Books 2011 Round Up

Julius Finn: A Chessmaster’s Life in America, 1871-1931 by Olimpiu G Urcan (McFarland 2008). Foreword by John S. Hilbert. This beautifully bound hardback has been out a while but we have only just had time to review it. Hopefully a considered response will appear in the magazine. Sufficient to say that it contains 271 pages of autobiography about a little known master, a strong advocate of the Rice Gambit 1 e4 e5 2 f4 exf4 3 Nf3 g5 4 h4 g4 5 Ne5 Nf6 6 Bc4 d5 7 exd5 Bd6 8 OO Bxe5 9 Re1 Qe7 10 c3 Nh5 11 d4 Nd7 12 Bb5 and so on (1-0 in 45); Consultation Game 1907, p.181. “No poem have I writ, but just a jingle/Of the fellowship that goes along with Chess/And if flattery don’t with these verses mingle, It’s not because I like you any less..” And when was the last time you read poetry in a chess book? Finn came to America from the Baltic, stayed and played, rose to become a patron of the game he loved, even becoming a blindfold maestro. He faced Marshall, Janowski, Emanuel and Edward Lasker, became both administrator and friend to the game at which he excelled. This is a typical McFarland masterpiece. Lovely!

New In Chess Yearbook 100:The Chess Player’s Guide to Opening News (NIC 2011). cp: 26.95 euros. paperback. 303 pages. Edited by Gennady Sosonko. See BCM 12/11, p.657. newinchess.com.

The Complete c3 Sicilian by Evgeny Sveshnikov (New in Chess 2011). See BCM 01/11, pp. 26-7 for a review by FM Steve Giddins. FAN. 574 pages.

the Modern Benoni by Richard Palliser is a bright title in the CHESS DEVELOPMENTS series, published in 2011 by Everyman. www.everymanchess.com. 281 pages. Richard is an English IM. This deals with the Modern Main line, the Anti-Modern Main Line, the Taimanov Attack, the mainline fianchetto and lines with g3 where White deviates. All the games are recent. In fact I spotted nothing earlier than 2006. Lots of games by Gashimov.

1.d4 – BEAT The Guerrillas! A Powerful Opening Repetoire Against Annoying Black Sidelines by Valeri Bronznik (New in Chess 2011). LFAN. pb. 7.5″ x 9″. Englund Gambit (1 d4 e5), Polish Defence, Baltic, Owen’s, Albin Counter-gambit, 1 d4 d5 2 c4 Nf6(?) not to mention the Vulture and Budapest, this is a collection of lines against irregular defences to the queen’s pawn. And there the similarity to chess ends. Nothing here can surely be as wonderful as an old Basman Audio Chess tape, a Myers Bulletin or even ‘Rand Springer’ or even the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit World. Small fonts and hardly a mention of Otto Hardy anywhere! The cover looks like a reject from an old Charlie Storey number. Buy if you insist. Best read backwards as the last few chapters are the best, which is not saying much.  Author is an IM.

My Search for Chess Perfection by CJS Purdy (Thinkers Press 2010). http://thinkerspressinc.com/ When the review appeared in BCM 12/11, p.601 it caused quite a stir. Less than favourable, it painted a variable picture of this (to your Editor’s eye) excellent book. But BCM welcomes all opinions and the critic explained himself well and at length.

Understanding Chess Middlegames by John Nunn (Gambit 2011). pb. p.237. AN. Defensive play, pawn structure, where to attack, positional play, planning, piece evaluation, two bishops, open files …  7″x 9.75″. Minimum Elo 1800. Not for the learner or tyro.

Checkmate Tactics by Garry Kasparov (Everyman). See BCM 01/11, p.27 for a review by David Lettington. I haven’t seen this book but it sounds fine for beginners or ‘returners’ to the game.

Win Like Kasparov by Ron W Henley, ‘The Indonesian’ Grandmaster. See BCM 02/11, pp. 102-5. www.Chess4Less.com.

yearbook 97 (New in Chess) Edited by Gennady Sosonko. Very detailed, outstanding quality, out informs Informator.

