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BCM Chess Book Reviews : January 2005Return to the BCM Review Index
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This book is the first from a new publisher based in Gothenburg, Sweden,
with IMs Jacob Aagaard and John Shaw as its editors. It is a promising
debut: an interesting work on specific strategic ideas that were personal
to some of the world’s greatest players. Romanian Mihail Marin has
written substantial chapters on Rubinstein’s rook endgame technique,
Alekhine’s expertise in endgame tactics, Botvinnik’s depth of
analysis, Tal’s handling of heavy pieces versus minor pieces, Petrosian’s
positional exchange sacrifices, Fischer’s ‘pet’ king’s
bishop, Karpov’s handling of bishops of opposite colours and Korchnoi
as an anti-authority icon. There are one or two slight gremlins in the
finished product but the general impression is very promising. JS
The adjective in the title is just a publisher’s trick to grab your
attention, there being nothing controversial about this well-established
variation. Chris Ward annotates 35 games with plenty of alternative suggestions
and variations. It is a good chunk of opening theory delivered with a
good helping of his usual ebullient humour. Note that Ward is firmly on
the side of White, though Black players can also find some advice here.
He deals with all the conventional lines and even puts in a brief word
for 1 d4 d6 2 e4 Nf6 3 f3!? when discussing Pirc/Modern side-lines. JS
This is the fourth and final volume in the author’s comprehensive study of the French Defence. Basically this volume covers 3 Nc3 followed by everything except 3...Bb4. Presentation of the opening is via the ‘game by game’ approach. There are just 18 stem games but with a massive amount of variations and sub-variations. The impression is more of a reference work than a ‘how to play’ manual, but there is still plenty of text in which Psakhis gives his opinions on what is good or ‘hot’. His name on the cover is a guarantee of quality. JS
After a warm encomium from Yasser Seirawan, the author introduces the
basic principles of rook endgames before presenting 180 annotated examples.
It is a slim volume at a cheap price, but thoughtfully written. Seirawan
tells a wonderful story in his foreword which says more about this book
than this review ever could. To summarise: Kasparov owns this book in
the original Bulgarian and swears by it. Convinced now? JS
This book contains 36 Centre Counter (Scandinavian Defence) games annotated
by Andrew Martin, who already has a video/DVD to his name on this subject.
That said, there only appeared to be four significant overlaps between
video and book. The current rival book for this at the moment is Jim Plaskett’s
very recent The Scandinavian Defence, which has more substance
to it. This book is a little thin, and judging from the author’s
abbreviated and decidedly carefree use of language, one of his slightest.
Note: the book does not cover the 2...Nf6 variation. JS
This is a chess puzzle book with a big difference. You have one kind
of white piece (normally one but sometimes two, and the rules are varied
somewhat for kings, queens and pawns) and you have to give check to the
black king in the fewest moves possible without putting a piece en prise
at any point. Meanwhile the black pieces don’t move at all. So, strictly
speaking, it is not chess at all. But it is an intriguing test of your
powers of visualisation. Once you’ve got the idea, it is good fun
to solve the positions. Whether there is a knock-on benefit to your game
remains to be seen, but it may help intermediate players to get familiar
with the moves of the pieces. Alongside the maze puzzles is some more
conventional learning material related mainly to the endgame. JS
In the introduction, the author seems slightly defensive about bringing
out yet another book on this opening. It is his fifth on the subject in
about eight years. But King’s Indian aficionados will be quite happy
to see it published as Joe Gallagher is a leading expert on this very
popular Black system, as well as being one of the best authors around.
74 games are analysed in detail, including 26 of his own games. As always
Joe is humorous but also scathing when he sees fit. For example, he says
of ChessBase Magazine and Mega Database disks: “a warning:
they have a guy called Tsesarsky who annotates King’s Indian games.
The guy ruins many good games with his forthright but erroneous annotations.”
JS
This book features nine puzzles per page on all aspects of the endgame.
Over 3,000 endgame examples are taken mainly from actual games but also
from endgame studies. Very good teaching material. The 54 page introduction
is in Russian and there is a contents page in English. Otherwise the puzzles
and solutions are annotated Informator-style. JS
This reprint of a 1838 title is sub-titled “A magazine of chess,
and other scientific games edited by George Walker.” The magazine
consisted of six issues running from December 1837 to May 1838. At the
end there is a 40-page bibliographical catalogue of printed books, and
writers on, chess, also by George Walker. The book is mainly about chess,
with some short articles on whist, écarté, and some Polish
(10 x 10) draughts studies. JS
The Bishops’s Opening has always been popular at club level, and
had a vogue at grandmaster level a few years ago. This is Gary Lane’s
second book on the subject: his first was Winning with The Bishop’s
Opening, published in 1993. A lot has happened since then and the
present work covers a broad range of transpositions, so you get a cross-section
of Two Knights’ Defence, Giuoco Piano, Evans Gambit and Vienna Game
for your money. JS
This second compilation of popular training programs for studying all
phases of the game: opening, middlegame and endgame has five new programs
included: Encyclopaedia of Middlegame II comprises 600 games/lessons,
each of them illustrating typical plans and methods used in popular openings,
with 500 exercises for solving and 150 training positions. Chess Tactics
for Intermediate Players includes more than 1,180 tactical exercises,
classified by theme and difficulty. Mate Studies consists of 5,000 exercises
and problems for tactical training. Theory and Practice of Chess Endgames
was compiled by Panchenko over 20 years. The theoretical sections includes
700 lessons and a training section of 300 exercises and 180 exercises.
Finally, Chess Endgame Training: consists of more than 2,450 endgame exercises
taken from actual games, plus endgame studies and training examples. In
all, the disk contains more than 11,000 study examples and exercises suitable
for chess players of Elo 1700/BCF 135 and above. System Requirements:
32MB RAM, 100MB free disk space, Windows 95 or later, CD-ROM drive. JS
This CD-ROM actually covers all Caro-Kann lines starting 3 exd5, not
just the Panov Attack with 3 exd5 cxd5 4 c4. There are 25,000 games in
the database, 800 of them annotated, a matrix of text files with outlines
of the main variations, plus a training database with about 60 positions
to solve. The training database was rather superficial, with many trivial
one-move traps to figure out (and sometimes your suggested solution is
rejected though it may be of equal value to the author’s solution).
JS
The latest yearbook features an article by Sosonko on Oleg Romanishin.
Amongst openings surveyed are the Evans Gambit and the Colman variation
of the Two Knights Defence. JS
