The tournament book tradition has given us many classics, e.g. Bronstein on Zürich 1953, Alekhine on Nottingham 1936 and, more recently, Jan Timman on Curacao 1962. Nowadays, tournament books are a rare guest among the countless opening guides, chess tutorials and personal game collections. Still, a serious tournament report has many advantages over these other genres.

If a single game is like a newspaper column, and a game collection is like a short story, a collection of all games from one tournament is, in my view, like a full-grown novel, with different story-lines and intricate plots, small personal dramas and highlights, seemingly trivial details and an intricate plot leading up to a satisfying or thought-provoking finish. I would like you to see Mihail Marin and Yuri Garrett’s Reggio Emilia 2007/2008, published by Quality Chess, as an intriguing and well-written novel, rather than ‘just another’ chess book on the market.

On of the characteristics of a good tournament book is that all games are seriously analysed. As Garrett, the tournament’s technical director, writes in the introduction, in the current book, 25 out of the total of 45 games are analysed by at least one of the combatants, 3 of them present the views of both players and the remaining 20 have been annotated by GM Mihail Marin.

One of the very nice things is of this is that quick, ‘boring’ draws are also seriously analysed. This is something you don’t see in regular game collections or in New in Chess magazine, but I’ve always found it very instructive to see how the big guys make these draws, especially with such an outstanding explicator as Marin commenting them:

Korchnoi-Almasi
Reggio Emilia (2) 2007

How realistic are White’s chances of retaining even a tiny edge? In the absence of knights, there is no way to take advantage of the relative weakness of the d6-square. Speaking about “ifs”, under certain circumstances a knight jump to f6 would have been devastating. The way it is, I see only one (highly unrealistic) possibility: exchange all the rooks in order to avoid any form of counterplay, install the queen on e4 to dominate both wings, and advance (by some miracle) the b-pawn to b5, in order to put the black pawns placed on dark squares in potential danger. Admittedly, there is no way all this could happen.

16.Bxb7 Maybe Korchnoi’s initial intention was to keep control of the long diagonal with 16.Qf3. However, in this case he would have lost control of another important avenue, the d-file, after 16…Bxe4 17.Qxe4 Rad8 18.Rad1 Rd7! followed by …Rfd8. This would also have led to plain equality.

16…Qxb7 17.Qe2 Rfd8 18.Rad1 Qc6 19.f4 g6 20.Qg2 This is the only way to try to activate his position, but the almost complete simplifications that follow lead to a dead draw.

20…Qxg2+ 21.Kxg2 h5 22.Kf3 Kf8 23.Ke4 Rxd1 24.Rxd1 Rd8 25.Rxd8+ Bxd8 26.h3 Ke8 27.g4 hxg4 28.hxg4 Kd7 When this position was reached, Korchnoi said in a loud voice, “What can I do?” A draw was agreed.

Of course, the tournament not only consisted of solid draws, but also of some very spectacular and beautiful chess. And again, Marin takes us by the hand towards a crystal-clear understanding of the games.

Almasi-Marin
Reggio Emilia (5), 2008

28.e6! White sacrifices his central pawn to clear the e5-square for his knight and make the e-file available for his rook. Black’s contorted piece coordination, which was quite functional in the closed position before Almasi’s breakthrough, will soon lead me to defeat. (…)

28….Qxe6 29.Ne5 c6 To tell the truth, I was still optimistic at this point, especially since, judging from his physical reaction, I knew Almasi had overlooked this defensive resource. My pleasant state of mind was not altered by his next strong move.

30.Bd2!! I would have enjoyed playing one of my favourite type of defensive positions – an exchange down – after 30.Nxg6 hxg6. Then Black has practically no weaknesses and his structure is much better than White’s. Moreover, if the black knight reaches the e4-square, White would be in trouble.

In this fragment, we see Marin at his best. He honestly describes his emotions yet manages to stay objective all the time, enabling him to explain the technical details without ever becoming boring or repetitive. He also shows a constant concern for the reader trying to make assessments of the arising positions. Marin even comes to the rescue in annotations by the other participants, when they have not been explicit enough to Marin’s satisfaction. The very first game of the book is a good example: Zoltan Almasi analyses his victory over Pentala Harikrishna in a solid, but rather clinical fashion, so Marin jumps in at several points in the analysis to add useful comments like “It may seem that Black has regrouped his forces harmoniously and his kingside counterplay is developing without problems. However, White’s space advantage in the centre and on the queenside should not be underestimated.”

Reggio Emilia 2007/2008 (it started on December 29, 2007) was in many ways perfect for a tournament book. Not only were there a number of world-class players such as Vugar Gashimov and David Navara, but also the legendary Viktor Korchnoi was present, as well as two rising stars from Asia (Pentala Harakrishna and Ni Hua), and of course Mihail Marin himself. As is good practice in a literary review, I won’t give away the ending of the ‘novel’, nor any other spoilers. In the end, however, it’s the moves and the games that tell the story of this tournament, not the results.

I thoroughly enjoyed immersing myself into this tournament (even though I had never seen a single game from it before), identifying with the players and the problems they were facing during the games, and I suddenly felt it as a real loss that such books are hardly ever written anymore these days. I think a tournament book is the closest a chessplayer can come to identifying with fictional characters, and it’s a true pleasure to be able to enjoy the excitement of chess for once without having to think about improving my own game or updating my opening or endgame knowledge. This is simply top level chess entertainment.

Apart from the tournament itself (the heart of the book) there are numerous interesting extras in Reggio Emilia 2007/2008, such as excellent interviews with the players, a history of the Reggio Emilia tournament (including some memorable games from past editions) and a sympathetic description by Garrett of how this particular tournament was organised. Garrett is a keep observer who not only loves to watch the games but also the players themselves:

It was also interesting to witness the cultural differences between the players, ranging from Almasi’s assertive comments to the hesitant and modest ones by the Chinese warrior, Ni Hua (…). Gashimov whispered his fascinating comments, which were charcterized by a wildly tactical approach (albeit with that raw touch so typical of the young player who has yet to fully exploit his potential).

I hope readers will consider buying this very charming book; perhaps it will energize publishers to publish more serious tournament reports. It’s too beautiful a tradition to be written off already.

Links

• Get yourself a copy of Reggio Emilia 2007/2008
• Read more book reviews

This is the last part of a ‘triptych’ on recent chess improvement books – you can find the other two reviews here. I’ve written before that in my view there are really too much ‘improve your chess’ books on the market; fortunately, some of them are very good and you may be surprised to hear that I like Andres Hortillosa’s Improve Your Chess at any Age as well.

