BCM Chess Book Reviews : April 2000

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How To Defend In Chess by Colin Crouch, Everyman, 224 pages, £13.99.

Sub-titled “Learn from the World Champions”, the main body of the book is devoted to examining the defensive technique of Emanuel Lasker and Tigran Petrosian, perhaps the two greatest escapologists in chess history. The author puts their achievements in the context of the development of defensive strategy as propounded by Steinitz and Nimzowitsch. The games are annotated more with words than variations, and many interesting comparisons and contrasts drawn between the positional mastery of Lasker and Petrosian, and other great defenders such as Karpov and Capablanca. The author endeavours to get beyond the intention of the moves themselves, and dig down to the philosophy and style behind the moves.

The appraisal of Petrosian is particularly interesting and Crouch owns up to being one of the minority who thought that ‘Iron Tigran’ would overcome Fischer in 1971. This is not to say that he doesn’t have considerably admiration for Fischer’s defensive skill and he bemoans the fact that we will probably never see the follow-up volume to My Sixty Memorable Games. Overall, this is a scholarly but readable work, with IM Colin Crouch paying homage to the superb technique of his subjects. Later Note (2007): this book has now been reissued under the Gambit imprint and retails at £13.99. The 2007 Gambit cover is shown rather than the 2000 Everyman version. Later review (June 2007) - click here



 

Botvinnik’s Best Games, Vol. 1 (1925-1941) by Mikhail Botvinnik, Moravian Chess, 392 pages hardcover, £25.99.

This is Botvinnik’s Analiticheskie i kriticheskie raboty 1923-1941 (Moscow 1984), translated into English by Ken Neat. Two further volumes are in preparation, relating to the periods 1942-1956 and 1957-1970. This volume contains 121 games with Botvinnik’s annotations, plus pen pictures of many of his opponents. It is noticeable that his 1984 chess autobiographical work reveals more of the man and his opponents than his 1949 work (later translated and still available in the Dover edition Botvinnik: One Hundred Selected Games). References to 1970s and 1980s games are clear evidence of Botvinnik’s chess researches continuing well beyond 1970, when he retired from international chess. The games are supplemented with 30 pages of crosstables and statistics of Botvinnik’s career, 16 pages of excellent photographs (many never previously published), translator’s notes and an index of openings. Though print quality is slightly below par and despite the gremlins that have crept into the photo captions, overall this is a superb work which does justice to one of the all-time great chess players at a time when he was crossing swords with the legendary stars of the inter-war period.



 

Informator 76, Sahovski Informator, 380 pages, £21.00.

Sahovski Informator’s usual high-quality and deeply annotated selection of the best games played in the given period – in this case, June to September 1999. 557 games, 27 combinations, 18 endgames. Voted best game of the period is Igor Nataf’s win over John Nunn (as predicted by the English Grandmaster’s French team-mates - see BCM, June 1999, page 315). Voted most important theoretical novelty is Topalov’s 13...g5! against Leko at Linares 1999 (subsequently refined by Kasparov: see Anand-Kasparov, BCM, April 1999, page 185). A new feature at the back is a 24 page section entitled “The Best of Chess Informant”, highlighting the best games, TNs, combinations and endgames of a prominent player as published by Informator over the years. The first edition is devoted to Garry Kasparov. There is a cartoon of him on the first page of the section looking rather grumpy; perhaps because on the opposite page there is a glowing tribute paid by Alexander Matanovic to “Alexander Khalifman: New World Champion”.





 

Richter-Veresov System: The Chameleon Chess Repertoire by Eduard Gufeld and Oleg Stetsko, Thinker’s Press, 192 pages, £15.50.

The ‘Chameleon’ in the title is the authors’ reference to the changeability of the Richter-Veresov System (1 d4 Nf6 2 Nc3 d5 3 Bg5) which can transpose into several different openings, including e4 ones such as the French or Caro-Kann. Gufeld and Stetsko have cast their net wide, dealing with early deviations after 1 d4 Nf6 2 Nc3, such as 2...c5, 2...e6 and 2...d6, as well as, after 1 d4 d5 2 Nc3, 2...Bf5 and 2...f5. The result is a pleasantly readable and comprehensive survey of a complex of openings that have always been popular at club level, and occasionally at the highest level in the hands of such openings mavericks as Miles and Morozevich. There is very little in print on this system, and this book fills the gap admirably.






 

Modern Chess Openings (MCO-14) by Nick de Firmian, McKay, 734 pages, £19.99.

