The juicy prospect of improvement constantly dangles above a chess player. Those morsels of knowledge one has acquired whet the appetite for others which lie just out of reach. Even players at peace with their ambient proficiency can’t help but acknowledge that their better games coexist with lousy ones. Once you admit that, it’s a hop, skip and a jump to the idea that replicating the good games might confer improvement. Unless you have the equanimity of a monk, wanting to play well becomes an unshakeable existential burden.
Many chess books will promise to boost your results at the board. Usually, it is taken for granted that absorbing the book’s insights will generate the desired improvement. Considering the large appetite for instructional material, books which treat improvement as their subject matter, rather than their goal, are rare.
The fact is, chess improvement is a slippery subject.
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