Actually, the book is every patzer’s childhood dream: an entire book (170 pages, beautifully published by Everyman Chess) dedicated to your own games, where you get to write about your thoughts on chess in general and during the games; your favourite style and your ideas on chess development theory! Too good to be true, right? Well, as we say in Dutch, chess publishers may be good, but they’re not crazy, and Hortillosa has a little more up his sleeve than just patzer analyses and ditto philosophies.

Yes, it’s true: Andres D. Hortillosa is a ‘mere’ 2199 FIDE player who just wrote a book on how he improved over the years at a, shall we say, riper age than most of us start to play chess. And yes, most of the games and game fragments are from Hortillosa’s own games. But why is that necessarily a bad thing? On the very first pages of the book, the author presents himself as a modest guy with good intentions, wisely anticipating some of his future critics but not bending over backwards to please them. He also says some pretty sensible, if not terribly spectacular, things about chess improvement targeting an audience of players with a rating below 2000. My first impression after reading the introduction was that perhaps this somewhat oddly-titled (and marketed) book deserved the benefit of the doubt.

This feeling was confirmed by some of the stuff in Chapter One, where Hortillosa paves the way for his theories on chess improvement and shows some of his past games. Again, note that his commentary, though not exactly grandmasterly, is certainly sensible, down-to-earth, and will definitely evoke a pang of recognition with most club players:

Hortillosa-Hartsook
Denver 1994
1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3 e6 3.Bg5 h6 4.Bxf6 Qxf6 5.e4 Nc6 6.c3 g5
To my mind this move is a little committal, although a number of strong players have used this advance. Karpov played …g6 in one of his games, although that was without …Nc6.

Amateurs including myself tend to make inflexible moves. We tend to forget that pawns do not move backwards. And once they are fixed on a square, they are subject to attack and they tend to leave you with limited options.

This may not be a huge shocker to advanced chess players, but anyone who’s ever trained weaker players knows what it feels like to constantly have to remind your pupils to ‘keep your hands off these pawns already!’ It’s a very good point and one that shows Hortillosa may actually have something to offer club players that truly strong players often don’t: to speak to them in their own languages and with examples from their own level of play. I myself have often been frustrated by how strong players often take stuff like this ‘for granted’. Hortillosa, you can be sure, never does. Here’s another example from the same game after Black has played 13…e5 (and before White played 14.d5):

Amateurs, when confronted with situations like this one, tend to resolve tensions rather hastily. I guess amateur thinking dislikes complexity so there is a strong tendency to simplify at the first opportunity. So, it is either capture on e5 or advance to d5. I can opt to maintain the pawn on d4 with Ndb3, but it will invite Black to harass the knight on b3 with …a6-a5-a4. (…) In general, however, one must learn to play comfortably with contact-tension on the board. Keep the tension as long as tolerable. See if you can force your opponent to waste a tempo in resolving the tension. For example, avoid capturing defenceless pawns right away. Often, a developing or centralizing move is the better choice.

Again, I was impressed by how well Hortillosa points to something weak players often struggle with. I could quote countless examples from my own games where I incorrectly resolved the tension in the game (as well as, fortunately, examples where I successfully put the pressure on by increasing pawn tension!). This is good, useful stuff.

In Chapter Two, Hortillosa elaborates on his ideas on chess improvement and thinking, the sum of which he calls, with a clear undertone of self-mocking (thank God!), ‘The System’. His approach here is more theoretical, but fortunately, he never becomes too vague (or too pretentious) for comfort. Again, what Hortillosa writes won’t sound too novel to people who’ve already read their Rowson, Watson and other chess philosophers, but one of the charms of Improve Your Chess at any Age is that there’s a real sense of personal involvement of the author in much of what he claims:

After this reflection, I concluded that my chess was totally devoid of any semblance of a thinking process. (…) I am passionately drawn to fixing things including those that work to make them even better. It was not hard to see my chess requiring more than just cosmetic repair; it needed total replacement. Disgusted with the status quo, I formulated a chess thinking process inspired by the combined philosophies of Cleanroom Software Engineering and Six-Sigma, which are known for their strong emphasis on error prevention.

To be honest, I didn’t always find Hortillosa’s opinions on thinking processes too convincing. For instance, one of the things he claims is that chess tactics puzzles often miss their mark because they focus on the finding of the solution instead of creating a practical game-situation where a (tactical) resolution can be created (’Anyone can solve a puzzle, but can anyone play the moves leading to the puzzle?’). I think this is only partly true: sure, it’s important to know the ‘context’ of a tactic, but solving puzzles does sharpen the mind and it definitely creates a reservoir of ‘chess tactics knowledge’ in the brain which may be extremely useful in later games, as many chess prodigies have clearly demonstrated.

In a chapter called ‘Are Openings Really Important?’, Hortillosa makes some valid points on studying opening theory (’stronger players are better in confusing us with sidelines than we are at confusing them’) and he gives a couple of great (and often quite hilarious) examples of why having your opponent fall for an opening trap doesn’t always guarantee victory. The main part, however, is explained in ‘The System’, the author’s answer to the question ‘how we prevent these errors from cropping up?’ Hortillosa gives a checklist of eight points you should always be aware of during play. These include things like ‘2. Search for specific threats’ and ‘5. Search for candidate moves’ – good advice, to be sure, but surely Hortillosa doesn’t expect players to answer these eight questions at every move?

Indeed he doesn’t, and here again is the book’s charm: the author shows modesty and self-knowledge by condeding that, of course, ‘the system has some implicit assumptions. One such assumption is knowing when to invoke the system.’ He follows up naming the exceptions, and especially the moments in a game when it does make sense to invoke ‘the system’. (He also gets kudos for questioning ‘the viability of the system’ altogether, ’since evidence is severely lacking’.) The points he makes are useful all the same, and I liked the two examples that illustrate them – but disappointingly, the rest of the book hardly mentions the eight points again explicity and instead focuses on thorough and at times engaging analysis Hortillosa’s tournament games from 2008 and 2009.

The result of this is perhaps the book’s only real problem: it’s overlong; I’d say it’s at least 50 pages too long. Like all chess enthusiasts, Hortillosa just loves to talk about his own games and to describe the thoughts that went through his head during them – and he knows he’s pretty good at it – but it’s just too much. Sometimes the explanation of ten perfectly normal opening moves is spread out over two and a half pages, and we get comments like this:

MacIntyyre-Hortillosa
Pawtucket 2008
Position after 7…Nf6

I normally do not continue with …Nf6, especially when … e6 has been played. Looking at this game one week later, I could not remember what I was afraid of that led me to post the knight on f6 instead of following generally established wisdom, which dictates playing it to e7. I was probably mixing systems here, a known defect in amateur play. When … e6 is played, Black normally should follow through with … Nge7. These two moves are a natural pair.

