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BCM Chess Book Reviews : August 2002

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Endgame Challenge by John Nunn, Gambit, 256 pages, £17.99.

This is a collection of John Nunn’s 250 favourite endgame studies of all time, in a large-format book from Gambit. The first 50 or so pages have the study positions, six to a page, and the rest of the book has the solutions, fully analysed by Dr Nunn. The introduction is well worth a read, and Nunn explains how a number of studies have succumbed to computer validation.
     As always he goes in deep to bring you plenty of explanatory material about endgame topics such as fortresses, zugzwang, the opposition, etc. The general reader might find this work not so much a challenge as a mental assault course, but the intrepid reader who is prepared to work hard should find it a bracing experience, and their playing strength will surely benefit from the effort.

The Grünfeld Defence by Nigel Davies, Everyman, 144 pages, £14.99.

The Grünfeld has the reputation of a being a combative and dynamic defence to 1 d4, and has attracted a clientele of the very highest class (Kasparov, Botvinnik, Alekhine and Fischer). Davies’ book is very up-to-date, with the majority of the 73 annotated games coming from the last two or three years. His annotations of Kasparov games alone (eight with Black, one with White) probably justifies the price of buying the book, which all Grünfeld aficionados will wish to purchase.

Can You Be a Positional Chess Genius? by Angus Dunnington, Everyman, 144 pages, £14.99.

This is a companion volume to Jim Plaskett’s Can You Be a Tactical Chess Genius?, reviewed in the May 2002 BCM. We are all used to puzzle books for testing your tactics – but how to test positional understanding? The author had a much tougher task than his predecessor, and many of the puzzles are less clear-cut. But the tests are arguably more satisfying than tactical tests as they require a little more thought.

Alexander Alekhine, Vol. 2, Games 1923-1934, Ed. Khalifman, Chess Stars, 494 pages, £16.99.

This is a collection of Alekhine’s game from his middle period, with the annotations in Informator style, by Alekhine, his contemporaries and modern analysts. Presentation is in chronological order, with crosstables and statistics also provided. Well up to the high standards set by Chess Stars in their series of game collections of great masters.

New in Chess Yearbook 63, Ed. Sosonko and van der Sterren, 233 pages, £14.95.

The latest opening theory volume, published four times a year by New in Chess. It includes NIC Forum, letters from readers, Sosonko’s column, book reviews by Glenn Flear, plus 36 NIC Surveys – good value as always.
     Letters from readers and contributors on the Botvinnik Variation of the Slav, the Marshall Variation in the Petroff, the King's Indian Four Pawns Attack, the Caro-Kann, the Keres Attack in the Sicilian, the Nimzo Indian, the 'Franco-Polish Gambit' and the Sicilian Scheveningen; Sosonko's Column; Book Reviews by Glenn Flear; 36 NIC Surveys including Sicilian: Hungarian 4.Qd4, Sicilian Najdorf 6.Bc4 b5, Sicilian Dragon 9.g4, Sicilian: English Attack 6.Be3, Sicilian Anti-Sveshnikov System 3...e5, Sicilian Paulsen 5.c4, by Fogarasi, Sicilian 2 c3 d5, Pirc Classical 4.Nf3, King’s Fianchetto: Gurgenidze 3...c6 4.f4 d5, French Burn 4...de4, French Winawer 6...Qc7 7.Qg4 f6, French Tarrasch 3...Nf6, Alekhine Modern 4...g6, Petroff Marshall 6...Bd6, Petroff Jaenisch 6...Nc6, Ruy Lopez Berlin 3...Nf6, Ruy Lopez Marshall 8...d5, Ruy Lopez Chigorin 9...Na5, Scotch Classical 4...Bc5, Philidor 3...f5, Two Knights Traxler Gambit 5.d4, Owen’s Defence 3.Nc3, Queen’s Gambit Declined Blackburne Variation 5.Bf4, QGD Cambridge Springs Variation 7.cd5, Slav Krause 6.Ne5, Nimzo-Indian/Queen’s Indian Hybrid 4.Nf3 b6, Bogo-Indian: 4.Bd2 Qe7, Queen’s Indian Petrosian System 4.a3 c5, Grünfeld 5.Bg5 dc4, KID Glek Variation 7...Na6, Benoni Modern Main Line 6.Nf3, Old Indian Main Line 8.Rb1, Colle Variation 3.e3, English Anti-Grünfeld 7.h4, Réti Capablanca Variation 3...Bg4.
 

CJS Purdy’s Fine Art of Chess Annotation and Other Thoughts Volume 3, Thinker’s Press, 250 pages, £16.99.

The Australian IM Cecil Purdy (1906-79) had a successful career during which he became World Correspondence Champion, but he also left a valuable legacy of game annotations and articles in Australian periodicals. This book is the third in a series collecting these writings: it contains 70 over-the-board games of Purdy himself, and a further 30 by his son John, who won the Australian Championship in 1955. The notes are concise but lucid, favouring common-sense explanations over long variations. Though always didactic, Purdy wittily admits his own failings, particularly with regard to clock-handling. He excels at pinpointing the reasons for mistakes in analysis: commenting on Kotov’s oversight during a wonderful struggle with John Purdy he observes, “Masters don’t mind giving away pieces, but they hate giving away threats.” There are plenty more such aphorisms, and the editor has compiled some of them in a chapter called “Purdyisms”. These are interesting but being out of context can sound unhelpfully dogmatic; more attractive is the brief section of complete articles with titles like “How to Plan” and “Psychoanalyze your f-pawn”. But the annotated games form the meat of the book. Although the players are mostly unfamiliar their chess is creative, and if you can ignore some heavy-handed editing, reading Purdy is likely to help cultivate strategic understanding. Review by James Vigus.
 

