Devoured it within a day of receiving it. I enjoyed the hell out of this delightful book. It had such a perfect balance of new-to-me knowledge, human insight, and wicked humour all the way through. It was also just deeply satisfying writing- I stopped in my tracks several times to appreciate a well-crafted metaphor or simile.

For a memoir about a game, I was moved by the depth of Chapin's insights into himself and the people around him (the healthy dose of self-deprecation added to the overall feeling of honesty). I enjoyed every literary reference and every well-drawn character (his master chess teacher was a scream). I have zero knowledge of chess and was totally spellbound learning about grandmasters and classic strategies. It was fascinating to think about the kind of mind that can really master chess, and the people whose cognitive styles that end up coming up short (not much of a spoiler here: Chapin is humble and frank about falling into the latter category). I wish I could read more memoirs like this, that expand my knowledge of human achievement while maintaining an amusing authenticity about our shortcomings. More please Mr. Chapin!

Parts of this are excellent. When on form, he conveys a good sense of what it feels like to be a chess fanatic. He does so with a charming humility. He clearly has some chess talent, but the defeats he faced in many (perhaps most) of the games described are spelt out with some candour.

I wish he had given more information about the various chess strategies. Towards the end, he starts to do this, and to do it well, but I wish he had done so from the outset.

My reluctance over the fourth star is because there is simply too much irrelevant information. Whilst humble about his chess talent, he is much less so in respect of his love life. Equally, the reader does not need so much detail about the consequences of digestive distress whilst attempting to participate in a tournament in India, nor of his intake of psychedelics.

I'm happy to recommend this, but saddened on reflection of how much better it could have been.

Days passed, as always, with casual, periodic looks toward the list of trending chess books served up by my Kindle. This book was getting good reviews, but it appeared to be autobiographical rather than to be a chess book of the kind that I purchase compulsively and then largely ignore. So I passed on its purchase, day after day.

But one day, when there was no other Kindle itch left to scratch, the purchase button somehow got pushed, and I became a catch to be pulled into the author's boat.

If you have not yet become impatient with this self-involved review, or even if you have, but would like to see autobiography by a relative unknown done much more artfully and well, then by all means buy this interesting book.

It is not a chess book of the ordinary sort. You could only search it in vain to find your next half-practiced opening. But it is very much a book that talks about chess, and it does so in a way that will invoke many moments of recognition, both painful and pleasureable, in those for whom chess has long ago become a guilty pleasure. Or for whom young romance was once an even more pleasureable and painful game. Which suggests the book deserves a wide audience.

By reading it, will a chessplayer learn anything of value for playing the game? Well, I certainly can't speak for the brilliant Ben Finegolds of the world (meaning players of the sort most will never beat or surpass at teaching). But i have spent, arguably wasted, thousands of hours over the board, and yet I did capture some general insights from the book that I will jealously guard and share only with my closest friends.

But even without those, I would recommend the book for its writing alone. The author is transparently intelligent and creative, and as the book progresses his writing seems to become more confident, less self-conscious, and he settles in to a style that earnest others may someday study and attempt unsuccessfully to emulate.

As a chessplayer, I walk away from the book with the perhaps unintended reassurance that achieving something less than mastery at chess does not imply a more general weakness. The author might never be a grandmaster over the board, but he seems well on his way to international mastery of the written word.

This book was fun to read. As other reviewers have mentioned, it is engaging about chess but its not just a book about chess. The author is a fine writer and, while the focus is on chess, this is really a personal story, full of the author's insecurities and occasional triumphs. Told in the first person, the story is almost voyeuristic at times. The reader feels witness to a sometimes painful but always humorous internal dialogue. In his youthful insecurity the author is indeed reminiscent of Woody Allen, and the reader sometimes wants to tell him to have a little self confidence and both his chess and his personal relations will be better for it. Still, the main subject is chess and the story is told so well that I, like other readers, was motivated to play more after reading it.

All the Wrong Moves is a sharp, clever, and meaningful story from an author who has exactly the right tools to tell it. Chapin’s account of his journey, compelling on its own, is broken up by asides that effortlessly blend knowledge with narrative. These give the reader an inside look at the professional chess world and offer a robust history of the game.