You’d think this was already more than enough explanation for a very common opening manoeuvre in a game that will last 60 moves in total, but Hortillosa has only just started:

Most strong players including the late world champion Botvinnik would prefer …Ne7 even with the pawn on e5. The advantage of posting it on e7 is that the natural break f7-f5 is ready to go whereas in the position where the knight is on f6, Black has to waste a tempo before he can play …f5. (…) One data point on the board that rules out …Nf6 in favour of …Ne7 is White’s h2-h3…

And this isn’t even the end of it. I’m not saying Hortillosa doesn’t make some valuable observations along the way, but such lenghty commentary does appear a bit self-serving to me. More importantly, the games in this section, while entertaining, don’t very well explain how Hortillosa’s ’system’ got him the results he achieved. My impression is Hortillosa simply had a lot of time on his hand, studied a lot of chess, received professional training (from IMs and GMs) and made very deep analysis of his games. And lo and behold, he made considerable progress. No ’system’ needed at all!

With that in mind, the rest of Hortillosa’s book does ultimately become ‘just’ any amateur’s dream: a great way to show a lot of, at best, fairly interesting tournament games. They’re all very well analysed, they do contain a lot of useful prose, interesting digressions good advice, but in the end they’re still games played by a 2100 player with an interesting message. It’s an interesting experiment in the sense that this (modest) game level may actually be helpful to players of that level (if only because their mistakes are so recognizable). Personally, though, I prefer playing over games by the big guys, but there you go.

That said, Improve Your Chess at any Age may well offer a glimpse at the future of chess publishing 2.0: everyone has a chess engine these days, so why not publish a book with your own chess games? Andres Hortillosa, at least, has written a very sympathetic version of this new concept, and I think lots of club players will enjoy his writings and recognize (and improve upon) many well-known issues in it.
In the end, Hortillosa’s book should not make us jealous, but inspire us to analyse our own games even better and to formulate our thoughts and mental blockades more transparantly. Hortilossa has given us a pretty good example of how it can be done – at any age.

Links

• Get yourself a copy of Improve Your Chess at any Age
• Read more book reviews

Mijn recensie van het vorige Matten-nummer begon ik met de constatering dat er sinds de opheffing van Schaaknieuws niet veel meer te beleven was op Nederlandstalig schaakgebied. Dat is niet meer helemaal juist. Niet alleen is er de nieuwe website schaaksite.nl, een initiatief van Kees Schrijvers met columns, verslagen en analyses, maar ook schrijft Richard Vedder sinds enige tijd zeer lezenswaardige schaakboekrecensies op schakers.info en zijn niemand minder dan Yochanan Afek en Hans Böhm een nieuwe, laagdrempelige serie over de schaakstukken begonnen. Het eerste deel, De Pion – De Ziel Van Het Schaakspel, werd onlangs gepresenteerd. Hoog tijd dus voor weer eens een Nederlandse (dubbel)recensie.

Matten 7: Eindelijk op topniveau!

Matten 7, uitgegeven door New in Chess, staat dit keer helemaal in het teken van schaken en vrouwen, en de introductie van dit enkele thema voor (bijna) alle artikelen is een gouden greep van de redacteuren, want dit nummer is zonder twijfel de leukste Mattten sinds haar oprichting in 2006.

Ik wil beginnen met het interview dat Karel van der Weide had met de schaaktweeling Marlies en Laura Bensdorp. Hebben we in het verleden Van der Weide als schaakliterator regelmatig kritisch gevolgd, de rol van interviewer vertolkt hij met verve. Het interview, met de goed gekozen titel Zelfstandig en Weerbaar, is vlot geschreven, scherp en tegelijk bedachtzaam van toon en levert veel interessante en soms onthullende antwoorden van de schaakzusjes op. Sterk is vooral dat Van der Weide in dit interview nu eens niet zijn eigen (inmiddels overbekende) opvattingen over een onderwerp als het vrouwenschaak herhaalt, maar de zusjes alle ruimte geeft hun punt te maken:

Het aansnijden van het onderwerp [vrouwenschaak] leidt bij Marlies tot enige verontwaarding. Hoe de KNSB met damesschaak omgaat, valt volgens haar zeker nog te verbeteren. De ‘publiciteit’ rond het afgelopen NK in Haaskbergen sterkte haar in die opvatting. De persdienst had toch op z’n minst een paar foto’s op internet kunnen zetten?! Laura vult aan dat vrouwen sowieso op een heel andere manier naar schaakverslaggeving kijken. Reportages op ChessBase en New in Chess worden eerst beoordeeld op de kwaliteit van de foto’s, anders beginnen de zussen niet eens aan de tekst! Marlies vervolgt dat ze zich vreselijk ergerde aan een uitspraak van Hans Böhm tijdens datzelfde NK. Hij zei dat hij hoopte ‘geen damespartij te hoeven bespreken’. Marlies: ‘We zijn minder goed dan de mannen, maar het is altijd zo negatief’.

In zo’n fragment toont Van der Weide dat hij wel degelijk kan schrijven: hij observeert, verwoordt en interpreteert goed, durft op te schrijven wat hij hoort en mixt alles met pittige soundbites van de dames zelf. Ook prima: het interview is ideaal van lengte, lang genoeg om de diepte in te gaan en toch kernachtig genoeg om niet te gaan vervelen.

Langer van stof is een ander vermaard interviewer, Dirk-Jan ten Geuzendam, in een sympathiek vraaggesprek met Corry Vreeken – het interview is langer, maar de 82-jarige Damesgrootmeester honoris causa heeft logischerwijs ook meer te vertellen dan de nog geen dertigjarige dames Bensdorp. Ook Ten Geuzendam slaagt erin de geïnterviewde opmerkelijke uitspraken te ontlokken – curieus vond ik bijvoorbeeld dat Vreeken aan het eind van het gesprek, dat veel gaat over ouderdom en nog meer over herinneringen aan het verleden, bekent nog wel degelijk te schaken: op internet. Relevant en stijlvol is ook Ten Geuzendam’s inleiding over schaken en sanatoria in de literatuur, die mij herinnerde aan een andere beruchte schaakroman die zich afspeelt in een sanatorium: Murphy van Samuel Beckett.

Beckett had trouwens misschien beter gepast in het stuk van Peter Boel over die andere grande dame van het Nederlandse schaak: de in 2007 overleden tienvoudig Nederlands dameskampioene Fenny Heemskerk. Eigenlijk vond ik Boels stuk nog boeiender, waarschijnlijk omdat het persoonlijker, soberder en diepgravender van toon is: waar Corry Vreeken vooral smakelijke anekdotes vertelt, beschrijft Heemskerks dochter, die zelf ook behoorlijk schaakte, openhartig de manische depressies van haar moeder en de moeilijkheden die dat opleverde voor het gezin én Heemskerks schaakprestaties. Het resultaat is een betrokken en aangrijpend portret van een Nederlandse schaaklegende.