Building Up Your Chess by Lev Alburt, CIRC, 352 pages, £22.50.

An expanded, updated and redesigned edition of the 1989 book Test and Improve Your Chess, this book is mainly about positional judgement, and goes into the study of openings, targeting the club player. Alburt is an informative and knowledgeable author as befits an ex-Soviet grandmaster, and he drives home his teaching with plenty of question and answer. The layout is very friendly and helpful, and this would be a good study aid for the serious, budding young player. Though the book is quite fat, the print is big and it is not clear that you get that much ‘book’ for your whopping £22.50.



 

The Chess Player’s Quarterly Chronicle, Vol. 2 (Feb 1870 – Dec 1871), Moravian Chess, 384 pages hardcover, £24.99.

The second volume of this new quarterly (which mainly featured games and problems from the UK) has some interesting news of the contemporary chess scene, including a blindfold exhibition given by Steinitz at the Oxford University club in which Lord Randolph (i.e. father of Winston) Churchill took part.

The Chess World, Vol. 1 (1932-33), Ed. George Koltanowski, Moravian Chess, 432 pages hardcover, £24.99.

An excellent periodical edited by then-Belgian master George Koltanowski, mainly in algebraic notation, covering all aspects of chess. There is comprehensive coverage of the Folkestone Olympiad of June 1933, with the ‘British Empire’ team headed by Sultan Khan.

The Field 1901, Ed. Leopold Hoffer, Moravian Chess, 302 pages hardcover, £24.99.

Another reprint of Hoffer’s collected columns from The Field, always described as the ‘country gentleman’s newspaper’.

Chess Informator 1-40 CD-ROM, Sahovski Informator, £37.00.

This CD-ROM has all the games from the first 40 volumes of Chess Informator (i.e. the years 1966-1985) in PGN (Portable Game Notation) format, with full annotations. The beauty of this is that you can load the file into the chess analysis/database software of your software, or merge with your existing database, without having to use any other proprietary software. It also comes with a very good database program of its own, with a good set of features to allow you to navigate around the data.






 

How I Became a Grandmaster at 14 by Alexandra Kosteniuk, Self-Published, 214 pages hardcover, £15.95.

This is a most unusual chess book. Most chess books do not have a colour front cover of a pretty girl (the author) made up and modelling sophisticated fashion clothes. It covers a number of subjects – the career of Kosteniuk up to her second place in the Women’s World Championship, her family background with input from her parents, a selection of exercises for beginners, poems by the author and a selection of photographs of Kosteniuk with an emphasis on the author meeting the great and the good (... and also some famous chess people - ed).
     It is interesting as an insight into the family stresses and strains involved in developing a talented child in modern day Russia. Kosteniuk herself comes over as a self-confident teenager who handles publicity with a natural ease. The chess however is disappointing. The educational material does not fit in very well and would be better placed separately. Too many of the earlier games are juvenilia and are not worthy of publication. Review by Ray Edwards.

 

ChessBase Magazine 88, ChessBase CD-ROM, £17.50.

Alexandra Kosteniuk is all the rage at the moment: this edition of CBM has a full-length video interview with the young Russian woman grandmaster. Also, 2,031 of the latest games and big-name annotations from the latest events (including Linares 2002).

Nimzo-Indian 4 f3 and Sämisch Variation by Vadim Milov, ChessBase CD-ROM, £18.50.

Vadim Milov is a very strong and active grandmaster and provides some well annotated games on 4 f3 and 4 a3 Nimzo-Indian lines. There are 7,000 games on the database (up to May 2002) with the usual trimmings such as a training database and a variation tree. Somewhere in there you’ll find Botvinnik-Capablanca, AVRO 1938 – with full comments by Kasparov. That’s one to enjoy.

ChessBase Corr Database 2002, ChessBase, £54.99.

This CD-ROM contains 400,000 correspondence and email games from 1804 until 2002 including the correspondence chess world championships 1-6, correspondence chess Olympiads 1-14, European correspondence championships 1-6, plus national championships and many other events. It also features a correspondence chess player encyclopaedia of about 41,000 names (for ChessBase 8). A must for every player of correspondence chess! (upgrade from Corr Database 2000 – £34.95 - please return the CD-ROM).

Theory and Practice of Chess Endings by Alexander Panchenko, Convekta, £25.99.

This CD-based course, with its pleasant user interface and good theoretical section, helps to show that the endgame can be fun to study. There is a theoretical section, with 700 games/lectures, plus 300 exercises for the user to solve, plus 180 positions for playing against the built-in chess playing program Crafty. Multiple user profiles are possible, with independent ratings, making the software ideal for classroom use as well as individual study.

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