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Magazine Chess Book Reviews : December 2008

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How Chess Games are Won and Lost by Lars Bo Hansen, Gambit, 254 pages, £15.99.

We are all familiar with the three stages of a chess game: opening, middlegame and endgame. 40-year-old Danish grandmaster Lars Bo Hansen adds two further phases: the transition from opening to middlegame, and middlegame to endgame, and writes a perceptive and highly readable account of how a player might handle each of the five phases. It is an impressively organised and well thought-out book which flows beautifully and provides eminently sensible advice on how to work on your game. Though Hansen takes the general view that players often work on opening theory too much compared with other phases of the game, his guidance on the choice of an opening repertoire (and how it must suit your strength as well as style) is particularly astute and practical. A great many books have crossed this reviewer’s desk this year but this is one of the very best. Highly recommended to players of around 1800 strength and above. JS.

School of Future Champions 4: Secrets of Positional Play by Mark Dvoretsky and Artur Yusupov, Olms, 240 pages, £18.00.

The blurb tells us that the main theme of this volume is ‘prophylaxis’: an excessively posh word that doesn’t actually exist as a noun in Classical Greek and probably owes its chess usage to translators of Nimzowitsch’s My System. It comes from the genuine Greek word ‘prophylax’ which means ‘advanced guard’ and gives a clue to its chess meaning; in plain English, ‘taking precautions to prevent the opponent doing things’. The authors and their various pupils (including a very young Kramnik) develop this Nimzowitschian theme in various directions, but also examine in depth various subjects such as manoeuvring, planning, transformation and other (mainly middlegame-focused) aspects of the game. It is essentially a retranslation of the 1996 book Positional Play published by Batsford (reviewed in Magazine, July 1996, p365) but as authoritative and educational as the day it first came out. Coincidentally, in another book reviewed this month (Rampant Chess), Jonathan Rowson reveals that the original edition of this work is one of his three favourite chess books ever. JS.

Dangerous Weapons: Flank Openings by Richard Palliser, Tony Kosten and James Vigus, Everyman, 253 pages, £14.99.

The three authors have between them produced chapters on 12 very different ideas within the umbrella of ‘flank openings’. Tony Kosten starts with ‘fun times with Nimzowitsch’s 4 e4 (1 c4 e5 2 Nc3 Nf6 3 Nf3 Nc6 4 e4!?). His name is then taken in vain in the second chapter title – ‘Fighting Back against the Kostenites’ – where Richard Palliser writes about a system (1 c4 e5 2 g3 c6 3 d4 e4!?) popularised by Kosten’s 1999 repertoire book The Dynamic English. As well as the English, there are chapters on variations of the Slav and Benoni. It is a lively and interesting book. JS.

Chess in Wales by Martyn J Griffiths, Moravian Chess, 337 pages hardcover, £26.99.

This is a collection of historical material from the early years of the 18th century through to 1970 (the book was substantially written in the 1970s). It gives details of Welsh players, clubs, congresses, associations, results and also correspondence chess and simultaneous displays and includes 68 photos and illustrations, plus a 14-page index of Welsh players. Magazine’s former Quotes and Queries editor DJ Morgan receives a splendid little vignette including some of his most humorous one-liners. An excellent reference work. JS.

Rampant Chess by Geoff Chandler and Keith Ruxton, Quality Chess, 200 pages, £14.99.

This is a collection of 65 games played and chosen by 13 top Scottish players (headed by Rowson, Aagaard, Motwani, Shaw, McNab and Arakhamia) but then – a new twist, this – annotated by the non-grandmaster authors. The idea is more to entertain than to educate and there is plenty of light-hearted and self-deprecating banter between the two authors who carry on like a couple of music-hall comedians throughout. The reviewer must confess that he was fully expecting to cringe at all the facetiousness but rather warmed to the authorial double act as it played out to a background of fine Scottish chess (some big-name scalps get taken, not all of Sassenachs). As well as the games, the 13 players answer a questionnaire on their favourite books, music, etc. To use two Scottish adjectives bequeathed to me by my Glaswegian mother: pawky and definitely not dour. JS.




   

Build Up Your Chess 2: Beyond the Basics by Artur Yusupov, Quality Chess, 338 pages, £19.99.

Renowned chess teacher and grandmaster Artur Yusupov continues his complete course of chess improvement. Volume 1, The Fundamentals, showed club chess players the basic ideas they should know. Now Volume 2, Beyond the Basics, sets off on the road to mastery. Yusupov guides the reader towards a higher level of chess understanding using carefully selected positions and advice. This new understanding is then tested by a series of puzzles. JS.

Play the Sicilian Kan by Johan Hellsten, Everyman, 320 pages, £15.99.