Diepgang wordt zeker ook niet vermeden in John Kuipers’ stuk De ziel tussen duister en licht over Erika Sziva en Johan van Mil, een relaas dat in zijn eerlijkheid en onopgesmukte tragiek soms bijna pijnlijk om te lezen is. Iets luchtiger, maar eveneens zeer onderhoudend, is het interview dat Danielle Pinedo hield met Peng Zhao Qin. Pinedo stelt goede vragen die getuigen van mensenkennis (’je aanpassingsvermogen is je redding geweest’, ‘ben je nooit bang geweest dat je familie de dupe zou worden van je vlucht?’) en Peng geeft open en uitgebreid antwoord op de vragen.

Sterk is ook het opzettelijk wat raadselachtig gelaten stuk van Jan Timman over zijn trainingservaringen met Judit Polgar, en Matten’s huisfilosoof Dirk Poldauf houdt een genuanceerd en goed beargumenteerd ‘enerzijds-anderzijds’ betoog over het vrouwenschaak als speciale discipline, waar ikzelf mij in elk geval uitstekend in kon vinden:

“Op korte termijn zou het afschaffen van toernooien voor alleen maar vrouwen een traumatisch effect kunnen hebben en ertoe kunnen leiden dat sommige meisjes zich bij het ontbreken van de kans op snelle lauweren van het schaken afwenden. Op de langere termijn zou het waarschijnlijk echter tot een normalisering in de verhoudingen in het toernooischaak leiden (…).”

De korte rubrieken Het Notatieformulier (Rob van Vuure) en De Foto (Allard Hoogland) zijn ook nu weer leuk om te lezen, en ook Het Gedicht dat Paul van den Hout schreef voor Frans Naerebout (’Verliezen doet hij immers nog maar zelden,/ want juist zijn stille kracht wordt onderschat’) is mooi en toepasselijk, op zijn minst voor wie Naerebout gekend heeft.

Is het dan alleen maar hosanna voor de nieuwe Matten? Niet helemaal. Lex Jongsma schreef een wisselvallig en wat rommelig stuk (met de al even rommelige titel ‘Mag ik u mijn Dame aanbieden? Het Dameoffer en het Paard in de Zak’) dat aanvankelijk over De Groene-hoofdredacteur Martin van Amerongen lijkt te gaan, maar opeens overspringt op Reuben Fine, dameoffers en iets ‘uit eigen werk’. Jongsma’s aanstekelijke manier van vertellen komt op papier een stuk minder tot zijn recht. Ik kon mijn aandacht er in dit artikel niet bijhouden: te veel van de hak op de tak, te veel onuitgewerkte invallen, overbodige uitweidingen en te stellig geformuleerde opinies (’Nu was Freud een genie, en Fine een schaker van wereldkampioenstatuur, en een zeer geacht en goed verdienend psychiater, die weliswaar nooit meer toernooien speelde, maar het schaken allerminst verleerd had: bij een enkele malen herhaald bezoek aan het Amsterdamse koffiehuis/schaakcafe op het Leidseplein eind jaren zestig, in de pauzes van een …’ Enfin, enzovoorts.)

Vergeleken met deze woordenbrij zijn de twee bondige stukken over Jan Timman, van Hans Böhm (‘Madame Chaudé de Silans’ over hun reizen naar Frankrijk) en van Franka van der Loo (over de fascinatie van Laurie Langenbach) een lust voor het lezend oog. Pikant is de foto van Langenbach voor Timman waarop ze in ‘een decolleté tot haar navel’ staat afgebeeld met op de achterkant de woorden ‘Op de overwinnning!’.

Ach ja, en dan is er nog Guus Luijters, als altijd kwistig strooiend met boek- en filmtitels en Grote Namen uit de Kunst en Literatuur. Luijters weet niets van schaken, is niet geïnteresseerd in schaken, schrijft niet over schaken. Dit keer roept hij wat over Graham Greene en de onlangs verschenen laatste roman van Nabokov (The Original of Laura), ‘koortsig proza, waarin zowaar een keer geschaakt wordt’, zonder ooit iets diepzinnigs of verrassends ter tafel te brengen. Raadsel waarom Luijters iedere keer weer gevraagd wordt voor een bijdrage aan Matten; ik begin inmiddels te vermoeden dat de redacteurs het zelf ook niet weten.

Tot slot: een fascinerend portret van de Pools-Nederlandse schaker Salo Landau door Adri Plomp – het enige artikel dat niet over vrouwen gaat. Choquerend zijn iedere keer weer de antisemitische stukken die Aljechin, wiens secondant Landau was in 1935, in de Tweede Wereldorlog schreef; maar de door Plomp beschreven gebeurtenissen rond de dood van Landau in de oorlog, zijn nauwelijks met droge ogen te lezen. Het is volkomen terecht dat de Matten-redactie er ondanks het themanummer toch voor gekozen heeft dit boeiende artikel nu op te nemen.

Met Matten 7 is het tijdschrift eindelijk helemaal op het niveau dat past bij de al tijdens de oprichting uitgesproken ambities van de redactie. Proficiat!

Wij presenteren … De pion – De Ziel van het Schaakspel

Er is een nieuw project van Hans Böhm en Yochanan Afek: een serie boeken over alle stukken van het schaakspel, uitgegeven door Trion Sport. Het eerste deel heet De Pion. Uit Böhms voorwoord:

Elk stuk van het eeuwenoude schaakspel verdient het om apart gepresenteerd te worden. Dit boek is het het eerste in een serie van zes – en we beginnen met de pion. Nog nooit zijn van dit kleine stuk zoveel speelfacetten, aanvallend en verdedigend, bij elkaar gebracht. Per thema – zestig in totaal – geven we vier voorbeelden. Door de presentatie, vier diagrammen op de linkerpagina en uitleg op de rechterpagina, is dit boek een ode aan de pion maar ook een leerboek.

Uit de inleiding wordt overigens niet helemaal duidelijk voor wie de serie nu precies bedoeld is. Voor mensen die ’slechts’ geïnteresseerd zijn in schaken? Of ook voor schakers die het leuk vinden problemen en schaakpuzzels op te lossen? Gezien het niveau van de stellingen denk ik eerder het laatste – en dat is goed nieuws voor gevorderde schakers!
Böhm schrijft dat hij te rade is gegaan bij schaakhistoricus Leo Diepstraten om een beeld te krijgen van de ontstaansgeschiedenis van de pion als schaakstuk. Afek heeft voor zijn selectie van fragmenten en composities inspiratie opgedaan uit vele verschillende bronnen. Kortom, dit is een degelijk project geschreven door twee schakers die weten hoe ze hun passie over het voetlicht moeten brengen, en dat is te merken.

