Many club players think that studying chess is all about cramming as much information in their
brain as they can. Most textbooks support that notion by stressing the importance of always
trying to find the objectively best move. As a result amateur players are spending way too much
time worrying about subtleties that are really only relevant for grandmasters.Emanuel Lasker
the second and longest reigning World Chess Champion (27 years!) understood that what a club
player needs most of all is common sense: understanding a set of timeless principles. Amateurs
shouldn't waste energy on rote learning but just strive for a good grasp of the basic
essentials of attack and defence tactics positional play and endgame play endgame play.Chess
instruction needs to be efficient because of the limited amount of time that amateur players
have available. Superfluous knowledge is often a pitfall. Lasker himself for that matter also
studied chess considerably less than his contemporary rivals.Gerard Welling and Steve Giddins
have created a complete but compact manual based on Lasker's general approach to chess. It
enables the average amateur player to adopt trustworthy openings reach a sound middlegame and
have a basic grasp of endgame technique. Welling and Giddins explain the principles with very
carefully selected examples from players of varying levels some of them from Lasker's own
games.The Lasker Method to Improve in Chess is an efficient toolkit as well as an entertaining
guide. After working with it players will dramatically boost their skills without carrying the
excess baggage that many of their opponents will be struggling with.Gerard Welling is an
International Master and an experienced chess trainer from the Netherlands. He has contributed
to NIC Yearbook and Kaissiber the freethinker's magazine on chess openings. In 2019 Welling
published together with Steve Giddins the highly successful chess opening guide Side-Stepping
Mainline Theory.Steve Giddins is a FIDE Master from England and a highly experienced chess
writer and journalist. He compiled and edited The New In Chess Book of Chess Improvement the
bestselling anthology of master classes from New In Chess magazine.
