GM Michael Adams and Philip Hurtado on How to "Think Like a Super GM"

In addition to shameless Perpetual Chess Podcast promotional posts, and data-driven breakdowns of my OTB games, I would also like to use this blog space to write the occasional book review. First, a quick caveat: As a podcast host who is reliant on people like GM Michael Adams wanting to talk to me in order to have good guests, I must admit that I am unlikely to write a hatchet-job style negative review of a chess book. BUT, I will never accept compensation for a positive review or falsely praise a book that doesn’t impress me. In the long term, in order to maintain credibility I can only praise books that I deem worthy of it. Therefore, to the extent I review books it will primarily be to raise awareness of a book that I found to be particularly helpful. With that out of the way, let's discuss such a book-Think Like a Super GM, by Philip Hurtado and GM Michael Adams.

Think Like a Super GM is a unique offering from Quality Chess Books which can help a wide range of chess players improve their games. It is the brainchild of Philip Hurtado, who describes himself as “an engineer, physicist, statistician and passionate amateur chess player.” Philip’s scientific background is evident in the book, as it takes a fairly rigorous approach to answering the question, “What separates the chess-thinking of Grandmasters from the rest of us?”

Hurtado notes that he has found this question to be one of interest since reading Dutch psychologist and chess master Adriaan de Groot’s landmark paper, Thought and Choice in Chess in his formative years. De Groot’s legendary study asked a wide range of players to think aloud as they were shown different chess positions, and the book analyzed the differences in their thinking processes. Many of the participants, such as Alexander Alekhine and Max Euwe, were quizzed while attending the famed Avro 1938 tournament in the Netherlands. De Groot’s approach has been also been modernized in the works of GM Jacob Aagaard’s Inside the Chess Mind, and NM Dan Heisman’s The Improving Chess Thinker, but it is a fascinating topic which had plenty of room for a brand new treatment with fresh ideas.

In Think Like a Super GM, Hurtado picks up de Groot’s mantle 80+ years after his research began. Hurtado presented 40 different chess positions (plus some “bonus positions”) to nearly 50 chess players of varying levels. The participants ranged from Tabitha Ryan, an 1100 Elo rated 10 year old, to the legendary 7 time British champion, GM Michael “Mickey” Adams, who has been among the world’s elite for decades, and is currently rated 2698 FIDE. Mickey Adams originally signed on as a mere participant in Philip’s book, but took such an active interest in it that his role was ultimately escalated to co-author. This week’s episode of Perpetual Chess features GM Michael Adams as the guest, and here is how he described his role in the book to me:

“It was Phil's book originally and his idea that he came to me with to be a part of. But the project sort of developed so much and grew and changed over time, that I think in the end that I've ended up writing quite a lot of the content and doing quite a lot of the editing. But he did a huge amount of collecting the data and coming up with the idea.”- GM Michael Adams on Episode 276 of The Perpetual Chess Podcast

As Mickey’s role in the project elevated, he ended up contributing 10 positions from his own games to the selection of positions. Mickey wrote more about the evolution of his involvement in the book on his blog. Here is one of the positions that I particularly enjoyed. (Don’t look at the solution if you would like to complete the book yourself without having seen the answer!)

The book gives you a score from 0-10 on each of the 40 exercises based on whether or not you found the correct solution, and also, interestingly, adds an additional component (scored from 1 to 3) based on how close your evaluation was to that of Stockfish. I appreciated the additional challenge of evaluating a position, as this is an important skill in itself. As a reward for completing the book, you can compare your total score to that of GM Adams, GM Julio Granda Zuniga, GM Keith Arkell, and to the many other players across the rating spectrum who participated in the book. My ELO is about 2100, and my score converted to 2250, so it suggests that the scale is at least somewhat accurately designed. Rather than drone on for pages, I will leave you with my 3 favorite things about this book, along with a couple of mild critiques.

3 Things I Like About Think Like a Super GM

1. It has an excellent selection of puzzles. Any book involving chess puzzles is only as good as the positions selected, and these are very instructive and run the gamut from tactical to positional puzzles. They also feature some instructive endgames. The puzzles have a decent range of difficulty and are labeled on a scale of 1 for least difficult to 10 for most difficult. Aside from positions from the games of Mickey Adams, many are from Philip's own games, both online and IRL, and there are also a few positions from Magnus Carlsen and his ilk. The fascinating morass of variations that can emerge from many of the positions speaks to the endless intrigue that a chess position can provide.
2. The scoring system makes it fun! As I told Mickey Adams, when I am preparing to interview an author in conjunction with a book, (as with Mickey) I often read the prose, but I sometimes end up skipping the puzzles for expediency. The depth of vision of Philip Hurtado’s book, and the scoring system he laid out in the introduction made me quickly decide that I would solve this book properly and treat the book as half interview-prep, half chess-training. I am glad that I made this decision The scoring system also makes the book an appealing option for those working with kids and teens. I teach a 1500 rated 10 year old student who normally isn’t overly enthusiastic about puzzles, but after working through this book during a lesson he wanted to do so again due to the scoring system.
3. The authors’ conclusions at the end of the book contain great improvement advice. The puzzles themselves are fun, but both Hurtado and Adams do an excellent job with “What did we learn from this experiment?” chapters and with providing advice based on their conclusions. The fact that they each wrote their conclusions independently was a nice wrinkle that adds further credence to some of their shared observations. A conclusion that struck me was that top players tend to calculate, not just better than amateurs, but also more often than amateurs, even in positions of a less forcing nature.

Some Minor Quibbles

One of my few critiques of the book is due to the inevitable limitations of any book that relies on a “scoring system.” The points for each exercise are primarily awarded based on whether or not you found the correct first move of a position. The authors took care to give partial credit when another move was comparable, but there were moments where I had the first move right, but missed a key idea on subsequent moves. In these cases the scoring system was giving me credit that I felt wasn’t fully deserved. I don’t blame the authors much for this, because a scoring system is a rather blunt instrument for chess puzzles, which can be quite nuanced. Plus whatever score you achieve on the exercises does not impact the instructive value of the book. The only other critique of the book that I have heard is by Jostein Langstrand of the Patzer’s Review blog. Jostein is working through the paper version of the book, and mentioned that he found there to be a lot of toggling back and forth between the puzzles and the instructive answers section. I read the book electronically, on Forward Chess, and thus did not personally face this issue.

For What Rating Level is This Book Best?

A final thing I would mention is that although the puzzles are of varying degrees of difficulty (and are conveniently labeled in difficulty on a scale of 1-10) , I suspect that someone rated below 1500 FIDE would get the vast majority of the puzzles wrong. If you have thick skin and don’t mind getting puzzles wrong,, you might still enjoy and benefit from seeing how different level players approach puzzles, but in my opinion, the book is best suited for those rated 1600 to 2400 FIDE. If you are rated above or below those levels, I think you would still enjoy the book, but may not derive maximum instructional value.

In Conclusion- Buy This Book!

So what more can I say? This is a great book! It felt like Hurtado and Adams were so bursting with ideas that they could have written more than one book. For example, the end of the book contains some interesting “eye tracker” analysis on whether information can be gleaned by following a player's eyes as they analyze. This topic felt like it could be a separate book entirely! On the theme of a separate book, The Week in Chess founder and chess bibliophile Mark Crowther is already asking for more puzzles! asking for more puzzles from the authors.
If your biggest critique of a book is that you wanted more of it, you have probably just read a good book!