De historische inleiding is een pakkend en levendig geschreven stuk met relevante citaten en interessante feiten over de evolutie van de moderne schaakpion, die over het algemeen ook nog eens accuraat beschreven is. Ik kwam één foutje tegen: het zogenaamde Göttingen manuscript stamt volgens de laatste wetenschappelijke opvattingen niet uit 1471, maar uit de vroege 16de eeuw, zoals ik vorig jaar leerde op een symposium in Valencia over de oorsprong van het moderne schaak. (Zie J.A. Garzón, The Return of Francesch Vicent, 2005, p. 399 e.v.) Ook in de bijbehorende beschrijving van de ontwikkeling van de rochade kan wellicht de nodige nuance worden aangebracht, maar ik wil geen muggenzifter zijn. Het historische gedeelte van het boek is leuk en informatief, en daar gaat het om.

Het leeuwendeel van het boek bestaat uit de al genoemde fragmenten en composities, ingedeeld in relevante thema’s. Het eerste thema is ‘De vertraagde pion’ en het eerste voorbeeld is meteen al behoorlijk pittig:

Remise. De eindspelkenner herkent direct een overeenkomst met de beroemde studie van Réti over het ‘kwadraat’, en inderdaad is deze studie van T.Gorgiev uit 1930 daarop gebaseerd, al noemen Afek en Böhm dit niet. De oplossing:

1.c6! (niet 1.a4 h6! ‘en zwart wint het tempospel’ of 1.a3 h5!) 1…h6 2.a3! h5 3.a4 h4 4.a5 h3 5.a6 h2 6.a7 h1D pat. Of 1…Kc7 3.a4 [sic, bedoeld is 2.a4] 3…Kxc6 4.a5 Kb5 5.Kb7 Kxa5 6.Kc6 h5 7.Kd5 ‘en de witte koning zit in het kwadraat (h1-h5-d5-d1) en dus remise’.

Oef! Hoe fraai en subtiel de studie ook is, voor een eerste voorbeeld in het boek vond ik dit tamelijk zware kost, vooral omdat de bijbehorende uitleg nogal summier en weinig specifiek is. Mensen die dit boek kochten omdat ze ’schaken een leuk spelletje vinden’ zullen zich toch misschien wel even op hun achterhoofd krabben wat nu precies de definitie van een ‘kwadraat’ is (is dat altijd h1-h5-d5-d1 of alleen in dit geval?). Schakers die Afeks werk kennen weten dat zijn niveau hoog is, maar geldt dat ook voor argeloze kopers?

De voorbeelden zijn trouwens niet allemaal zo pittig, al zijn ze ook nooit echt makkelijk. Uit het hoofdstukje ‘De kamikazepion’:

Wit aan zet.

Dit is een fragment uit de partij Tal-Zdravko Milev, München 1958. De eerste zet is fraai en in het kader van het thema niet al te moeilijk te vinden, maar daarna wordt het toch lastiger:

1.d5!! exd5 2.Tfe1! Kd8 3.Db3 c5 4.Pxc5! en wit won in enkele zetten (al schrijven Böhm en Afek dat de partij hier ‘abrupt eindigde’).

Afek en Böhm geven als alternatieven voor zwart op de tweede zet 2…dxe4 3.Dxe4+ De7 4.Dg4 en vervolgens – zonder nadere toelichting! – de tamelijk complexe variant 2…Le7 3.Pf6+! Kd8 4.Db3 Kc8 5.Lf4! Dxf4 6.Txe7 Tb8 7.Dh3+ en wit wint. Hier sta ik toch wel even van te kijken. Ten eerste wil ik na het spectaculaire 3.Pf6+ toch ook wel even weten wat er volgt op gxf6 gevolgd door rochade, dus ik zocht de partij op in mijn database en kwam toen pas te weten dat zwart helemaal niet meer mag rocheren aangezien de koning op zet 14 een stuk op d7 geslagen heeft en daarna weer teruggegaan is naar e8. Dat hadden de auteurs er toch wel even bij mogen zetten! (Dat wit toch wint als zwart had mogen rocheren, doet daar niets aan af.) Daarnaast is pas 3…c5? de beslissende fout en kan zwart nog aardig partij geven na 3…Kc8, al blijft wit ook dan goed staan.

Uit deze twee voorbeelden blijkt dat de auteurs hun taak op een tamelijk rigoureuze manier hebben opgevat: het gaat ze puur om de ideëen die door de thema’s worden geïllustreerd: het visuele aspect. Ze lijken minder geïnteresseerd in de uitleg van het waarom, en dat is jammer, want gaat het daar uiteindelijk niet om? Misschien is dit een knieval naar het ‘grote publiek’, dat mogelijkerwijs niet zit te wachten op een diepgaande uitleg, maar op zoek is naar ’snel vermaak’. Zou het zo zijn? Zou een oppervlakkige lezer wel geraakt worden door de schoonheid van Gorgievs studie, maar niet geïnteresseerd zijn in de precieze uitwerking?

Toch valt niet te ontkennen dat Hans Böhm en Yochanan Afek met De Pion een zeer vermakelijk en aanstekelijk boekje hebben geschreven, dat zich zowel goed leent voor ‘in bed’ als voor diepere (zelf)studie. Welk stuk volgt? Het Paard? Ook dat belooft wat.

• Koop Matten 7
• Koop De Pion
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A few weeks ago I visited an exhibition in the Picasso Museum in Barcelona, Spain. The exhibition featured some very explicit classic Japanese erotic paintings (there was actually a warning sign at the entrance of the exhibition, prohibiting visitors below 18 years of age) which served as a source of inspiration for Picasso and his contemporaries. Though I had seen some of these paintings before, I was amazed how deeply such works from a competely different culture had influenced some of Picasso’s works. For me it was yet another proof that what makes a true artist is his ability to be inspired by literally everything around him.

A contemporary of Picasso’s, Marcel Duchamp (1887-1968) is without a doubt the most famous chess-playing painter of all time. In fact, apart from being obsessed by it, he was a rather strong chess player, who played in the French Championship (in 1924) and scored real results against some of the world’s chess playing sub-top of the 1920s and 1930s. It was Duchamp who famously said that, “while all artists are not chess players, all chess players are artists.” A new book by Francis Naumann, Bradley Bailey and Jennifer Shahade focuses on Duchamp’s artistic life as a chess player and his chess life as an artist. Marcel Duchamp – The Art of Chess, published last year by Readymade Press, is an inspiring little book, beautifully illustrated and beautifully printed, which made me realize Duchamp is not only my hero but also an example and a teacher with an important lesson.

