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BCM Chess Book Reviews : July 2001

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Victor Korchnoi: My Best Games, Vol. 1: Games with White by Victor Korchnoi, Olms, 207 pages hardcover, £19.99.

This book contains Korchnoi’s own selection of his best 50 games with the white pieces; a second volume is to follow with 50 more where he had Black. The games were selected evenly from the fifty years that he has been playing top-level chess. One gets the impression that the restless Korchnoi could get very bored writing a book and he deliberately seeks to alleviate that by choosing games with a variety of different opening systems and opponents. Also, he has a chatty style and says that he threw out games if they did not contain any ‘conversational’ fragments to disclose to the reader.
     Quality of the games was not the top priority for his selection, but, with so many to choose from, the reader need not worry. They can hardly fail to entertain, and Korchnoi’s notes are spiced with his playfully wicked sense of humour. Don’t expect to find examples of seamless attacks and smooth positional masterpieces here; many of the games are flawed struggles which reflect the attritional nature of grandmaster chess.
     Lifelong enemies can expect no more mercy in its pages than can his chessboard opponents. Amongst the notes to the three Karpov games, Korchnoi retells the tale of his being an unwanted challenger and a foreigner in his own country during the 1970s and implies that Karpov was little more than a well-schooled automaton to whom the massed ranks of Soviet grandmasterhood had to dictate their best theoretical ideas. But, albeit grudgingly, Korchnoi speaks of Karpov as the “most practical champion in the history of chess” and admits to learning from him about how to economise on time and energy.
     Korchnoi is the last of the great war-horses of the 1950s who can still play 2600+ standard chess and take on the very best players in the world. It is clear from his annotations that he prepares hard for every battle and uses a computer to help him do so. He is not an indiscriminate fan of silicon assistance, however: “I do not think computerised commentaries à la Hübner or Khalifman are an adornment to chess, or that they are useful to chess players. A player should develop his tactical intuition, whereas catalogues of variations try to replace this with a total calculation of the possibilities.” Korchnoi also clearly revels in opportunities to wrongfoot database-dependent youngsters, recycling long-forgotten but still potent ideas from the days when an Informator was a delegation member who reported back to the Soviet Chess Federation what you got up to on tournament rest days.
     Korchnoi maintains his freshness by playing the man as much as the board, and giving in to his own moods and whims both to amuse himself and flummox his opponents. The notes are a good place for settling old scores (which would have made a good title for the book). He also brings jesuitical zeal to bear against youngsters. The hype surrounding Ponomariov provokes him to some wonderfully cruel humour: “I was no child prodigy”, he grumbles, repeating the first note from game one of the book, “... but nevertheless I have had to measure swords with numerous young grandmasters. By way of passing on experience, of course...”
     Ken Neat’s translation reads very well in English, and he even gets a credit from the author for improving on some of the analysis in one game. The humour might have been drier had he edited out the countless exclamation marks with which jokes are drilled home. This work is one of the few that deserves to sit on the shelf alongside such classics as Fischer’s Sixty Memorable Games and Tal’s Life and Games. In fact, it should probably take pride of place as it is likely to be of far more practical use to the vast majority of chess players who, like the author, would not claim to be chess geniuses. Although we know he is, of course.
     Genna Sosonko’s recent book Russian Silhouettes was a nostalgic celebration of the golden age of Soviet chess, but a tad depressing when one considers that all the people he was writing about are now dead (or gone off to play tennis). This book is a reminder that there is still one live dinosaur out there in Caissic Park. And he’s still got very sharp teeth.
 

Max Euwe: The Biography by Alexander Münninghoff, New in Chess, 351 pages, £17.95.

