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BCM Chess Book Reviews : October 2000Return to the BCM Review Index
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Sub-titled The Life and Crimes of Norman Tweed Whitaker, Chess
Master, this is an extraordinarily detailed biography of a middle-ranking
international master, who probably would not rate more than a footnote
in chess history – were it not for the fact that he also happened
to be a notorious criminal. The detail owes much to four crate-loads of
documents which Whitaker left behind at his death, as well as the details
of Whitaker’s long life found amongst federal and state criminal
records. There is also a chapter of personal recollections of Whitaker,
perhaps the most readable and revealing part of the book. For all his
nefarious and occasionally quite sordid activities, many acquaintances
had positive things to say about him, even when aware of his darker side.
To the end of his life, he was, by and large, accepted by the chess community.
Bisguier tells an amusing story of Whitaker visiting the offices of Chess
Review in New York, and Al Horowitz welcoming him, thus: “good
morning, Norman, pull up an electric chair and sit down!”. The biographical
detail dominates, but there is also a collection of 570 of his games,
many annotated. This is not standard chess-players’ reading material;
but, as a study of a complex, colourful and unscrupulous man, it is both
revealing and fascinating.
The Grand Prix Attack (1 e4 c5 2 f4 or 1 e4 c5 2 Nc3 with f4 to follow)
started life in the early 1980s as a quick and brutish way for the top
British players to score points and conserve energy on the UK’s tournament
circuit of the same name. Who better, then, than one of the circuit’s
star strikers, James Plaskett, to write the current volume. Here he analyses
91 games, including nine of his own, to show how the system has grown
in stature over the period up to 1999.
Sub-titled “Mistakes and how to punish them”, this is a familiar
walk down the well-worn path of opening catastrophes. The mistakes are
all there, waiting to be published once again. Most of the material is
elderly, though there are a few examples from the 1990s. This is a generally
well-written and nicely produced book, with some general principles on
combinations and traps for inexperienced players to follow, though stronger
players, or those with extensive libraries, will have less use for it.
The book kicks off with a chaotic introduction which never quite tells
you what the first moves of the Hedgehog are. There is no index at the
back, and the contents do not list game moves. It is not until page 43
and chapter four that the author decides to pose the question “What
is the Hedgehog after all”? There follows a narrative on the aptness
of the name, before a discussion ensues on the merits of move orders that
lead to the position after 1 c4 Nf6 2 Nc3 c5 3 g3 e6 4 Nf3 b6 and beyond.
The lay-out and readability of the book never improves above this level,
and the reader is distracted from the analysis by irrelevant commentary
and incomprehensible asides. No editor’s or translator’s names
are listed. Die-hard Hedgehog adherents will find 100 annotated games
and a goodly helping of related analysis, but will wish that the material
could have been better collated and indexed.
This is the seventh and final volume in Alburt’s Comprehensive
Chess Course. It sets out to provide “Winning Endgame Knowledge
in One Volume”, ambitiously claimed in the sub-title, and generally
succeeds. Written by two veterans of the Soviet School of chess, with
decades of training experience behind them, the message is nevertheless
delivered in good English, is easy-to-read and readily digestible, with
plentiful diagrams, photos of endgame virtuosi, famous quotations, punchy
bullet points. This would be a very good first book on the endgame for
juniors as well as more experienced players.
Reviews were few and far between in the mid-Victorian era; but Staunton’s
Chess Player’s Handbook and Chess Player’s Companion
were both given rave reviews; hardly surprising, given that he was the
periodical’s editor. There is the announcement of the plans for the
great 1851 tournament to mark the occasion of the Great Exhibition of
that year, and mention of the newly-designed Staunton chess men.
This was the year of the “Great Chess Tournament”; some coverage
and games are to be found herein. There is also some vituperation in response
to an attack on Staunton in the German Schachzeitung.
The most significant, and saddest, event of the period covered was the
death of Morphy, to whom the final issue of the volume was dedicated.
Earlier in the year the foundation of the Scottish Chess Association is
recorded, listing its first list of officials. One subscriber to the periodical
– John Ruskin – has a letter published on the first page of
one issue out of respect for his eminence in the arts, but his chess credentials
are brought into question by the editor.
A new reprint from the Moravian Chess stable: the editors were Kling
and Horwitz, and the periodical ran from 1851 to 1853, and includes many
of their celebrated joint compositions, as well as documenting some contemporary
chess activity; despite that, there is precious little mention of the
great tournament of that year. As might be expected, problems and studies
predominate.
“A magazine devoted to the cultivation of the game of chess, containing
games and problems by the first Masters” trumpets the cover. The
editors (unnamed in the book; one of them was Staunton) saw it as a way
to regenerate English chess with “scarcely 40 British Chess Societies
[remaining] alive.” They boast that it is “edited by Englishmen”.
Neverthless there is little jingoism to be found in the text, with a style
that was not surprisingly modelled on that of Staunton’s Chess
Player’s Chronicle.
Helms’ periodical chronicles the toings and froings of Capablanca
and Marshall, with coverage of Reshevsky’s triumph at Hastings and
in the US Championship, Alekhine winning at Margate, Eliskases at Noordwijk,
and culminating in the great AVRO tournament where Fine and Keres shared
the spoils.
A slim volume covering 1 d4 Nf6 2 Nf3 c5 3 d5, translated from Hungarian
into indifferent English. 51 games have been analysed and annotated in
some depth. There is no index, but the contents list the first few moves
of each variation considered. An introductory chapter goes through the
principles of the opening and gives some guidance on pawn structures.
The companion volume French With 3 Nc3 was reviewed in the July 2000
issue of BCM. This is another enjoyable work from the editor of Canada’s
national magazine En Passant, and features of the order of 73,000 games
in three separate databases. The principal variations looked at are the
Advance, Tarrasch and Exchange, but the scope is basically the same as
that covered by ECO codes C00 to C09. There are also 37 training positions,
plus an opening tree incorporating 65,000+ games from the databases. The
bibliography quotes Megabase 98 as the main source, but there are also
many games from 2000.
This is a fairly elementary guide to the endgame from ChessBase, and
consists of 13 inter-linking texts and 176 Chessbase positions with analysis.
Surprisingly there is no author credited, and no collection of endgames
between named players. Nevertheless it is a well-structured endgame resource
for the less experienced player and will appeal to those who prefer learning
via a computer to slogging through a book. One irresistible feature of
this CD is the video footage of a post-mortem between Kasparov and Karpov
of their king and pawn ending from Las Palmas 1996, with a running commentary
from the admirable Karsten Müller. This was previously published
on Chessbase Magazine 57, but is well worth the repetition here. This
must rank as the finest implementation of Chessbase’s built-in video
capability to date. One day all chess analysis will be like this.
