|
|||||||
|
|
|||||||
|
Chessville
From the
|
Turning Advantage Into Victory in Chess Reviewed by Mark Houlsby
"Woo
Hoo!" "If I
owned the copyright on the Bible, I wouldn't sell it to Random House..." This book is a milestone in chess publishing. Why say it last? Here's a quote from the cover of the book:
Has GM Soltis ever written a bad chess book? Possibly, but if he has, I have not read it. Nevertheless, the quality of this book is outstanding even for him. I had been looking forward to the publication of this book ever since the announcement of the publication of Winning The Won Game by Dr. Danny Kopec and Grandmaster Ljubomir Ftacnik. I even placed an advance order for WtWG with my regular supplier. Fortunately, however, its publication did not happen until later than anticipated, and by the time it appeared I already had discovered that it is "Pringles not Oreos" as Michael Jeffreys put it, succinctly and appositely, in his review of that book. I had, by that time, cancelled the order. WtWG may be fine for GMs, but for the rest of us there is this nearly flawless new book by Soltis. Why, then, is TAiV a milestone? It's a milestone because it's the first book this reviewer has encountered which is written specifically for intermediate to advanced players which is devoted to the topic of endgame technique. Of course, it's not the first book period dedicated to endgame technique. Dear reader, you may know that there is, for example, a trio of books by Slovenian Grandmasters Alexander Beliavsky and Adrian Mikhalchisin: Winning Endgame Technique, Winning Endgame Strategy and Modern Endgame Practice, with the significant difference that the writing, in the case of Beliavsky and Mikhalchisin, is aimed squarely at players who are already classed as experts or better...more on these books later. The book consists of an introduction, eleven chapters [most with a quiz at the end], the quiz solutions and an index. All of the examples herein are carefully chosen (although perhaps not always meticulously researched) and clearly explained, in language which even a patzer such as I can understand. Soltis helpfully includes check (+) and capture (x) signs, in case you missed the fact, which certainly this patzer reviewer does, alarmingly frequently.... It may be worth my pointing out here that usually, when reading a chess book, I make a database of the examples, in order to derive the maximum benefit from the book. I have to tell you now that although this is my third review for Chessville, this is the first time that I have made such a database--the two books I reviewed previously seemed not to be worth the effort. This one is. And how. I began my review of Littlewood's Chess Tactics with a quote--about strategy--which was taken from the classic work On War by Clausewitz. The reason I did that is that in chess, as in war, tactics are a means to realising a strategy. What TAiV does extremely well is to convey not only the extent to which strategy and tactics are intertwined, but also how they are and, crucially, what that means in terms of pragmatic decision-making at the chess board. Time and time again, upon completing a chapter and finding myself tackling a quiz question with the theme of its preceding chapter, I was able immediately to figure out (rather than just guess) the correct answer. The last time I remember doing that upon reading a chess book for the first time was when I read the classic How To Reassess Your Chess by IM Jeremy Silman. Here's the first quiz position from the end of chapter 2, which has been explaining how and when to simplify. The quotation is from:
M. Gurevich-Davies
Can you spot GM Gurevich's
move? The chapter headings are well chosen:
In case you did a "double take", chapter 3 really is headed "First Steps", the preceding chapters were laying the foundations, if you will. "First Steps", in common with most of the other chapters, contains subheadings in BLOCK LETTERS. In the case of chapter 3 the subheadings are: COUNTERPLAY AND HARRASSMENT, ENDGAME MOOD, HOW ACTIVE IS ACTIVE?, TACTICS VERSUS COUNTERPLAY and WHEN IT'S CALMER. Oh...and QUIZ at the end. Some chapters contain many subheadings, others none at all. This book covers all the bases including, for example, exchanging advantages to win the endgame, which Soltis describes, rather idiosyncratically, as Material Alchemy, and, as you will no doubt have gathered, chess psychology (in chapter 8: Attitude--The Weapon). Disclaimer: naturally, this does not mean that on its own the book will take you to the level of competing in a Category XX GM tournament, but it should be a fun ride going as far as you want it to take you.... Indeed, speaking (or rather writing) of Category XX tournaments, as I was just now, it seems likely that most endgames one imagines might be encountered in such a tournament could, just possibly, be more difficult to win than Soltis' chapter 5 heading suggests, but that is not what he means, of course.... Here's an extract from that chapter which illustrates the point:
The same goes for the ending. You know you will probably need a passed pawn to win. But before you're ready to do that you often employ other techniques--trading pieces, improving piece activity, and restricting the enemy. That was Black's order of battle in the next example:
Dzindzichashvili-Wolff
Soltis' writing here really is every bit as good as, say, Alexander Goehr's writing about music, or Richard Dawkins' writing about evolutionary biology. This is to say that Soltis, like Goehr and Dawkins, makes you, the reader, feel like a genius. The difference is that whereas after reading a book by Dawkins one might not automatically gain a place to study a biology course at an Ivy League University, Soltis' book does improve one's chess, but it does that if and only if it's read and understood properly, and this is done in conjunction with practising tactics and endgames. On its own, it may do little for you, but might do rather more than little. Not the least reason for this is that the book contains advice such as:
Woo Hoo! Why didn't I think of that? Then there's:
Woo Hoo! ...and:
Woo Hoo! ...and:
Woo Hoo! Woo Hoo! ...and...and...and... So, is it all good news? Very nearly, but not quite. There are a couple of minor quibbles which I would level at this--mostly impeccable--work. One is a general criticism of the propensity of Random House to promulgate a false notion of classes of chess player on the back cover of its chess books, in conjunction with its "Chess Meter" gimmick. It's definitions are as follows:
Yeah.....right. Tell that to English GM Mickey Adams, who is a superb player (and who, incidentally, crushed me in a simul in 1996) but who was, in turn, strategically and tactically annihilated by the Hydra software/hardware combination, in June, scoring a miserable +0-5=1. Clearly, the above is intended as a criticism neither of Soltis nor his editor, but of the publisher. "If I owned the copyright on the Bible...". The only criticisms I can level at the book itself are these: 1) It contains the usual quota of typos and grammatical errors, such as the split infinitive in the above extract which discusses Dzindzichashvili-Wolff. 2) On a number of occasions, the carefully chosen and expertly explained examples cited either quote the wrong tournament, e.g.: Z Almasi-Delchev, Pula 2001 is quoted as having been played in Hungary, when in fact it was played in the Croatian National Team Championship, or, in one case, the gender of a player, Elisabeth Paehtz, is mistaken...things like those. Without wishing in any sense to belittle the sensibilities either of Ms. Paehtz or of the good people of Pula, Hrvatska, I'd suggest that these are relatively minor complaints, included only to convey some semblance of negative criticism, purely in the interest of balance.
"After that, it's all
good..." In his July 2001 "Novice Nook" column, which is in the archive at www.chesscafe.com the always excellent NM Dan Heisman wrote an article about "Chess Books and Prerequisites". With this article firmly in mind, I suggest the following:
The answer to the question posed after the first diagram is that Gurevich
played 36.Qd1, hitting the Nh5, after the (virtually forced) reply 36...g6
he then played 37.Qd4! both hitting the Qc5 and menacing mate on h8, thereby
forcing a queen trade, simplifying to a won ending (the clue was in the
chapter heading!) An immediate 36.Qd4! was good, too, as Soltis points
out.
|
Advertise to Single insert:
The
|
|||||
|
|||||||