Secrets of Opening Surprises 13 (New in Chess). pb. 144 pages. Jeroen Bosch. A well established series from the amazing Dutch publisher.

The Sniper by Charlie W Storey (Everyman). 175 pages aimed at the clubplayer. Not very detailed but lively. DVD also available from the author, a Northern player of some notoriety. Book recommended to be read first before watching the 4 disc DVD set. Apparently the only overlap is the game Tiviakov-v-Storey, Liverpool 2008. Both are fun and original in approach. Author an FM.

slay the Spanish by Tim Taylor (Everyman). 288 pages. US IM on the troubles Black can get into when submitting to the Spanish Torture. See BCM 04/11, p.195.

the Scotch Game by Yelena Dembo and Richard Palliser (Everyman). Yelena did a vid on the Scotch which never saw the light of day. This may therefore be her way of not wasting her research. Palliser is a much under rated player, so this could be a little time bomb!

Your Best Move by Per Ostman (Everyman). pb. 222 pages. Review by Nimzowitsch scholar Phil Hughes in BCM 08/11, p.435.

Bobby Fischer Against the World (powerHouse Books, USA). A full-page review (why can’t all our reviews be a full page?) by Stewart Reuben who knew Bobby. Reuben also writes about Fischer in his book, co-written with David Levy, The Chess Scene ( long out of print, I’m affraid..). See BCM 08/11, p.434.

Chess Openings for Kids by John Watson & Graham Burgess (Gambit). www.gambitbooks.com. Richard James, author, coach and all-round good egg, writes with a sharpened quill about this colourful textbook in BCM 09/11, p.457.

The Secrets of Station X : How the Bletchley Park Codebreakers Helped Win the War by Michael Smith (Biteback Publishing 2011). pb. 328 pages. 5″ x 8″. 35 b&w photos. Obviously not a chess book, less than obviously a tale involving chessplayers. Golombek, Milner-Barry, Turing, Alexander, NA Perkins, Welshman were all codebreakers. Alexander rose to head the department, moaned to Churchill, agonised over cyphers as he did over endgames. With the wartime restrictions lifted, this is perhaps a good place to start to read about these terrific and inspiring people. (Also see BCM 12/11, p.628). www.bitebackpublishing.com

Lasker: The Ultimate Streetfighter by Bob Long (Thinkers Press). pb. AN. Light reading, annotated games, good cartoons by the author’s son; one of an on-going series from our Iowa associate. Others in the series include Alekhine, Petrosyan,~ see below~Blackburne). Ask for the author’s catalogue.http://thinkerspressinc.com/

I have been circling the next work, wondering what on earth remains to be said about it. Capablanca: A Comendium of Games, Notes, Articles, Correspondence, Illustrations, and Other Rare Archival Materials on the Cuban Chess Genius Jose Raul Capablanca, 1888-1942 (McFarland 2011). This is a paperback reprint of the much praised 1989 compendium by Edward G Winter.  Beautifully written, winner of the BCF Book of the Year when it first appeared, today it is still useful and full of interest. Twenty-five photographs, letters, games, lists and lists of results from a long and sucessful career. The Third World Champion, Ladies and Gentleman. Who could resist this amazing tale? The most natural of players, the technically accomplished, the smoothest operator in the endgame. Is there more to say? EG Winter will tell us. Amazing notes too.

Invisible Chess Moves (New in Chess 2011). Reviewed twice in BCM in 2011 and deliberately so, this is a great favourite with us. An imaginative look at analysis: new topics not mentioned by Kotov, we think. www.newinchess.com. Voted ‘Book of the Year’ by Chess Cafe.

declining the queen’s gambit by John Cox (Everyman). pb. fan. 208 pages. I reviewed this is in BCM 09/11,  p.463. JJC is about to start reviewing for BCM so I’m glad I admired this detailed text. 53 complete games, very detailed bibliography. A fine book by the London-based IM.

