Disclaimer 1: The following article contains several affiliate links to Amazon.com, meaning that if you go to Amazon and buy the recommended product (or some other product in an allotted period of time), the author of these lines will get a commission % from the purchase

Disclaimer 2: The following article is an excerpt from my article titled Best Chess Books 2022 in which I reviewed 20 chess books

James Schuyler: Your Opponent Is Overrated

In episode 148 of the „King Of The Chess Podcasts” – The Perpetual Chess Podcast, an old friend of the blog and a renowned Chessable author Kamil Plichta mentioned that the book Your Opponent Is Overrated is one of his favorite chess books of all time. Ever since it has been on my wishlist, and this year I finally got around to reading it.

This book is all about the psychology of chess and how to use it to your advantage to force your opponent to make a mistake (which is why the subtitle of the book is A Practical Guide To Inducing Errors). Over the course of 17 chapters, FM James Schuyler talks about different topics such as how to make your opponent uncomfortable straight out of the opening, how to handle lost positions, how to prepare tactical ideas in a manner where your opponent is likely to miss them, how to play in „provocative” manner, about the controversial topic of „using the clock to your advantage” and much more.

The goal of the book is, basically, to provide you with ideas, tools, and a mindset that will help you become a more successful practical player. It is definitely a very fresh book dealing with topics that are rarely covered in chess literature. ¹ I do genuinely believe every chess player would benefit from learning how to be more resilient in lost positions ² or not being too much attached to the objective value of the chess opening – even in a classical game. ³ I feel players with limited/no OTB experience would particularly benefit from reading this book as it can teach them techniques and concepts that are usually learned mainly through experience.

On the other hand, I do want to emphasize that, in my opinion, there is the danger of overestimating the value of the psychological approach to the game. I do feel such an approach can sometimes make you overconfident and lose your objectivity. And even though the author does occasionally tackle this conundrum and even devotes an entire chapter to the concept of „overpressing”, I do feel it is necessary to keep an open mind and take everything written „cum grano salis”.

I, for one, would say that having an opening like Latvian Gambit as one of your main weapons against 1.e4 and employing it against master-level opposition in classical games in 2022 does fall in the „overstepping the risk” category. I feel that the author very often goes to extremes where moderation is required in order to illustrate a certain concept and that it might give some wrong ideas to the (inexperienced) reader.

But leaving that aside, Your Opponent Is Overrated is definitely a very fresh and original book that I would recommend every chess player to read at least once during their career.

1. I have a hard time recalling any other similar books, from the top of my head
2. In my experience, lower-rated players often give up way earlier and make the job of converting the advantage much easier compared to higher-rated players
3. Something way too many people are prone to doing in this engine era. I literally had sub-1500 players commenting on my Modern course that it is not for them as the opening is not correct. Sub. 1500. Players.