Luckily, Chapin’s passion for chess is infectious, and you’ll find yourself enthralled with the subject even if you’d never played before. When I finished reading, I ended up spending hours on chess.com getting my ass handed to me by players who were almost definitely twelve years old. It wasn’t until I was personally trounced by children that I realized how accurately Chapin describes the experience.

From the outset, Chapin makes it clear that he’s self-aware enough to know that his deep dive into competitive international chess is a fool’s errand, but bold enough to do it anyway. While this might come off as pretentious or obnoxious from a lesser writer, Chapin’s unending wit, honest reflection, and remarkable voice make All the Wrong Moves an incredibly riveting read that will stick with you for weeks.

On Chapin's journey to pursue his obsessive passion, his mentor and chess grandmaster Ben Finegold often quips, "the truth hurts", and indeed as Chapin's overwhelming love for chess bumps up with the cold, ambivalent reality of both the game and his life, Chapin is forced to wrestle with some profound but painful truths.

The writing is intelligent and often hilarious, and in it Chapin bares his naiveties, insecurities, and deepest desires in full, giving us an honest account of the mixture of hope, anxiety, elation, and disappointment he experiences in his quest for meaning and greatness.

Throughout the narrative Chapin gives a gripping and personal exposition of the game, from its austere beauty to its singular significance as a human endeavor. In chess, Chapin sees a simple yet combinatorially infinite world of "perfect information" free from the ambiguities that plague life. This brutal honesty is a paradox for Chapin as it's what both attracts him to the game but also painfully exposes his familiar tendency to idealize life.

Though Chapin never reaches the heights of chess glory he dreamed of at the outset of his journey, he triumphs in a more human and profound way as he comes to understand an enigmatic, koan-like secret of the game, and just maybe his life.

My grand son really likes it.

Often funny, always entertaining, Sasha Chapin's account of being bitten by the chess bug to the point of nearly being eaten alive by his addiction is well worth the read. Chapin takes the reader on a wild ride, beginning with the rejuvenation of his love for the game in Asia, all the way to the Los Angeles Open, where the culmination of Chapin's chess obsession is recapped via an interview with himself. Yes, that's right; the climax of the story finds the author literally talking to himself.

The most entertaining portions of the narrative come when Chapin interacts with Grandmaster Ben Finegold, a chess teacher who doles out the wisest and most practical advice regarding the game in a manner that would make Henny Youngman proud. While those who have fallen under the spell of the Royal Game will greatly appreciate this account, I believe that this is a memoir that can be enjoyed by most any reader. Highly recommended.

Had been looking forward to the book as the reviews have been great.

I just didn't like it much at all. The author describes his addiction well but he doesn't go into enough detail on how it affected him and what he was doing to boost his addiction. He tells of long nights playing online chess and some coaching he had with GM Finegold but I think this area needed to be expanded.

This traveling around the world do play is a bit offbeat as there is more than enough avenues to be in tournaments in the US.

I just felt the book was a bit bland and dull.

The dvd was in mint condition and the service was good.

I loved the humorous descriptions of Sasha's chess adventures and being a lifelong chess player myself made this book even more enjoyable. Having said that, chess knowledge isn't a requirement to enjoy this book. The awkward struggles and thoughtful often poignant musings of the author make this book relatable for anyone.

Sasha is a wonderful writer. I recommend this book wholeheartedly.

Perhaps the surest sign that you’re in love is that you can’t stop talking. You find yourself announcing the name of your beloved at the slightest provocation. Given any opportunity, you engage in a vain attempt to explain your infatuation… And this is no less true when the object of your affection is the game of chess. In other words, when you’re me.’

All The Wrong Moves charts Sasha Chapin’s journey through the chess world. This is the story of a chaotic life, the choices Chapin makes, the people he meets, and what he learns both about himself and chess along the way. Having been a sometime player at school, Chapin catches the chess bug to the extent that the occasions when he ‘went to Chess.com to play a few online games [which] became my night, which became my weekend,’ are all too frequent. His working life as a writer essentially loses meaning for him, his personal relationships are increasingly erratic, as chess takes over Chapin’s every waking hour.

