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BCM Chess Book Reviews : September 2003Return to the BCM Review Index
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Aagaard’s 2002 book Excelling At Chess was very well received,
and this is an offshoot which develops some of the thinking from that
work. Aagaard is a perceptive writer, with an individual way of approaching
the game. In this he is not unlike John Watson, although Aagaard does
differ slightly from certain views expressed by that excellent writer
in Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy. There is some very specific
and useful advice about analysing your own games and other aspects of
positional play in the first half of the book. For the second part, there
are 108 positions for the reader to analyse and then work out the best
move and plan, with very full solutions to be found at the back of the
book.
The two Finnish authors have produced a reliable and complete work on
this major opening system. As usual with a Gambit opening manual, it is
well indexed and cross-referenced, provides detailed overviews of opening
principles and gives you an idea of the evolution of different ideas and
variations. An example of their thoroughness is the attention given to
Nimzo-Indian hybrids in chapter five. For that reason, it will probably
prove indispensable to Nimzo-Indian, as well as Queen’s Indian, players.
Nigel Davies examines 80 games beginning 1 d4 Nf6 2 Nc3 d5 3 Bg5, 1 d4
d5 2 Nc3 2...various or 1 d4 Nf6 2 Nc3 e6, 2...f5, 2...c5 or other minor
second move alternatives for Black. The Veresov is one of those minor
openings that has never quite become fashionable (unlike the Trompowski)
but has also never been discredited and is occasionally used by big-name
players as a surprise weapon. It is certainly a suitable weapon for amateur
chess.
A repertoire book for Black against the Open Sicilian based on the Najdorf but where Black opts for a Scheveningen pawn structure (...e6) against most White variations. This is no theory-dodger’s quick-fix manual: as the author points out, if White chooses 6 Bg5, Black needs to get to grips with some highly theoretical lines. Presented variation by variation, rather than game by game, it is a good starting place for anyone keen to acquire a high-calibre repertoire for Black.
This book covers the main lines of the Ruy Lopez, Marshall Attack, plus
8th move Anti-Marshall alternatives, via 108 heavily analysed games. One
of these alternatives (8 h3 Bb7 9 d3 d6 10 a3) is rather more in vogue
than the full-blown Marshall in recent years, and Lalic is hot on the
latest wrinkles in this line. The author suggests some significant improvements
in this extremely useful and well-written account of a dynamic Black system.
This is a simple, elementary player’s guide to the basics of the
endgame. It starts with some standard but tricky finishes, including mating
with bishop and knight, and then goes on to consider various common piece
and pawn endings. There is some good, commonsense advice about how to
approach various endgame set-ups, both as attacker and defender. The second
half of the book has some endgame exercises to test the reader’s
expertise. The author is a correspondence IM and strong over-the-board
player from London.
A large-format book from Gambit with a new front cover design, this
is a nicely laid out work about what might be seen as a rather ‘unsexy’
aspect of the game. But such superficial considerations should not put
the potential reader off as there is a particularly interesting discussion
of a number of defensive (and counter-attacking) themes such as attacking
with the king, fortresses, two pieces for a rook, etc, to be found between
the covers. High-grade material for ambitious students, enhanced by Gambit’s
usual superlative editing.
The author is an ex-Soviet IM now working as a coach in the USA, who
is also a friend of Garry Kasparov. The blurb claims that the book ‘lets
us into the secrets of Kasparov’s opening preparation’. One
suspects that any friend who did such a thing would rapidly become an
ex-friend, so the reader is advised not to expect anything truly revelatory.
It is a very broad-brush and gimmicky overview of the Grünfeld Defence,
with lots of white space and padded out with some very sketchily annotated
games. Anyone expecting an in-depth study of the Grünfeld is likely
to be very disappointed.
Computers play such a central role in the life of the chessplayer that
it is inevitable that there should be more chess books about their role
in the game. The author is a professional journalist and is a 2500+ correspondence
player. Perhaps the most valuable part of the book is his comparison of
various commercial chess databases and software programs, although it
stops short of giving specific recommendations. He compares ChessBase
8 with Chess Assistant 7, and considers the merits of Fritz 8, Junior
7, Hiarcs 8, Shredder 7 as well as a number of other less well-known,
but still meritorious programs. The author is not a gung-ho computer freak
by any means; he sensibly recommends not using your computer so much (or
at least not relying on it so heavily) if you want to improve at the game.
There are also chapters on improving your openings and tactics using a
computer, and how to beat your computer.
Quite a meaty tome from the late grandmaster (his co-author is listed
as a collaborator on the title page). It has four main parts: general
strategy, opening, middlegame and ending, of which the weakest is the
opening. A trawl through the book revealed no reference later than 1989,
so it looks like rather elderly material. The suspicion is that it may
have appeared before in some other guise or language. But it’s a
well-written work.
| WINNING CHESS OPENINGS OUT OF PRINT |
Another trio of chess books by Seirawan which were first published by
Microsoft Press in the early 1990s. In the brilliancies book the author
explains the reasons behind top grandmasters’ moves which he does
via some in-depth annotations of big-name, well-known games. The other
two books present their subject in a chatty and discursive way.
| OUT OF PRINT |
“Larry Evans called Arthur Bisguier the ‘greatest natural
talent’ at the 1963 United States Championship, a strong field that
also included Bobby Fischer, Sammy Reshevsky...” says the blurb.
This bit of silliness gives a clue to the over-the-top style of this large-format
book about the US grandmaster. Though he never scaled the heights (so
much for ‘natural talent’), he played some very entertaining
chess. Annotated games (indistinguishable from ChessBase output, right
down to the typeface) are fleshed out with pages of photos and some racy
anecdotes.
The latest ChessBase opening disk, authored by Romanian grandmaster
Mihail Marin, consists of three main databases covering ECO codes A20-A29,
starting from 1 c4 e5. It has in the region of 69,000 games, with 60 texts
and 330 annotated games. There is a training database with 46 games.
Thomas Eicchorn’s mini-biography is more of a summary of the basic
facts of Morphy’s life and career. Karsten Müller presents a
discussion of Morphy as a player and annotates some of the key games (as
does Rainer Knaak). A thorough contribution to material available on Morphy,
it will be of particularly interest to anyone wanting to examine his games.
An electronic talking book: you can add your own notes, search for commentary,
print out games and check your learning. Comes with the ARENA program,
which gets the thumbs-up in How to Use Computers to Improve Your Chess,
reviewed above. Good value for money. Specification: Windows 95
or later, 32 MBs RAM, 45 MBs available on hard disk.
Just in: The Four Knights by Jan Pinski, Everyman, 192 pages, £14.99; Starting Out: The Pirc/Modern by Joe Gallagher, Everyman, 192 pages, £12.99; The Knockout Nimzo (Video, PAL/UK format) by Tony Kosten, Bad Bishop Videos, £19.99. See New Books page.
