book help will liberate your mind in the chessic sense. You no longer will need to imitate someone, since their logic is, "you can't beat me, so don't question me". Their logic is, the only way to learn is from the successes or failures of past masters. This book will help you to learn how to think for yourself. If you find chess lessons expensive or you feel like your chess coach wants you to be a carbon copy of him, I recommend this book to you. There are many bad and selfish teachers. It isn't always the fault of the student. I see the applicability of this book for intermediate players, to the strongest of titled players.

The few disappointments I had with this book were minimal. One is that the author's native language isn't English. So you have to keep an open mind about grammar. He also has his own chess idiom and it isn't like that of most traditionally taught chess players. Due to this, some of the terminology can be a bit confusing. In spite of this, simply applying the demonstrations of the positions and their analyses to your games and studies, can be extremely helpful. I still highly recommend this book, in spite of these few things I would have preferred to see different. I see how happy with it, the proponents of it are, including myself. I also see how angry this has made many players and coaches, who have spent many, many years learning chess the traditional way. Their negative reviews are here also.

Interesting and very enjoyable book.

Very interesting , innovative book on chess , not for beginners though , you need to be higher level to get understanding , I bought it after reading a nice review by IM swordfish .

The Secret of Chess is a textbook of ideas for beginning programmers who would like to take a stab at programming a chess engine ( a program thats plays chess). There is no code, but there are plenty of ideas for a chess programmer to think about: piece square tables, mobility, trapped pieces, pawn chains are just a few of the samples covered in the book. An area that Mr. Tsvetkov is especially adept in are pawn formations and fortresses. A fortress is an in-penetrable formation that most chess engines, even the best engines mis-evaluate. Pawns are considered the soul of chess and the this book covers many of the positions that engines get wrong. This book is not about tactics or openings, but more about strategy at a high level how to approach certain formations. There are over 500 diagrams, at least one and usually two or three, and sometime 4 on each page and there are about more than 100 tables a programmer could incorporate into his chess program. This book can also help a player improve his chess, but it will require some effort as some of the concepts are quite deep. On that basis it's more in alignment with the style of great chess classic "The Soviet Chess Conveyor" by Mikhail Shereshevsky The Soviet Chess Conveyor (try to find that book at reasonable cost) and you will have to put some time into to it to reap the most benefits - but it isn't that that true with any good textbook?

This book is so different from any other chess book I've read, and I have read a lot of them. Before dismissing these new ideas, remember that many new advances throughout human history seemed insane when compared to commonly held wisdom, and took years before people accepted them. I believe this book is actually ahead of its time. Perhaps we will look back years from now and realize how important these ideas were.

The concepts in this book are quite advanced. The author has named many things that occur in games quite frequently, but are rarely documented as strategic ideas. The chapter on pawn formations is tremendous - it's worth getting for that alone. But there is a lot more great info in here. Even the section on evaluating piece imbalances had new info in it.

If anyone has played against Stockfish or other strong engines available today, you know that beating computers is very difficult. They do not make tactical errors in general. But they haven't been programmed to realize the value of certain actions and structures. So they assess certain situations inaccurately. I used some of these ideas to mate Stockfish twice this week. Full Disclosure - it was running on my phone, not a powerful computer, and I ran out of time both games, so I guess technically I lost ;) But a mate is a mate, and I'll take it.