This substantial book is a translation of the 1976 Dutch edition. It includes many critical games from throughout Euwe’s career with 50 annotated by Euwe himself and a good selection of photographs. The appearance is neat and tidy, but it is spoilt by the use of a small typeface which makes for hard reading – try the continual text on pages 173-189 for example.
     That Euwe was a major figure in chess history is not in doubt; he was one of the best players in the world in the 1930s, a prolific and successful author, the founder of the modern Dutch chess tradition and an diplomatic president of FIDE who, mirabile dictu, saw his duty to preside dispassionately and fairly for the benefit of chess players everywhere without a thought of personal aggrandisement or gain.
     This biography is much like the Dutch world champion (1935-7) himself – thorough, honest and workmanlike. And yet there is a feeling of disappointment. Euwe was an enigmatic and complex personality. Why for example did he, a Doctor of Mathematics, teach – apparently quite contentedly – in a girls’ secondary school? Why did he not – when World Champion – become a full-time professional? Why did Euwe – always a busy man – play in many small tournaments well below his class and often do relatively badly?
     Münninghoff writes (p.31): “When looking back, many people who have had dealings with Euwe over the course of many years were forced to the conclusion, sometimes to their own surprise, that they appeared not to have really known him after all.” Münninghoff too has had the same problem. He seems in awe of his great countryman and has written an excellent chess history rather than a biography. Nonetheless it is a worthy tribute to a very worthy man.
 

Mikhail Botvinnik: Games Vol.2, 1951-1970, ed. Soloviov, Semkov and Krylova, CS Chess Stars, 494 pages, £18.99.

This is the second of a two-volume work (the first was reviewed in BCM, September 2000, page 478), completing a collection of Botvinnik’s games up to the end of his playing career in 1970. There are nearly 600 games in this volume, each of which has been annotated in Informator’s languageless style. The annotations are extensive, with attributions (very often Botvinnik himself) and modern-day opening references included (up to the year 2000). There are opening and player indexes, and each competition Botvinnik played in is accompanied by a crosstable or statistical data. This is a superb reference work with excellent production values. We noticed just one slip-up, with “Littlewood P” listed as a player at Hastings 1961/2 (he was aged less than five at the time: the true identity of the player was his father “Littlewood J”).






 

Classical Nimzo-Indian by Bogdan Lalic, Everyman, 160 pages, £14.99.

This book is sub-titled “The Ever-Popular 4 Qc2"; it covers lines for both colours after 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 Bb4 4 Qc2. Curiously missing from the bibliography is Nimzo-Indian Classical Defence by Ivan Sokolov, published by Cadogan (i.e. the same publisher before it changed its name) in 1995. However a comparison of the books shows that time has marched on in this popular variation of the Nimzo-Indian, which has the reputation of being one of the soundest ways Black has available to counter 1 d4. The format is Everyman’s tried and trusted one: a selection of games (in this case, 84 of them) annotated and arranged in a logical sequence. Lalic is a diligent, no-frills author and, after a short consideration of the Classical Nimzo as played by world champions of the past, he presents a rigorously modern selection of material. More than 60 pages are devoted to lines beginning with the more modern 4...d5, less than 50 on 4...0–0 and 12 pages on the less fashionable 4...c5. All in all, a very thorough work on a substantial and important area of opening theory.





 

The Slav by Graham Burgess, Gambit, 256 pages, £15.99.

Most opening book blurbs boast a list of world champions that have utilised the opening contained between the covers and this is no exception. 11 of the first 13 world champions have played the Slav at some time in their careers. It is not hard to see why; it is a very solid response for Black, and yet, unlike so many other ‘solid’ defences, it tends not to hem in Black’s pieces but allows the attacking player to respond actively. It allows a myriad of transpositional possibilities. This is often a stumbling block for an opening book writer, but fortunately here it is in the hands of the dependable Graham Burgess, who is particularly adept at cross-referencing transpositions. He has produced a superbly clear and practical guide to a complex and wide-ranging opening, mainly in terms of variations but with textual advice when appropriate. Note that coverage does not include the Semi-Slav, an opening system in its own right.






 

Top 12+1 – VI-XII/2000, Sahovski Informator, 247 pages, £9.99.