The Chess Game (1910)

The three authors focus on different aspects of Duchamp’s chess-art life. Francis Naumann, an art scholar and curator in New York, describes the development of Duchamps artistic works as if it were a game of chess, starting with the learning of the rules (1902-1912) and the opening (1912-1918) and so on, until the endgame which ended in Duchamp’s death in 1968. My first impression of this method was that it was hardly original, life being described as a game of chess having been tried from medieval storytellers to Garry Kasparov. But when I read on, I found out that this method actually fits Duchamp’s life quite well, and there are several others who have noted the parallels.

In 1951, [art collector Walter Arensberg] wrote to Duchamp: “It’s curious how I get an impression when I look at our paintings of yours from the point of view of their chronological sequence of the successive moves in a game of chess.” Duchamp responded: “Your comparison between the chronological order of the paintings and a game of chess is absolutely right… but when will I administer checkmate or will I be mated?”

Here we already see the way Duchamp looks at things: from a broken angle, taking the common analogy somehow literally to the domain of chess and giving it quite an original twist at the end. Naumann himself drily notes that serious chess games (such as Duchamps played regularly), “rarely progresses to such a dramatic terminal point; the losing player usually resigns first.” It shows Naumann’s no-nonsense approach to his subject and he goes on to describe in great detail the various aspects of chess as a major influence on Duchamp’s work.

Portrait of Chess Players (1911)

From the well-known post-impressionist The Chess Game (1910) and the Cubist Portait of Chess Players (1911), Naumann takes us to the infamous Nude Descending a Staircase No.2 (1912) and he prepares our mind for this work with the following quote from Duchamp:

In chess there are some extremely beautiful things in the domain of movement, but not in the visual domain. It’s the imaginging of the movement or the gesture that makes the beauty, in this case. It’s completely in one’s gray matter.

Again, we see how relevant chess is as a metaphor to describe Duchamp’s artistic works: what chess player wouldn’t recognize what Duchamp is hinting at here? In chess, it’s not about the beauty of the wooden pieces but about the potential movement of the pieces. And so it is in Nude Descending a Staircase, which is not a painting of a nude descending a staircase, but rather, as Duchamps put it:

Painted as it was in severe wood colors, the anatomical nude does not exist, or at least cannot be seen, since I discarded completely the naturalistic appearance of a nude, keeping only the abstract lines of some twenty different static positions in the successive action of descending.

Nude descending a Staircase No. 2 (1912)

Naumann coins the possibility that, since The Nude is restricted to wood colorings, “tracing its origin to a chess piece is not entirely implausible, particularly when we consider the fact that the queen is the most mobile piece on the board, a feature reinforced by her rendition in multiple form.” Again, to his credit, Naumann is not forcing his ideas upon the reader in order to fit the analogy of chess and art too rigorously, but merely suggesting possibilities and ways of thinking to enhance aesthetic pleasure. Reading Naumann’s essay, I increasingly felt drawn into Duchamp’s world where one thing can so easily be linked to another that you really feel like you’ve entered Wonderland or went Through the Looking-Glass, where a slightly puzzled but intrigued Alice remarks:

Somehow it seems to fill my head with ideas-only I don’t exactly know what they are!

An even more ambitious approach is taken by art professor Bradley Bailey, who makes the case for the idea that in Duchamp’s huge The Bride Stripped Bare by Her Bachelors, Even – also known as The Large Glass – (1915-23), “chess is a critical and largely unrecognized thematic element.”

The Bride Stripped Bare by her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass), 1915-1923

Bailey, it seems to me, makes more bold assumptions than Naumann. In his description, for instance, of the famous photograph (taken in 1963) of Duchamp and nude model Eve Babitz playing chess, he writes:

Duchamp and Eve Babitz playing chess (taken by Julian Wasser, 1963)

The chess table – complete with a double-faced chess clock for authenticity – was set up in front of [a replica of] the Large Glass, such that the board seems almost a continuation of the Large Glass beyond the frame at its bottom. (…) The brilliance of this photograph lies in the fact that it incorporates three of the major themes of Duchamp’s art and life in a single image: art, eroticism, and strategy. Achille Bonita Oliva reads the image as an erotic stalemate, which echoes the theme of sexual frustration in the Large Glass.

Such statements can, of course, be read with rigorous skepticism, but that would be missing the point of art in the first place. Art – and modern art in particular – is associative by definition, and Bailey’s essay is one long associative excercise, obviously backed by solid research, references and a vast amount of art experience. I did find his writing slightly more academic than Naumann’s, and I suspect readers unfamiliar with the way art conaisseurs tend to talk about their passion will probably be put off a little by all this erudition and huge display of knowledge, ranging from medieval manuscript to World War architecture. All the same, Bailey makes a convincing case that The Large Glass does indeed contain more than a haunting hint of chess and it more or less proves the work is so rich that such a lenghty essay can be written about this work alone.

A final, not unimportant question is how good a chess player Duchamp was, anyway? Edward Lasker (not to be confused with Emanual Lasker) called him a “master among amateurs” and said that “it there were official rankings of United States chess players in the 1920s and 1930s, Duchamp have certainly ranked among the top twenty-five.” WGM Jennifer Shahade, who analysed Duchamp’s games and picked 15 for the book (chosen for “their quality and their importance to Duchamp himself”), takes a more nuanced position on the question:

In analyzing dozens of his games, I saw flashes of tactical brilliance as well as deep understanding of strategic concepts, such as open files and pawn structure. Duchamp also had weaknesses. He sometimes played too passively against strong players and he occasionally lacked precision, especially towards the end of the game. Yet it was clear to me in annotating the fifteen games to follow that this artist, who excelled in so many styles, also mastered the ultimate in conceptual art: chess.

Shahade’s analyses are accurate and easy to follow, with a focus on weaker players. This is perfectly reasonable as it is the only way of presenting Duchamp’s chess games to a broad audience. The game layout and diagrams are somewhat tougher to follow, since they are based on Duchamps own Design for Chessmen (Buenos Aires 1918). It’s an interesting concept, but still one that doesn’t exactly help following the game from the book only. Especially the king is a strange piece in Duchamp’s design: it looks more like a pigeon with a crown to me – but then again this probably shows I’m still in Wonderland where Duchamp wants me to be anyway.

Here’s an example of Shahade’s game comments, combining general statements and concrete analysis:

F. Michel [sic; in my database, his name is listed as 'Edmond Michel' - AWM] - Duchamp
Strasbourg 1924

13…c5

The American Bobby Fischer famously said, “You gotta give squares to get squares,” but in this case Duchamp gives more than he receives. The d5-square is now available to White’s knight, which gives White a recurring, simplified motif. The d5-square is a quasi-outpost. Although the pawn on e7 can slide to e6 to force the knight away, the advance would weaken Black’s dark squares and his d6-pawn.