While brilliantly written, this was a book that generated mixed feelings for me. To start with the positives, Chapin captures some of what it is to be a chess player with piercing accuracy. At one point, observing ‘The world is lousy with chess tournaments. Almost everywhere on earth, you can get checkmated and lose rating points.’ His sense that however bad your last performance has been, the chess gods owe you nothing the next time out, is nicely done. ‘I girded myself with the knowledge that my first tournament game, in Bangkok, was definitely the worst game I’d ever play. Although sickening defeats might yet follow, none would be as bad as my first devastating loss… You should never do this. Never tell yourself you have been through the worst of anything.’

Chapin’s descriptions of the players he encounters also have a ring of truth to them. Up against one particularly nervous character, who seemed stricken by fear before a move had been played, Chapin observed, ‘For a chess player, Lasagna didn’t like chess very much. Every move seemingly caused him physical pain. His hands shook as he reached for each piece and when he hurriedly deposited each one on its chosen square, he winced and clenched his fist.’ His more generic description of the clientele at Bangkok chess club, while a little harsh (and countered by noting there were some more attractive players out there) still had something to it. ‘You might have a stereotyped conception of what a chess club looks like. You might imagine that club players tend towards the bespectacled, the dramatically ectomorphic, and the pimpled. You might envision yawning holes in shirts worn by men with improperly thriving facial hair. You would be correct.’

As part of Chapin’s chess odyssey, at one point he takes lessons from Grandmaster Ben Finegold, and Finegold’s insights are compelling, even if they do entail countering the myths we all most likely build around our own play. ‘Everyone thinks they are better than they are. Everyone thinks they are underrated. Every game, they think they played badly because their opponent got lucky and picked the wrong move. But it’s not true… You’ll only improve when you stop making excuses… Being a winner starts when you realize what a loser you are.’

Finegold also shares with Chapin what the ‘secret’ of chess is, which is something all players surely want to know. While sadly this does not turn out to be a hitherto unknown trick that will enable us to win every game, it is a useful piece of psychological advice that might well lead to marginal gains. Namely, ‘You have to play like you never want the game to end… In life, and in chess, people make terrible decisions because they’re impatient. They want things to end, right now, on their own terms.’

Yet for all this, I also had reservations about All The Wrong Moves. Chapin ultimately decides that chess has a ‘ruinous’ effect on him, and that he has no choice but to quit. A kind of moral superiority also seen in J.C.Hallman’s The Chess Artist where another gifted writer engages with the chess scene before walking away. It is not that we can’t sympathise with someone who says ‘When I told my children about my twenties, I didn’t want to explain that I spent big chunks of it in my bedroom staring at digital chess pieces, surrounded by granola bar wrappers, occasionally noticing the snow drifting by the window.’ More that it does not feel that either total emersion at the expense of everything else, or complete cold turkey, need to be the only chess options open to us. Essentially everyone who is reading these words has most likely found a better way to balance their love for chess, with everything else they have going on in their lives.

Chapin does chart some of his other addictions within this book, and it could well be argued that it was not so much his approach to chess but rather his drug use, which caused most of his challenges. All The Wrong Moves might have seemed more rounded if he had shown the same level of reflection in relation to his more harmful addictions, as he does toward his chess. As an aesthetic work, I also felt that the final chapter which is written in the style of an interview seemed a little rushed, and not to the same standard as the rest of the book.

Caplin writes that ‘Chess pours pure sugar down cognitive pathways that were originally forged for the sake of survival. Our sense of pattern recognition, crucial for making our way under the stars, is tickled when we see lethal potential lurking in an innocuous looking pawn structure.’ Yet the reality is that his own chess career consists of a handful of rated games. There is no question that Chapin is an extremely gifted writer. The extent to which we would consider that he was ever really a chess player is more in doubt.

[A version of this review first appeared in the English Chess Federation Magazine, ChessMoves]

Fast read with tons of depth, humour and insight.