Improve Your Chess Calculation: The Ramesh Chess Course (Volume 1) Paperback – August 15, 2022

I've been playing chess about a year, I'm an adult improver, and felt I've not been getting better. But, now that I have this book outlining the thought process of moves and calculating, I feel empowered greatly that as I read this, it'll assimilate into my thoughts during games, and help me win. It feels like a weapon that I'm so glad I found. I will say, that it required some getting used to, an genuine effort to read the variations. But, that initial hurdle once conquered in myself, I found that I was greatly enjoying my time with this lovely book. I'd like to thank RB Ramesh for writing it, and as the text indicates at various times that "this will be covered further in future books." Well for me, I look forward to any book by RB Ramesh, and will buy as many as he puts out, I mean I've got stacks of chess books already, but I'm really excited about this book, and I know it'll help me, proportionally to the time, energy, and effort I put into it. Thank you New in Chess! Love you guys!PS I initially didn't like the book, like afore mentioned, it takes some effort to read the variations, but I'm already seeing that I can just read the variations without putting all the pieces on the board, just visualizing the position after the moves. So I wanted to tell you that if you that, when you get it, put in some work, and I know you'll love the book like I do!

If you need intermediate to advanced instruction and training in tactics, calculation, strategy, preparation, and psychology for players rated 1600 and above, this is the course for you! Detailed and extensive analysis and insights of recent games by top players from an active grandmaster coach. This is not another collection of games, but drills and real teaching.

I'm was around 1800 rating on chess.com when I got the book and I immediately improved to 1975. The book's advice and problems helped me clean up my calculation quickly and realize the errors in my thinking. My one complaint (why I docked a star) is that the solutions are written right under the puzzles and I often accidentally see the answer which is really bothersome. The solutions would be better placed at the end of the book in their own section like in other chess books.

This is likely a great book, but very advanced players only. It was beyond my understanding. I have read over 70 chess books, this one is the hardest to understand. Definitely not for beginners. Good luck!

The idea of improving my calculation is very attractive because that's really all chess is. Those with superior calculation skills will always win. But this book is beyond my understanding of how it works or how it could help me better calculate. Maybe it's just the style of the excercises or maybe I'm missing something else. Or perhaps I'm not advanced enough a chess player to benefiut from this book. I'm currently about a C-Class player and have played many USCF rated tournaments around the country.I thought about this book to a used bookstore or online for half the price I paid because so far I'm getting nothing out of it. But maybe I'll keep it for a whilein case I can get better insights on how it can be used to help me improve.

The vast majority of reviews for this book are raving, and I can't understand why so I wanted to give a more accurate review.The main benefit of this book are that there are many good examples which if you work hard to analyze you will improve. However, many of the examples are at best a waste of time and at worst just plain incorrect. For example, in the first chapter there is an example on the "drawback principle" where you are given that black just played a move and you must play a move that exploits this drawback. It then gives a 10-ply variation where black defends completely incorrectly on the SECOND ply, with no mention of the fact that black has better responses.There are dozens of other examples in the book where the evaluation of the diagram in incorrect (e.g. the prompt suggests you have a winning/much superior continuation but in fact it's better for the other side in any case) and the defense provided for the other side is poor. I don't understand how a book published in 2022 can have so many errors of this kind.Also, due to the layout of the book it's basically impossible to not see the solution by accident. Maybe the authors are trying to improve my focus in a very roundabout way, because there are many books that solve this problem by having the answer on the next page or in the back or many other possible solutions to this problem.Until this book is revised to correct these two issues which are both incredibly frustrating I cannot recommend anyone to buy this book.

I am about 1600 USCF (~1700 chess.com rapid) and most of the problems in this book are way over my head. I am fairly good at solving puzzles(2500 on chess.com) so I would say this is for thise more advanced.

I have been the 'helper' of a player whose coach recommended this book. We have the electronic version from chessable. I engine-check each position while the player tries to solve it. We've only encountered 1 or 2 positions where the book's recommendations do not align perfectly with the lichess engine. Occasionally the player finds an alternative that's marked as wrong by the book but lichess considered it equally strong or stronger than the book solution, but this is very rare. We've gone through about 60% of the materials in the past month. The positions are pretty hard, but that's a good thing.