What's Up with the Watson-Hating?

I've been reading these two books, Attacking Manual 1 by Jacob Aagaard, and True Lies in Chess by Lluis Comas Fabrego, both from Quality Press (overall a great publisher). They are both interesting and rich with ideas, but I'm struck by the recurrant cheap shots both take at John Watson. I should say up front that I'm a HUGE fan of Watson-- I find his books instructive, philosophical, and extremely enjoyable to read. I think his Secrets of Chess Strategy is a very important book in the history of chess thought. However, even if I thought he was a hack, I would still be taken aback by the treatment he's getting here.

Let's take a look:
Attacking Manual 1, Preface, p. 21:

"I remember when I read John Watson's Secrets of Chess Strategy back in 2000 that I was unconvinced about his idea of "rule-independance" where he was claiming that the strongest players were relying less and less on rules and more and more on calculation. I had a problem with this notion for several reasons.

One is that Watson is American and that the strongest players in the US do not have the kind of chess culture players in Eastern Europe (and even some in Western Europe) have. If your training consists solely of opening analysis and tactical exercises and is not based on a chess education, it is an understandable point of view to have. However, the East Europeans who have thought a lot about rules (just go through Watson's hero Mark Dvoretsky's books on positional play) are much better. At one point there were no autodidact American's (sic) on the US National team."

Where to start? OK, I am absolutely the last person to express pro-American opinions, but you can't attack someone's thoughts because of their nationality. It's a well-known logical fallacy (ad hominem) to attack an argument because of the person making it rather than the ideas themselves, but attacking an argument because of the author's country of origin? It's incomprehensible to me that Aagaard seriously tries to do this.

Secondly, Aagaard uses Dvoretsky as an example of why Watson is wrong, yet calls Dvoretsky Watson's hero sarcastically. That doesn't make any sense, right?

Thirdly, (and this might seem bitchy of me, but I'm an English teacher) if you are going to be high-brow enough to casually use the word autodidact (meaning self-taught person), then I think you should know the difference between a plural and a possessive. It's also not clear to me which US National team Aagaard refers to-- certainly not one in recent memory. And again, let's say this was true in 1985. Let's say they were also all tobacco-chewing second cousins with three arms who had never seen a chess book in their lives. What does that have to do with Watson's ideas?

The second thing I am struck by is the comparative discussion in both books about inaccuracies in the annotations of classic games.

Aagaard (p 21):

"Later in his writings, Watson included strategic decisions in his definition of calculation and it seemed to limit rules to be something uttered by Tarrasch and Lasker a hundred years ago. Understood in this way, meaning that the top players think for themselves at all times and are not bound by dogmas, it is impossible to disagree with Watson, though I would question the assumption that would then be inherent in this interpretation: that Capablanca, Lasker, and Tarrasch were excessively dogmatic in their play. I choose to believe that they simply annotated their games with a weak audience in mind and therefore explained their thoughts in a simplistic way at times, bowing to the expectations of the public."

So, first of all, the assumption that Tarrasch, Capa etc were dogmatic is absolutely not inherent in "this interpretation" (which is arguably not even a completely fair summary of what Watson says). It would be like saying Watson and Crick (sorry, of course a different Watson: he and Crick discovered that DNA was structured as a double helix) were dogmatic for not mapping the human genome. It's not dogmatism or inflexible thinking not to be ahead of your time. It's just normal.

Secondly, you can't criticize Watson for "limiting the rules to be something uttered ...a hundred years ago" when his book is sub-titled "Advances Since Nimzowitsch."

But Aagaard's point about annotating for weak audiences is fair enough and I agree.

But then Comas Fabrego begins chapter one with the words:

"In the games that appear in the classic manuals the analysis is usually too one-sided. History is always written by the winners and often their research lacks objectivity. Later treatises blindly copy these 'exemplary games' thus reinforcing the transmission of the inaccurate, sometimes utterly false, knowledge they try to show." But he's pissed off about this-- in the introduction he claims his own chess education was slowed by the "lies and mistakes" of annotations, and he blames "authors' lack of chess strength, scant ability to pass on their knowledge, superficial analysis, etc." as well as their "lack of honesty." Is he really calling Watson (who he names repeatedly as one of these problematic authors) a liar? That seems quite ridiculous, especially since in the game that follows, Comas Fabrego agrees more often than not with Watson's annotations.

Now these are two completely different authors, but given that Aagaard runs, or co-runs Quality Press, it seems strange that the two books that appear almost simultaneously express such contradictory opinions. But maybe I shouldn't be surprised: Aagaard is writing a book about the rules of attacking play, while Comas Fabrego is writing about the dangers of overly general applications of rules and the importance of rigorously accurate analysis. But I'm quite sure it's strange that they use these seemingly opposed viewpoints to attack Watson.

While I'm complaining, let me quote one more bizarro piece of reasoning from Comas Fabrego on a Geller annotation:

"Regarding the assertion that after a2-a3 the c5-knight feels at home, it reminds me of the classic and somewhat naive saying 'When a piece is badly placed the whole position is bad' only I would feel like phrasing it 'When a piece is well-placed, the whole position is good.' Obviously this is a somewhat limited statement" (p 21).

Slow down there, Nelly: you can't do that. The inverse of a statement is not implicitly true. (In other words, if a--> b, you can assume the contrapositive, ~b-->~a, but you cannot assume either the inverse (as is being done here) ~a --> ~b, or the converse, b--> a.) So he's correct to say this statement is somewhat limited, but that's because its truth value is totally unrelated to that of the original rule. Furthermore, Geller never comes anywhere close to saying "The well-placed nature of this knight alone is enough to make black's position good."

Conclusion:

I like both books and have learned things from each. True Lies is a little dense and difficult for my taste: I think I have an above-average work ethic when it comes to reading chess books, but this one kicked my ass. It's the kind of book I imagine Ray Robson reading. However, I really like his in-depth discussion of specific positions and his comparison of different authors' explanations of how to understand them. I also appreciate his summary of key points at the end of several games, although I found it more useful to read these before I began looking at the game.

Aagaard's book is much more enjoyable and reader-friendly. I love that he previews key positions at the beginning of each chapter and asks the reader to analyze them. I appreciate that he tries to limit the variations and explain ideas in words. I do notice that he sometimes cheats, explanation-wise-- giving absurdly computerish lines in a book that endeavors to explain how humans can use principles and intuition to guide us. (p. 29, top of the second column, for example)

It's a shame that I will remember both books primarily for their unprofessional and logically questionable attacks on John Watson.