Schacksnack

“Think Like a Grandmaster” (Batsford, 1971) is one of the most influential training books in modern chess history. Alexander Kotov (1913–1981) set out to explain how strong players actually think, and the result became a cornerstone of the Soviet School. His concepts of the candidate moves and the tree of variations encouraged players to discipline their thought process instead of relying purely on intuition.

This book made a deep impression on me when I first studied it. Kotov urges us to avoid jumping impulsively between lines and instead analyse in a structured and logical way: identify candidate moves, examine each branch of the variation tree only once, and then evaluate before deciding. The tension between methodical calculation and natural intuition is central to the book, and to chess itself.

In this video I also discuss Kotov’s two later books in the trilogy:

Play Like a Grandmaster (1978), which focuses on practical decision-making during the middlegame, and

Train Like a Grandmaster (1981), which examines how masters study and improve over time.

To provide contrast and balance, I compare Kotov’s method with Jonathan Tisdall’s outstanding book Improve Your Chess Now, which explores the more dynamic, flexible, and intuitive side of calculation — a refreshing counterpart to Kotov’s structured model.

Kotov was not only a teacher but also a strong player, most famously remembered for his brilliant queen sacrifice as Black against Averbakh in the Neuhausen–Zurich Candidates Tournament, 1953 — one of the great attacking masterpieces of 20th-century chess.

No list of classic chess literature is complete without Kotov — and no study of calculation is complete without understanding both his discipline and the modern reactions to it.