Blackburne: The Black Death in Spades by Bob Long (Thinkers Press). Another from Bob from Iowa. Light, holiday, reading. Games from simuls, tourneys … see review by JP in BCM 10/11, p.552.

the Slav: Move by Move by Cyrus Lakdawla (Everyman 2011). pb. A Chernevian subtitle for a great book, lots of detail, topicality, humour, explanation. Author is an American IM.

the Ruy Lopez: move by move by Neil McDonald (Everyman). FAN. pb. Question and answers. ‘..covers both mainline and d3 options’ it says here. 317 pages. This must have taken ages to write. Neil McD deserves a very warm round of applause. Not (yet) reviewed by us. Author is a Kent GM.

Score Book For 50 Games with Index. Francis Bowers chessbower@aol.com. £3.00. Space for eighty move games, players games, large diagram, clock times, date, round & board number. Some graphics. Two mistakes in the contents at the front which does not detract. Tel 01733 579569. Reasonable value.

James Mason in America: The Early Chess Career, 1867-1878 by Joost van Winsen (McFarland USA).  An. HB. 373 pages. Very, very detailed, an annotated and animated life of an Irishman who came to the US as a kid and made good. An investment as a book, this is almost a self-contained fairytale and by that I mean Mason’s life is so (hitherto) unknown that the author could almost have made this up, the narrative flows like a novel. Reviewed in BCM 11/11. www.mcfarlandpub.com.

Giants of Innovation by C.W. Pritchett (Everyman 2011). The veteran Scots IM looks at the TNs, opening philosophies, games and so much more of Steinitz, Lasker, Botvinnik, Korchnoi and Ivanchuk. Large double columns, sweeping historical perspectives. www.everymanchess.com. Reviewed in 01/12, p.33.

play the Benko Gambit by Nicolai V Pedersen (Everyman). 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 b5! according to a Danish IM. Instructive. Reviewed on this site by JP who was later panned by a certain Simon Bibby. (We sent him some DVDs for his troubles!)

Saragossa Opening: The 2. Qc2 System by David Robert Lonsdale (2006, revised 2011). Booklet. Introduction, contents. AN. 37 pages. A5. Games played on line by Mr Lonsdale in 2006 at Chess World.net. No evaluation, bibliography or analysis of lines which are obviously very unusual. More suited to ‘Bullet Chess’, we think, and perhaps the only place to look for games beginning 1 c3 and 2 Qc2. Nice green cover. £7 + postage, available from the author at 61 Boem Avenue, Scarborough, Ontario, Canada M1R 3T4 or, better, dlonsdale@hotmail.com.  Reviewed in BCM 01/12, p.33.

The Four Knights Game – Andrey Obodchuk (New in Chess 2011). Would compliment the Dembo/Palliser book above. Very colourful Mondrian-like cover. Small text, long-form algebraic notation. 238 pages. Packed. Curiously lacking in authority, this looks like a bit of a non-starter. A shame. Has sold well, we gather. (PS A view at Chess Cafe thought much better of it than I initially did)

The Ragozin Complex: A Guide for White and Black by Vladimir Barsky (New in Chess). pb. AN. 349 pages. 9.5″ x 6.5″. Good bibliography (19 items listed!). Historical intro, guideline (28 pages). 1 d4 Nf6 2 Nf3 d5 3 c4 e6 4 Nc3 Bb4. “ Transpositionville”.  Eight games by the young Fischer(!) Author is a Russian IM. Reviewed by IM John Cox in 03/12.