The publishers of Informator have put together a collection of games played by the world’s twelve top rated players – plus one other, in this case Judit Polgar – for the period July-December 2000, and collected all the games they played during this period into individual chapters. Each player’s chapter starts with a short biographical summary, and presents each game chronologically, without commentary or annotations. That takes up about 100 pages: note that Kasparov’s games during the period consisted solely of his 15 Braingames encounters with Kramnik – and that the same games appear in Kramnik’s chapter. This is true for all games played between ‘the top 12 plus one’.
     There follows a 50-page statistical appraisal of each player in turn, listing their scores within opening category. Forty pages of opening theory follow, concentrating on systems that were in vogue during the period. This section of the book, written by Dusan Rajkovic, includes substantial textual and symbolic annotations. A remarkably inexpensive book with plenty of games, but the gratuitous repetition of game scores and sparsity of annotations does rather detract from the overall impression.





 

Chess On The Net by Mark Crowther, Everyman, 127 pages, £12.99.

In this book, the well-known founder and editor of The Week In Chess (TWIC) web site sets out to review the range of chess web sites, give advice on how and where to play chess online, and suggest how chess players can use the web to improve their practical play. It is very interesting to see how Crowther sizes up what is available out there in the ether. The attributes that have brought him to prominence as a purveyor of chess news on the internet are much in evidence; he is informative, to the point and rigorously objective, even when dealing with web sites which he might consider to be rivals of his own. There is invaluable advice in admirably plain English on the basics of computing, including how to connect to the net and use email effectively. For the more advanced (and for any Crowther ‘wannabees’), the author reveals much of the philosophy, and many of the techniques and software packages, that underpin his news site. His technical understanding and long experience of the internet give great authority to his views. Anyone considering whether to invest in an internet connection, or thinking of setting up a chess web site, would do well to read this book.



 

How To Think In Chess by Jan Przewoznik and Marek Soszynski, Russell Enterprises, 276 pages, £18.99.

This book attempts to apply various psychological and analytical techniques to the thought processes involved in playing chess. It follows Jonathan Levitt’s Genius in Chess and Jonathan Rowson’s Seven Deadly Chess Sins, which has been reappraised by Levitt elsewhere in the June issue of BCM. Levitt also contributes the foreword to this new book. It is based on Jan Przewoznik’s magazine articles on chess thinking and has been translated and in many cases rewritten by Marek Soszynski. Early in the book one is pitched into some heavy academic text, exhorting the reader to think aloud. There is a very complex scoring system which looks harder to understand and apply than chess itself. The last section of the book deals with areas of psychology that management trainees may be familiar with, e.g. creative thinking, stress management, character development, positive self-image.The book contains lots of exercises to test various aspects of your thinking, but the reader may well be turned off very early by the quantity of ‘techno-speak’. Some might find this sort of analysis useful, but most will find it desperately hard work and lacking in the fun department.




 

Exploiting Small Advantages by Eduard Gufeld, Batsford, 144 pages, £15.99

The ‘small advantages’ of the title include material, positional and also psychological ones. The book is made up of nine chapters on such subjects as strengths and weaknesses of opposite-coloured bishops, and rook versus two minor pieces, and consists of annotated segments of games, many of which will be very familiar, up-to-date to 2000. A good read for the club player, though the price tag seems a little steep for a book of only 144 pages.








 

Mega Corr 2 (CD-ROM Games Database), Chess Mail 2001, 350,000+ games, £26.99.

The first edition of this CD-ROM collection of correspondence chess games was reviewed in BCM in October 1999. This is a brand-new 2001 edition, bringing it fully up-to-date with more than 350,000 good quality correspondence and email games (available in old and new Chessbase formats as well as PGN and Chess Assistant), of which about 10% are annotated. In addition, you will find a cornucopia of data, information, interviews, book reviews, even complete books relating to correspondence chess, including the last four years’ worth of Chess Mail in PDF (Adobe Acrobat) format, so that you see the magazine exactly as it appears on paper; a suitable reader for this is supplied on the disk.



 

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