Shahade refrains from mentioning the stronger alternative 13…a5! as indicated by D. Primel in the ChesBase MegaBase and prefers to talk about general ideas. As said, this can easily defended, but the chess player in me sometimes wished for just a little more depth. What I found impressive in both Shahade’s and Naumann’s part of the book, though, is their restraint in hinein-interpreting: they do not indulge in far-fetched and hard-to-prove pseudo-theories of how Duchamp was magically inspired by chess and art respectively; instead, they take the rational approach and describe his efforts in a cool yet sympathizing way. The effect? The focus is on Duchamp’s creations themselves and not on their interpretation – or their interpretors.

The beauty of many Duchamp paintings, and indeed in his chess games, for Duchamp the chess player was in some respects quite ahead of his time, the beauty of all this is in the eye the beholder: Duchamp is providing the rough material and the spectactor is invited to let his head “be filled with ideas”. I find this to be an important general lesson: art and indeed all creative effort is not about making things accurate or even reasonable – that’s the realm of science. It’s about generating ideas, now matter how wild or far-fetched, and enabling new associations to be made in one’s gray matter. This is also how chess can become art: when it transcends the completely rational.

Reading about Duchamp inspires me to try and do the same, to achieve something more than just chess prose or good journalism. The stuff in The Art of Chess provides an excellent playground for this, both to Duchamp fans and to chess players who had never heard of him. If you’re interested in having your chess mind turned upside down in an artistic way (or your artistic mind in a chessy way!), this is the book for you.

Update Feb 10: Jennifer Shahade, incidentally, has also played against a (male) nude as part of her Duchamp research project. You can watch the video here.

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I loved Moskalenko’s previous work, The Flexible French, hands down. I positively reviewed it back in 2008, and I also rather liked his book on the Budapest Gambit. This time, however, Moskalenko has written a completely different kind of book – a much more ambitious kind of book, to say the least. On the cover we read that this book is ‘a brand-new system to become a better player’. Now, I don’t know about you, but whenever I hear the word ’system’ together with the words ‘to become a better player’, I tend to turn sober right away and put on my most sceptical glasses. Haven’t we heard such claims before, and haven’t authors learned from the past? Apparently not. Well, as the saying goes, extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, so let’s just see what Moskalenko’s got up his sleeve.

By the way, what’s with all these ‘improve your chess’ books recently? It’s almost as if all modern chess titles focus on the improvement of the reader, of you, rather than on providing amusement and interesting stuff. I think this is a misunderstanding of many reader’s motivations to buy books. I, for one, am not at all primarily interested in improving my chess by means of chess books – I read them because they tell me something interesting, not because I want to score points. The most important thing is to enjoy chess, no? Improving is only of secondary interest to me, but hey, that’s just me of course. More importantly, I think improving one’s chess can be achieved by studying any chess book seriously. As far as I’m concerned, this doesn’t have to be mentioned in the title time and again.

Anyway, back to Revolutionize Your Chess. First, I would like to invite you to read the first few paragraphs of the book’s foreword in full. Then, I will comment upon it.

Thanks to decades of research and the development of computer programs, chess theory is quite well developed as far as the opening and the endgame are concerned. Still, once they have reached a certain level most players fail to make real progress. They focus their study on openings, a limited amount of strategic themes and classical tactics in the middlegame, and a collection of standard endgame themes. Which means that they do not understand much of what they are doing when they are sitting behind the board themselves, facing real chess problems.

How can this be? The answer is quite simple: the general rules of the game have not been discovered yet. Famous chess researchers have developed various systems which have been universally accepted in the chess world. But these systems are highly theoretical and often not very realistic. We need a modern, dynamic system. And I intend to offer you one in the present book.

Frankly, I find this introduction amazing. Amazingly silly, that is. If, as Moskalenko claims, the general rules of the game have not been discovered yet, how come there are thousands of grandmasters adopting them, tens of thousands of IMs who play well above the level of the ‘most players’ Moskalenko intends as his audience? How did all these very strong players acquire their current or past level of play without these ‘general rules of the game’? Apparently, they’re all doing fine without Moskalenko’s new system! Even if we grant Moskalenko the idea that these players, too, have still not grasped the ‘right’ system, or that they somehow ’intuitively’ acquired it, how to explain why some players did ‘get’ this intuition and others didn’t? I hope you see the logical trap Moskalenko has set for himself on the very first page of the book. It makes his task for the other 340 pages considerably more difficult.

But let’s not waste time with this introduction, which may, after all, have just been a commercial stunt. (Disappointing all the same, since I expect a more honest approach from the New in Chess editors.) More interesting are Moskalenko’s ideas about the history of the present ‘general rules of the game’, even if they, too, are hopelessly flawed. After introducing the well-known Elements of Steinitz (and, later, of Alexander Kotov), with its ‘permanent and temporary advantages’, Moskalenko mysteriously writes:

These elements are in general quite useful in practical play, and the list has not changed much in chess literature until today. However, I think that the main problem of Steinitz’s theory is that there is not much of a mention of dynamic chess, where the key rule is: to give checkmate! In fact, in dynamic chess, many permanent advantages become temporary, and temporary advantages may become permanent at any time.

I’ve puzzled over this statement for quite some time, especially the part about temporary advantages becoming permanent, but I failed to understand it. My conclusion is that it’s either truly brilliant or truly stupid. I mean, isn’t it a characteristic of a temporary thing to be able to change into, well, something else – say, something permanent? For instance, according to Moskalenko, one of Steinitz’ temporary advantages is ‘bad piece position of the opponent’. Surely Steinitz understood that if the position of a bad piece didn’t change during the game, it could become a permanent disadvantage? Shouldn’t we give that credit to the first World Champion? I think we should.

Of course, I acknowledge it’s entirely possible that it’s just me who doesn’t understand what Moskalenko is up to here. Perhaps his theory makes perfect sense to grandmasters and not to amateurs. Or it makes perfect sense to people who don’t like to think things through that much. After all, I like to see myself as a philosopher, too, and perhaps I’m just looking for problems that really aren’t there? But in that case, what kind of audience did Moskalenko have in mind, and shouldn’t he have done more effort to be a little more explicit in what he means, especially given the ambitions he has clearly expressed? 

And it gets worse. While describing Emanuel Lasker’s six general rules of attack and defence - based upon Steinitz’ - in Lasker’s Manual of Chess, of which the first rule is: ‘In chess only the attacker wins’, Moskalenko writes: ‘My problem here is that what Lasker explains are philosophical concepts. What can you do with these ideas concretely, when you’re sitting at the board?’
This sounds fair enough (if still a little vague), but look at what Moskalenko wrote just a few paragraphs back: ‘the key rule is: to give checkmate!’ How is this more practical than Lasker’s rule that in chess only the attacker wins? Also, what to make of Moskalenko’s previous statement that ‘Steinitz’ elements are ‘quite useful in practical play’? If the rules work in practical play, how can they be too philosophical? I don’t get it.