“Samuel Reshevsky”, by Stephen W.Gordon (McFarland 2011). www.mcfarlandpub.com
My first two thoughts after an initial flick-through Samuel Reshevsky were “why now?”, and “not for me”.
Its not that the book doesn’t hit its intended target; its described as “A compendium of 1768 chess games, with diagrams, cross-tables, some annotations, and indexes”, and that’s exactly what it is. The book is laid out decade by decade, through Reshevsky’s incredibly long-playing career, from the 1920′s through to the 1990′s. Each chapter starts with a 3 or 4 page narrative describing Reshevsky’s playing successes and failures in that decade. After that its onto the games. Gordon has laboured long and hard to produce the most comprehensive summary of Reshevsky’s games, which are laid out in the decade by decade format.
At first glance a big disappointment is that the games don’t appear to be annotated. Turning a few more pages though, one comes across games with contemporaneous annotations, from CHESS, Chess Life or “Chess Review”. In total, perhaps 100-110 games have contemporaneous annotations; comparable with a lot of player biographies. Within a compendium of 1768 games though, the reader is left with the impression that Gordon’s main aim was to record Reshevsky’s career as comprehensively as possible, rather than bring either Reshevsky’s career, or games, to life for the modern-day reader. This impression is reinforced by the lack of any present-day annotations, and by the way the annotated games are interleaved largely unannounced with the unannotated games (admittedly the Opponents Index at page 403 does use bold typeface to identify annotated games). Gordon obviously had to wrestle with how to organise such a huge volume of material; I think I might have chosen to present the 100 or so annotated games first, to draw-in the player readers, followed by the comprehensive collection of other games, for the chess historian readers.
Reading the Introduction and preamble, I learn that this 2011 paperback edition was preceded by a 1997 hardback edition, which brings me to the “why now” question. As a teenage player back in 1980′s, I can remember Informant, and game collections for players like Kortchnoi, where the moves were everything, page after page of unannotated games, and Gordon’s book feels from the same mould. In the age of online databases though (and indeed a lot more like computer analysis, online commentators etc), the book feels desperately dated.
My last observation is that the book is printed on boring yellowing paper, which again reduces the book’s excitement factor.
In summary a magnificent resource for the chess historian, but I personally (as a clubplayer) found the book didn’t spring to life in my hands. I can’t help feeling that if any new edition was warranted now, it would be a searchable / chess program readable e-book. Andrew Ponting

(Just to add to Andrew’s words, this is not written by the English GM Stephen Gordon and was originally reviewed in BCM 05/97, p.252 -Ed)

Quarterly for Chess History Autumn 16/2007. 6″ x 8″ x 1.5″. 1 kg. hb. FAN. p.542. Index of openings, adverts, players games. Editor Dr Vlastimil Fiala. Chess Agency, CAISSA-90, Post Box 101, 772 11 Olomous, Czech Republic. 32.00 Euros. 4 issues a year at 28.00 euros + 20% for other publications. www.moravian-chess.cz. cz@hotmail.com. This is the best volume for ages. I bought the first nine but had to stop. This is number 14 and a return to form. More variety. FD Yates (43 pages), Forgotten Steinitz games (44-50); Staunton’s columns 51-75; Chigorin’s biography (76-133), Lilienthal (134-186), Prince Saburov (187-203), Redcar 1865 & ’66 (204-216), Dublin 1865 (217-230), Birmingham 1899. Also Williams v Harrowitz matches, Morphy letters, Alekhine simul in Pilsen, Sonia Graf, Paulsen’s blindfold simul, Douglas Forbes, historian. Book reviews, about 500 games, crosstables, bound boards, no enthusiasm or basic source material lost in the translation. Recommended.  (Also see BCM 03/12)

The Zurich Chess Club, 1809-2009 by Richard Foster (McFarland & Company, Inc., USA) . 436 pages. Foreword by Vladimir Kramnik ‘with a chapter of the festivities featuring eight living world champions.’ Notes, bibliography, index, lists of champions. FAN. Beautifully bound in green cloth. International chess history as it has reached the modest chess shores of Switzerland.