Modern Chess Openings is more of an institution than a book, but the proliferation of chess literature in the past thirty years has seen the one-volume openings manual being overtaken by a multitude of books that cover just one opening or a variation within an opening. Nevertheless MCO has carried on, although new editions have appeared after longer intervals than previously. This, the 14th edition, has been completely revised by three-times US Champion Nick de Firmian, with assistance from fellow countrymen such as John Fedorowicz and John Donaldson. The book makes reference to games from 1999.

The competition in the one-volume market comes from the similarly-priced Nunn’s Chess Openings and Small Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings. Each of the three manuals has its own merits; in MCO’s case it is that there is a little more textual content. The writer fills in the background to an opening and delivers authoritative verdicts in plain English. This, together with a little more white space, makes for increased readability than its rivals, possibly at the expense of extra material, and it would be an ideal openings reference work for club players who want to know something about the full range of openings. NOTE: rather than this US edition, the BCM Chess Shop stocks the identical 'Batsford's Modern Chess Openings' (14th ed) - same content, same author, same price, and published by Batsford in August 2000.



 

Quarterly for Chess History (Summer 2/1999) by Vlastimil Fiala, Moravian Chess, 564 pages hardcover, £19.99.

This is the second edition of the new chess historical journal and, like the first (reviewed in BCM, September 1999, page 489), filled with the fascinating results of Vlastimil Fiala’s original and scholarly research. As hinted in the earlier review, the proposed interval for publication has proved optimistic, but this has been largely as the result of the monumental amounts of material made available. Given the huge overall number of pages, the editor can afford to give over vast amounts of space to each of his subjects. Capablanca’s simultaneous tour of the UK in 1919/20 is spread over 159 pages, and a full report of the 26-round Monte Carlo tournament of 1903 (where Colonel Moreau scored his famous 0/26) runs to 161 pages. There are 325 Max Euwe games from the period 1911-22. The book also contains biographies of Alapin, von Bardeleben and Mieses, three Marshall matches from 1902, in-depth book reviews, an article by Ken Whyld on rediscovered Lasker games, and John Hilbert on chess in Philadelphia. A must for the chess historian.





 

King’s Gambit by Alexander Bangiev, Chessbase CD-ROM, £18.50.

This CD-ROM from the ‘ChessBase Training’ series comes complete with an installable version of ‘ChessBase Light’ so there is no need to own a copy of Fritz or ChessBase. The opening is divided up into more than 30 constituent variations, each of which is presented via ChessBase hypertext pages (which are reminiscent of an internet browser). Underpinning the whole structure are no less than 16,700 games, including a handful from the year 2000. An impressive and highly useful resource.




 

Ratmir Holmov by Aidan Woodger, The Chess Player, 96 pages, £9.50.

Despite his immense playing strength Holmov is a Soviet player hardly known in the West. Suffice to say that he had an even score in 45 games with Korchnoi, Bronstein and Keres and a plus score against Geller and Petrosian. For whatever reason he never achieved the international celebrity of the élite Soviet players, even if he held his own at the board. A collection of his best games is therefore most welcome. The notes are mostly derived from Holmov’s own annotations. As an appetizer, examples of Holmov’s considerable tactical prowess, taken from the book, will be found in this month’s Spot the Continuation feature. (Review by Ray Edwards).






 

Complete Mansfield by Barry Barnes, self-published, 120 pages, £10.00

This is volume three (1963-1984) of Barry Barnes’ complete collection of the problems of Comins Mansfield, widely regarded as the greatest two-mover problemist of them all. Thus all 461 problems in the book (13 previously unpublished) were composed by Mansfield after the age of 67 until his death in 1984. A labour of love by Barry Barnes, himself an IM of chess compositions and a friend of Mansfield over many years.









 

A (First) Century of Studies: Ernest Pogosyants, edited by John Roycroft, Russell Enterprises, 49 pages, £6.95.

John Roycroft’s selection of 100 studies from 404 sent him by the prolific Soviet composer Pogosyants (1935-1990). In his short life, Pogosyants is believed to have composed 6,000 studies and problems of which around 3,000 were published. This relatively slender selection gives just a taste of his mastery.










 

Just in...

New In Chess Yearbook 53, £15.00

Vladimir Simagin by Aidan Woodger, The Chess Player, 100 pages, £9.95

76 games and biographical data for Soviet Grandmaster Simagin (1919-1968).


 

All Reviews by John Saunders except where otherwise indicated

 

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