BCM Reviews : June 1999

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The Chess Player's Chronicle Volume 1 (1841), Moravian Chess 1999, 416 pages, hardcover, £24.99.

Very few chess magazines can boast a Shakespearean scholar as editor but Howard Staunton's impressive, pioneering journal was originally titled The British Miscellany, and Chess Player's Chronicle. As its name would suggest, The British Miscellany was a previous periodical which contained a smattering of chess amongst matters of high-brow interest. Staunton's new magazine was devoted virtually entirely to chess (with the exception of a few worthy articles on Galileo, the philosophy of education and the like), incredibly coming out on a weekly basis for the first volume.

The notation is naturally of the arcane descriptive variety, such as this comment by Staunton to his game with Popert (London, 1840): "[white, Popert] K.P. two, [black] Q.B.P. two, [w] K.B.P. two [1 e4 c5 2 f4]". "Decidely better than 'Kt. to K.B. third'[2 Nf3]" says Staunton, pre-dating Bent Larsen's joke that 2 Nf3 and 3 d4 was a 'cheap trick' by over a century. Many of the games given coyly abbreviate players' names, simply referring to 'Mr. P-t' versus 'Mr. S-n', or "M. P- and M. J-h, the two strongest players in Russia"; to modern eyes the effect is quite charming, almost suggesting that there was something ungentlemanly about the brazen publishing of one's own games.

There are richly-textured prose articles on chess culture and history, such as Sir Frederick Madden's serialised treatise on the origins of European chess (the Lewis chessmen had been discovered only 10 years previously, in 1831) and the supposed workings of the automaton chess player (the first great cabinet illusion was in reality human-operated). Elsewhere, there are light-hearted snippets to curl the moustaches of even the most fastidious of Victorian readers, such as the Icelandic account of cheating King Canute's touch move dispute with his thane, Earl Ulf. One overturned chessboard later and the unlucky Ulf was, shall we say, history.


 

The Chess Monthly Volume 1 (1857), Moravian Chess 1999, 384 pages, hardcover, £23.99.

No, this magazine was not the forerunner of our contemporary, but an American magazine launched in the same year as the First American Congress in New York, where Paul Morphy triumphed over Louis Paulsen. It ran as far as the fifth month of the fifth year (like the Chronicle, also in the old-style descriptive notation), and the first volume proudly bears the names of Morphy and Daniel Fiske, the secretary of the Congress. The respective input of the joint editors has since been the subject of some academic debate, but in 1857 more pressing matters were being discussed, such as the 'Lives of Great Chess Men' Ponziani and Philidor (not to mention the not-so-famous Augustus, Duke of Brunswick-Lüneberg - who went under the chess pseudonym of Gustavus Selenus and was an ancestor of Morphy's famous opera-victim), the soundness of the en passant rule, and whether any New York player had the bottle to take on Morphy with only a pawn and move odds.


 

The Dynamic English by Tony Kosten, Gambit Publications 1999, 144 pages, £12.99.

English GM Tony Kosten, now resident in France and recently appointed trainer to their national team, again adopts an avowedly populist slant for his latest work, an aggressive repertoire for White in the traditionally refined English opening. After 1 c4, play can either develop into an early central clash (with, for example: 1...e5 2 g3 Nf6 3 Bg2 c6 4 d4 - Keres-Parma System - or 1...Nf6 2 g3 d5 - Pseudo-Grünfeld), or quite commonly as a 'non-contact sport' for the first few moves (e.g. 1...e5 2 g3 Nc6 3 Bg2 g6 4 Nc3 Bg7 5 e4 d6 6 Nge2 - Botvinnik system - or 1...c5 2 g3 g6 3 Bg2 Bg7 4 Nc3 Nc6 5 a3 - Symmetrical variation). Paradoxically, it's often in the slower-burning lines where things really liven up, and Kosten gives a good summary of the attacking options - such as f4 and a big kingside push in the Botvinnik, or a b4 thrust to sharpen the queenside play in the Symmetrical.

However, if you're looking for encyclopaedic coverage, you may have to look elsewhere, as Kosten freely admits in his introduction that his repertoire is quite an 'untheoretical' approach. Then again, if like the author (and the vast majority of non-professional players), you can confess to being 'a very lazy chess-player', you won't have to keep up with the very latest developments in theory either. All-in-all, Kosten has written a sensible guide which will educate (and enthuse) new recruits to the English cause.


 

Informator 74, Sahovski Informator 1999, 387 pages, £21.00.

Safely shipped out of war-torn Yugoslavia, we now have the latest chess-manna from the indefatigable Informator team, containing 620 games and part-games from the top of world chess. The best game prize for the previous issue was deservedly won by Boris Gelfand, for his powerful demolition of Shirov's Grünfeld defence at Polanica Zdroj, 1998, featuring the spectacular rook drop 23 Rd7!! (see BCM, October 1998, p.541). However, despite seven out of the nine GM-jurors awarding Gelfand a maximum 10 points, and Mikhail Gurevich lagging slightly with 9, one person failed to put Gelfand-Shirov even in their top 10. The identity of the mean East German figure-skating judge from hell? Holy conflict of interest, why, it's none other than Mr. S-v himself. Whatever next? By this logic, a world champion will soon be able to choose his potential challengers.


 

International Chess Magazine Volume 5 (1889), Moravian Chess 1999, 388 pages, hardcover, £23.99.

For his second world title defence Steinitz beats Mikhail Chigorin 10½-6½ in Havana and afterwards cracks self-deprecatingly, "The young master of the old school sacrificed pawns and pieces, the old master of the young school did more, for he sacrificed a whole number of games for what he considers to be a sound principle." Amazingly, editorial work goes on for Steinitz throughout the match and his Personal and General editorials are masterclasses in the art of the intelligent insult, replete with wacky nicknames for his enemies such as 'Dreckseele' and 'Gumpelino'. Along with annotations to this match are many from the Sixth American Congress in New York (a typical marathon of the day), won jointly by Chigorin and Max Weiss on 29/38 (they also drew four games of a play-off match). As with previous years, the Bohemian Caesar's splendid, erudite journal is a real treat, and chronicles the rise of British resident Isidor Gunsberg (soon to play matches with Chigorin and Steinitz himself), as well as the emergence of a certain new star, Emanuel Lasker, and his flashy double bishop sacrifice (v. Bauer at Amsterdam).


 

Tactical Targets in Chess (Volume 1): Getting a Decisive Material Advantage by István Pongo, Caissa KFT 1999, 323 pages, £14.95.

The Pongo 'twins' are an attractively produced pair of puzzle compilation books (published previously in Hungarian and German), collated by theme and with explanatory examples to ease the student into the tests. In Act 1, the final 150 of the 978 positions are a no-clues exam, so there's plenty to do here, even if experienced solvers may have seen some examples before. Interesting chapter headings include 'Battery Building' and 'Ending the Harmony of Defensive Pieces'. A word of warning, however: for the extra monster-size diagrams dubbed 'Chess Gems' you'll look in vain for any answers here. That's because they're tucked away in the back of Volume 2, with the numbers from Volume 1 cunningly corresponding at random to letters in the answer section.


 

Tactical Targets in Chess (Volume 2): Mate Combinations by István Pongo, Caissa KFT 1999, 274 pages, £13.95.

Act 2 sees another 867 well-chosen combinations classified by checkmate theme with esoteric titles like 'King Got Stuck in the Middle' and 'Interference Between the Defensive Pieces of the King Position'.

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