A Nimzowitsch-M Wiesendanger, QGD Simul. Zurich 1934

1.c4 Nf6 2.Nf3 c5 3.Nc3 Nc6 4.d4 d5 5.cxd5 Nxd5 6.e4 Nxc3 7.bxc3 e6 8.d5 Nb8 9.Bb5+ Bd7 10.dxe6 fxe6 11.Bc4 b5 12.Bb3 c4 13.Bc2 Bc5 14.Bg5 Qb6 15.Ne5? Bxf2+ 16.Ke2 0–0!! [A profound sacrifice of which any master would have been proud.] 17.Nxd7 Nxd7 18.Qxd7 h6! [The hidden point - White's bishop has no good square at its disposal. After the continuation in the game and after 19 Be7 Qe3+ 20 Kd1 Bg1!! White's king is exposed to deadly cross-fire.] 19.Bc1 Bg1! [here too this esthetically pleasing bishop move has decisive effect. 20...Qf2+ is threatened, as is 20...Rf2+ 21 Ke1 Rf1+! and mate.] 20.Qxe6+ [Desperation. There was no escape. If 20.Bd2 then ...Qf2+ 21.Kd1 Qf1+ 22.Be1 Rad8 & wins] 20…Qxe6 21.Rxg1 Qg4+ 22.Ke1 Qh4+ 0-1. {Notes by IM Richard Forster}. (Also see BCM 02/12)

Lasker and His Contemporaries Issue #6 by Bob Long (Thinkers’Press 2011). 72 pages. http://thinkerspressinc.com/ Launched about 35 years ago, this series appears once in a blue moon. Articles included this time: Linder on Schiffers, Pillsbury at Hastings, 1895 and Nuremburg 1896, Pillsbury’s Forgotten Simul by John S Hilbert, Steinitz history … a relaxed and original publication. Cartoons. Winner of the 1997 Fred Cramer. bob@thinkerspressinc.com.

Alekhine: the Executioner by Bob Long (Thinkers’ Press 2011). Paperback.http://thinkerspressinc.com/ 41 pages. No. 3 in ‘The Chess Gangs of New York and London’ series. 59 lightly annotated games. Others in the series include Petrosyan and Pillsbury + those mentioned above. Just fun.

Beating Unusual chess defences: 1 e4 dealing with the Scandinavian, Pirc, Modern, Alekhine and other tricky lines by Andrew Greet (Everyman 2011). BCM‘s review of this new paperback from Everyman was sent to the author himself (!) much his bemusement. However, it was worth it, he corrected two minor points we’d attempted to make. See BCM 12/11, p.601. We wonder whether a companion volume, dealing with 1. d4, is planned.

1…d6: move by move by Cyrus Lakdawala (Everyman Chess 2011). paperback. 400 pages. UK £19.99. US $29.95. www.everymanchess.com. The author must have worked on this for years, four hundred pages, he ought to get a medal! I quote from p.233 ‘Against the Grand Prix, we fall back on our elemental, E=MC squared, Pribyl formula from Chapter One with …Bg4, bishop takes something, …e6 and …d5.’  And one paragraph earlier: “Exercise (planning). White’s king isn’t safe. Prove it.” One can’t ask for a more direct approach than that, nor for more clarity and good humour. The Pribyl, the Old Indian, 1 c4 d6, the Wade, Rat. It is all here transposed and errors exposed. Transpositionville, USA. Author is a State Champion, an American IM, a great expositor.

Centre-Stage and Behind the Scenes: The Personal Memoir of a Soviet Chess Legend by Yuri Averbakh. newinchess.com. Comrade Yuri is ninety now and the oldest grandmaster in the world. You wouldn’t know it, he writes vividly and with obvious courage. Apparently the Russian version contained games and I miss them here, though Pergamon published his best games some years back. Instead this is history without revelation, honesty devoid of hypocracy and chess (almost without) paranoia. No wonder he lasted this long. Reviewed in BCM 01/12, p.32.

the Nimzo-Indian: move by move by John Emms (Everyman Chess). www.everymanchess.com.  A gargantuan tome covering 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 Bb4.  I wish Emms played a bit more but maybe this is not the place to say so.  Reviewed in 01/12, p.34.

 All reviews by James Pratt except for ‘Samuel Reshevsky..’ which is by Andrew Ponting.