This is a Black repertoire book starting from 1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 e6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 a6 which, as the sub-title suggests, is a dynamic and flexible system for Black. White can continue with 5 Nc3 (to which Black here plays Qc7), 5 Bd3 (to which Black here replies Bc5), 5 c4 and one or two other moves so there is a lot of material to consider. Consequently it is quite a sizeable book. Having said which, the author argues that there is less theoretical material to sift through (and perhaps fewer transpositional possibilities) than is the case in other variations of the Sicilian. It is a well-organised and thorough work which will suit players of 1700 and upwards. JS.





   

Informator 102, Sahovski Informator, £21.00.

This issue contains 421 annotated games and 467 variations from events held between 1 January 2008 and 30 April 2008. Events covered include Corus Wijk aan Zee, Moscow, Morelia/Linares, Mérida, Plovdiv, Baku, etc. The game voted best in the previous issue is Aronian-Anand, Mexico 2007, and the most important novelty Kramnik’s 17 Rb1! against Aronian in the same competition. As well as the usual features it includes a retrospective of Vlastimil Hort’s creative output. JS.





 

The Greatest Ever Chess Tricks and Traps by Gary Lane, Everyman, 235 pages, £14.99.

Our Chess Questions Answered columnist is in charge of the dirty tricks department here. A few favourites are featured, from the refutation of Damiano’s Defence (3 Nxe5!) to the ‘Copycat Petroff’ (3...Nxe4? 4 Qe2), but for the most part the book features lesser known and more subtle pitfalls that you will probably not have seen before. Let’s face it, even Garry Kasparov has fallen for a stinker in his time (1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 Nc3 dxe4 4 Nxe4 Nd7 5 Ng5 Ngf6 6 Bd3 e6 7 N1f3 h6? 8 Nxe6! against Deep Blue – even the humblest Caro-Kann player should know that one). If Christmastide ‘goodwill to all men’ starts to cloy, read this book and get ready to inflict some chessboard wickedness in the new year. JS.







   

Encyclopaedia of Chess Openings, Vol. E, 4th Edition, Sahovski, 672 pages hardcover, £29.99.

The fourth edition of Volume E, has 144 more pages of new material on 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6, 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 g6 without 3... d5 (King’s Indian, Nimzo-Indian, Queen’s Indian, Catalan, Bogo-Indian). It includes games and analyses from Informators 1-101 and is made up mostly of the games, analysis and assessments of leading grandmasters. The focus is on games played recently and published in Informator as well as other publications. JS.







 

Facing the World Champions by Vlastimil Hort, ChessBase DVD-ROM, £24.99.

On this DVD, the Czech grandmaster (who is now registered for Germany) reminisces for some four hours about his long and successful chess life. Despite a slightly self-deprecating and ironical manner – he could even be described as lugubrious, with throw-away references to his “life sentence” as a chess professional and a tendency to end an anecdote with a soft, sighed exclamation – Hort is a relaxed and unselfconscious raconteur of chess stories from the golden age of chess through which he has lived. Hort was born in 1944 and met eight world champions over the board (Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Spassky, Fischer, Karpov and Kasparov) and also knew Euwe. Speaking a fluent and beguilingly accented English, he starts with his own beginnings in the game aged five and stories he learnt when young of the first world champion whose name he learnt – Alekhine – and carries on from there. There is a wonderful feeling of intimacy about this production and it is as if Hort is talking only to the viewer. Pure nostalgia for those of us well stricken in years. System requirements: Pentium-Processor at 300 Mhz or higher, 64 MB RAM, Windows XP, Windows Vista, DVD drive, mouse, soundcard. JS.







   

ChessBase Magazine 126, ChessBase DVD-ROM, £17.50.

The second FIDE Grand Prix in Sochi, the Tal Memorial in Moscow and the Grand Slam final in Bilbao are the focal points of this issue. Levon Aronian and Michael Adams make their first contributions to ChessBase Magazine on this DVD, and Ivanchuk, Topalov and Carlsen also provide material. System requirements: Pentium-Processor at 300 Mhz or higher, 64 MB RAM, Windows XP, Windows Vista, DVD drive, mouse, soundcard. JS.







   

Top Theory Novelties 1 (May-Aug 2008), Informator CD-ROM, £16.99.

This CD highlights the most important novelties played between 1 May and 31 August 2008 in ECO codes C67 (Ruy Lopez Berlin Defence), E05 (Catalan with dxc4), E32 (Nimzo-Indian with 4 Qc2). Each game contains a precisely-defined novelty with additional information derived Informator and ECO. System requirements: CD-ROM drive. JS.







   

Just In: 1000 Miniature Chess Traps by Andras Meszaros, Magyar Sakkvilag, 362 pages hardcover, £19.99.

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