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Chessville Reviews
The answer to this question is yes and no. In sharp systems like the Semi-Slav and certain lines of the Grünfeld, opening theory is always in a state of flux. In such cases it may be necessary to check the current state of theory in your favourite variation from websites like Chesspublishing.com or NIC Yearbooks. But in more solid openings like the QGD and the Slav a radical overhaul of variations is less likely. These systems have stood the test of time. I would also like to address the other dilemma of a chess player intending to buy this volume. Should he buy the book or the CD? For a player with a modest purse may not be able to afford the book and the CD together. So I shall offer a comparison to enable the reader to make an informed choice.
The first database includes 6817 games(1834-2003). These games are not annotated. This presents a problem. The basis for presenting so many games is not too clear. Certainly not those short draws. In my view games prior to the Informant era (i.e. before 1966 when the Informant began its publication) should have been annotated. Great masters like Rubinstein and Smyslov played both sides of the opening with virtuosity. For sheer purity and elegance of style there is nothing like their games. While Smyslov’s games are well-represented in this CD the same cannot be said of classical masters like Rubinstein and Schlechter. Yet this section is useful if the reader examines older lines which have been discarded for no other reason than an undeserved loss or just because it was played by a lesser-known player. The second database is better. It includes 15,487 games published in various issues of the Informant (1966 to 2003). They carry the original annotations that appeared at the time. These are of particular value as many of them are offered by the players themselves. There is also a training module with 234 positions in its Test Your Skills section. These exercises are not the usual type of finding the winning combination. They are as much concerned with positional judgment as tactical calculation. Last but not the least, the CD comes with the software Chess Informant Expert 5, a user-friendly program for downloading and annotating games. To conclude, the CD is ideal for ambitious players who are computer savvy and wish to make intensive use of databases to prepare for tournaments. The book is suitable for players who have no such ambitions and would love to explore openings with an old-fashioned chess set. However, users of the CD have to be very careful in examining annotations to individual games. The assessment of the opening phase in these games evolved through a series of trial and error experiments. The database tree would offer a more sober and balanced evaluation of individual lines. This brings me to the main point. At first glance studying this volume appears to be a daunting task. But its format is so clear and systematic that any player can prepare a solid and reliable opening repertoire out of these variations, the only exception being the Queen Pawn Game, with lines other than 2.c4. In this review it would be impossible to deal with the treatment of every standard 1.d4 d5 opening in the CD. So I shall confine myself to an important TN. Queen’s Gambit Accepted
I would not rate the treatment of non-standard lines as good. This part of the CD should have been much better as tournament players are often confronted with these offbeat lines and do not have a clue how to tackle them. A case in point is the following line: Queen Pawn Opening
A quarter of the database in the CD is devoted to the Grünfeld Defence. But it is ironic that the very first game with which this defence made its dramatic debut is missing in the database. It was in Vienna 1922 that Ernst Grünfeld played this opening against Alekhine. After a tense battle Alekhine resigned by throwing his king across the room (this game will be annotated in a subsequent review). Later Alekhine himself became a great follower of this opening and began to play it. In the post-Fischer era Kasparov has been the greatest exponent of Grünfeld Defence. Unfortunately, it took a terrible beating in his matches with Karpov and Kramnik. These games of Kasparov offer a fair idea of problems faced by Black. However, improvements continue to be found for this defence. So Grünfeld players need not lose hope. On the whole I regard this volume as a standard reference work. The only point of limitation is that the games and analysis are covered until 2004, the year of its publication. Recommended. At the
Publisher’s site.
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The
book is a handsome hardcover tome of 608 pages with 1660 lines covering the
entire range of openings from D00 to D99. These lines include 1268
sub-variations dealing with 1.d4 d5 openings and 332 dealing with the
Grünfeld Defence. A highly impressive achievement. (For a
detailed view of the distribution of material, see Carsten Hansen’s
ChessCafe column,
The
only problem is that there are no complete games to substantiate the
evaluation of each line in this book. It is here that the CD scores
over the print version. It has 22,304 games and game fragments with
two databases.
