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BCM Chess Book Reviews: April 2002

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The Lion: The Black Weapon by Jerry van Rekom and Leo Jansen, Uitgeverij Schaaknieuws, 347 pages hardcover, £22.99.

The title is the authors’ name for the Black opening system beginning 1 e4 d6 2 d4 Nf6 3 Nc3 Nbd7 (or an immediate 3...e5). An unfamiliar name to most of us but it is used in homage to one of the authors (whose surname appears as “Janssen” on the cover, but “Jansen” elsewhere in the book) who has used and developed this system over many years. The idea is that Black does not transpose into the Pirc but plays an early ...e5. This more akin to lines of the Philidor. From the position after the above moves, the book considers 4 f4 e5, and then in more depth 4 Nf3 e5 (although the contents list maddeningly omits the move 4 Nf3, so it is not easy to gauge where 4 f4 ends and 4 Nf3 starts). Generally the book is nicely produced and positively encyclopaedic in scope, though the type is so light that the white pieces in diagrams (shown from Black’s perspective throughout) are rather hard to see. Obviously the work is a labour of love by the authors. This flexible system will appeal to club and correspondence players who are looking for an all-purpose answer to both 1 e4 and 1 d4.

 

Alexander Alekhine: Games 1902-1922 (Vol.1), Ed. Alexander Khalifman, Chess Stars, 423 pages, £16.99.

The first in a projected three-volume set of the complete games of Alekhine, as edited by Alexander Khalifman. It is another well-produced book from the Chess Stars imprint, with the games annotated Informator-style, and full crosstables and statistics from Alekine’s career. Annotators are not credited, though most games contain references to recent games; so one rather suspects that the game scores have generated using the facility within ChessBase that allows similar games to be placed as variations within the main game score. Though it is well put together, the potential purchaser might still be tempted by the option of purchasing the superbly-produced one-volume hardcover Verhoeven/Skinner collection of Alekhine’s games published by McFarland which, at £64.95, is only £13 more expensive than this three-volume series.

 

ChessBase Magazine 86, ChessBase, £17.50.

Published February 2002, this CD-ROM (with its own built-in ChessBase reader – there is no need to own any other software to use it) contains 1,802 games from the period September 2001 to January 2002, with many games annotated and opening surveys. The multi-media report is last September’s Europe versus Asia match, held in Batumi, including an interview with Azmaiparashvili and Kasparov meeting the Georgian president, Edward Shevardnadze. Another interview, with Evgeny Vladimirov, contains some trenchant criticism of Kasparov, but the sound quality is so poor that is hard to hear what the Kazakhstan-based grandmaster is saying. It has to be said that much of the multi-media material on ChessBase disks is still rather amateurish both in terms of production and interviewing technique but they still reveal aspects of the reality of chess that doesn’t always come across via the written word. The CD-ROM is as always accompanied by a nicely-produced 26-page written supplement which explains the contents of the CD-ROM and contains many useful tips on using ChessBase products such as Fritz software.

 

Informator 82, Sahovski Informator, 382 pages, £21.00.

The usual comprehensive coverage of chess events around the world. The period for this edition is June-September 2001, with Dortmund, European Individual Championship, Biel, Clichy, Portoroz, Buenos Aires and British Championships being amongst the events from that time. There is a retrospective on the career of Boris Spassky, with his best games and most important theoretical novelties as published in Informator, plus photos and statistical data.

The Total Marshall, CD-ROM, Chess Mail, £13.99. New low price as of Jan 2004

This disk contains a database of over 7,500 games plus 37 detailed database surveys, by CC-GM Janis Vitomskis, CC-IM Tim Harding and Martin Bennedick. In addition there is a 58-page PDF (Adobe Acrobat) containing an introduction to the ideas and evolution of the Marshall Counter-Gambit, plus analytical articles. There is an HTML file (readable by internet web browser) with a an ‘easy guide’ to the Marshall, with java play-throughs. The disk comes equipped with both ChessBase and Adobe Acrobat Readers, although due to a production error there is no Acrobat Reader for Macintosh users – it is freely available on the internet. The publisher also owns up to some technical gremlins with the HTML content of the disk, which has to be manually fixed by the user. This doesn’t affect the main database or text files, however, which are rich in detail and content.

StarBase 2.74, CD-ROM, Pickard & Son, £19.99.

This is the second edition of Pickard’s bargain-priced games database. As indicated by the title, there are 2.74 million games on the disk. The publisher cheerfully acknowledges that the quality (in terms of lack of annotations, game header uniformity, etc, and an abundance of internet, blitz and substandard games) is considerably less than you will find on (say) ChessBase’s own Mega Database 2002. Despite the publisher’s claim to have eliminated many duplicates, there are still a lot of these. The reviewer looked up his own name and found games under seven different versions. But it is surprising how often you find obscure but interesting lines on a bargain-basement databases which are absent from Rolls-Royce alternatives. In ‘New ChessBase’ (CBH) format, suitable for ChessBase 6.0 and higher, or Fritz 5.0 and above.

The Complete Queen’s Gambit, CD-ROM, Ed. Franco Pezzi, Gambitingly, £18.99.

This disk contains 76,000 games and 46 opening books/trees, with copious annotations and hypertext files with structured indexes of variations. The databases are in new ChessBase (CBH) format and cover all lines of the Queen’s Gambit (including the Slav and Semi-Slav), the disk comes equipped with a ChessBase reader and a Fritz 6 demo version. The product design is unusual: the cover, and also some of the text files, are adorned with famous artistic depictions of women (who have sacrificed articles of clothing rather than the c-pawn), and there is also some very pleasant classical music to listen to.

BCM Bound Volume for 2001, British Chess Magazine, 672 pages hardcover, £31.95.

The best in chess for the year 2001 in one fully-indexed hardcover volume. It contains annotations and articles by top grandmasters, plus detailed on-the-spot reports on all the top events. There is simply no better way to keep a complete record of the full range of chess activity in the year. (Note: the front cover of the book is in plain red cloth as in previous years, not as the advertising image shown left)

Barnes About Chess Problems by Barry Barnes, Self-Published, 87 pages, £9.00.

Chess composition IM Barry Barnes has put together this entertaining autobiographical sketch interspersed with selected chess problems. There are lots of references to the personalities of the chess problem world, plus details of Barnes’ own life, anecdotes, jokes, etc. Though only 87 pages, it is A4-sized and is packed with content. Very readable.

The Art of Chess by Colleen Schafroth, Harry H Ingrams, 176 pages hardcover, £19.95.

The author is Director of the Maryhill Museum of Art, Goldendale, Washington. The museum houses an outstanding collection of chess pieces, pictures of which form the basis of an illustrated history of the evolution of chess design over more than 2,000 years. Schafroth takes great care to demonstrate how chess sets illustrate the cultures and times in which they were made; she also shows, perhaps inadvertently, that at times as much effort went into the design of the pieces as was expended playing with them. This beautiful book is a must for anyone interested in collecting chess sets. Review by Ray Edwards.




 

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