In the last paragraph of the foreword, Moskalenko promises to ‘make an attempt to systemize this dynamic approach to our game’. But in fact no such systemization is made in Revolutionize Your Chess at all. What Moskalenko does – and, fortunately, often quite well – is explain what chess skills a complete player needs, and what elements may play a role in determining these chess skills, and the ability to make good evaluations during practical play.

First, there are the ‘Chess Skills’. Moskalenko mentions opening knowledge, endgame knowledge and middlegame knowledge (which consists of strategic and tactical skills) and then mentions tactical and strategical skills again as separate skills. The sixth skill he mentions is ‘Basic Knowledge of the Chess Rules’. This ‘chess rules knowledge’, Moskalenko explains, again include tactics and strategy. Rather confusing, if you ask me.

Of slightly more interest are Moskalenko’s six ‘Personal Skills’: memory, disposition (the will to win), psychological skills, physical condition, discipline and concentration. Indeed these are useful and very important skills; still, identifying such skills is hardly original, let alone ‘revolutionary’, since it’s been done many times before by authors like Mark Dvoretsky, Jonathan Rowson and Alex Yermolinsky, to mention just a few recent ones. 

In the next chapter, Moskalenko elaborates on the ‘general chess rules’ mentioned before. He introduces his ’dynamic system with Five Touchstones’, the core of the book, as follows:

This ‘pragmatic style’ [by the Soviet School, led by Botvinnik - AWM] considers the classical chess laws in a more dynamic way. Advantages may change during a game, or may even be overruled by an endangered position of the king, or by the factor which has thus far been neglected in theoretical works: Time. This dynamic factor should be included in any chess system if we want to call it conclusive.

And sure enough, the author lists ‘Moskalenko’s Five Touchstones’ of dynamic chess as follows:

• T1 Material
• T2 Development
• T3 Placement of Pieces and Pawns
• T4 King Position
• T5 Time

Again, Moskalenko stresses that a chess player should especially ’sense when the factor time (T5) is prevalent, in order to get a firm grip on the key moments of the key moments in the game.’ But doesn’t this all sound very, very familiar to you? Fans of Jonathan Rowson will no doubt recognize the five ‘dimensions in chess’ from chapter 7 of his book Chess for Zebras (material, opportunity, time, quality, psychology). Note the inclusion of ‘time’ in Rowson’s list. Tellingly, Moskalenko’s bibliography does not include Chess for Zebras, but we could forgive Moskalenko for this were it not for the fact that this talk of ‘dimensions’ – including a ’Time’ dimension - in chess is not at all Rowson’s invention but … Garry Kasparov’s.

As Rowson had already discussed in an even earlier book, The Seven Deadly Chess Sins (talk about listing elements of chess!), Kasparov thinks of chess as a game of three dimensions: Material (piece value), Quality (positional features) and Time (initiative). In The Seven Deadly Chess Sins, Rowson even adds another ‘Time’ dimension to this list: time on the clock, or ‘ticking time’. The details are of no concern to us now – what is, is that Moskalenko is apparently unaware of this discussion, nor of the fact that Robert Hübner has discussed (and demolished) Kasparov’s dimensions theory as well (in ChessBase magazine, 2003). Particularly, Rowson writes in Chess for Zebras:

Hübner argues, convincingly, that Kasparov’s tiradic conception is incoherent because the three different dimensions collapse into each other: ‘Time’ and ‘Material’ are relevant only in so far as they are ‘Quality’. Hübner expresses this by saying that time is a dynamic factor, while material is a static one, but the only way the importance of these dynamic and static features can be assessed is by their relevance to quality, and then cease to operate as distinct dimensions. (…)

Time is sometimes absolutely vital, and a single tempo can make a decisive difference, but sometimes Time is completely irrelevant, and having lots of extra tempi doesn’t matter at all. So ‘time’ doesn’t exist on the chessboard in any unitary way, because the value of one move varies enormously.

Rowson discusses the various aspects of these concepts in great detail, agreeing with Hübner as saying that ‘the significance of these expressions for the description of chess structures has been overestimated because they can be applied in every situation’, but at the same time conceding that such an approach can have ‘considerable pedagogical weight’.

Again, let’s not go into too much detail – what’s important to note is that Moskalenko’s discussion on his own elements is extremely simplistic by this standard. (What about Moskalenko’s touchstones ‘collapsing into each other’? Can’t they, too, be applied in almost any situation?) And this is especially painful because Moskalenko boasts that ‘in most books about chess rules the concept of Time is simply ignored, and in practice their chess laws do not work – or do not make much sense – for this precise reason.’ He fails, however, to see that perhaps they fail in practice precisely because concepts like Time and Material (and indeed all other ‘touchstones’) are such tricky philosophical ideas in the first place.

Summing up my problems with the theoretical part of Revolutionize Your Chess, I conclude that:

• Moskalenko attacks a strawman when he says the current models do not work well in practice;
• the suggestion that previous models were ‘too theoretical’ is demonstrably untrue;
• the concept of breaking down chess into five dimensions or ‘touchstones’ is not ‘revolutionary’ at all;
• Moskalenko’s model (and just about all other theoretical concepts he introduces) invites a host of philosophical questions not addressed in the book;
• while accusing others of failing to provide a ‘theoretical framework’, Moskalenko’s system, too, is just a list of basic elements that can mostly be found in any good book on how to improve your chess.

Let’s now turn to the practical application of Moskalenko’s theory in analysis and game situations. Moskalenko is a great chess instructor and, as always, he chooses his examples well.  No doubt they are interesting, as was obviously the case in his previous books. But in the current book, the comments are often needlessly confusing because Moskalenko wants to include his touchstones all the time. Consider the following typical example:

Moskalenko-Barria, Bilbao (rapid) 2005

1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 dxc4 5.a4 Na6?!

Black develops his knight in a strange fashion. The idea …Na6-b4 must be wrong, as it wastes two tempo (-T5 and a delay of T2) in the opening.

6.e4 Bg4 7.Bxc4 Bxf3 Black spends two more tempi (-T5 and -T2) to trade B x N.

8.gxf3 But in exchange he gets a better pawn structure (-T3 for White).

8…Nb4

The key position of this opening. Now White can choose.

9.d5!? The signal for dynamic play! I chose this ambitious advance in order to fight for space, hindering the development of the black kingside at the same time (T3 versus T2). Of course, after the natural 9.Be3 White has better chances, but after 9…e6 the position is quite blocked, and it will not be easy for White to exploit his lead in development.

9…cxd5? This might be the decisive mistake, since it weakens b5 (threat Bb5+) and therefore the king’s position (-T4). But what to play? The best solution was the dynamic counter 9…e6 10.dxe6 Qxd1+ 11.Kxd1 fxe6 12.Be3 +=.

First of all, all these T-numbers look extremely distracting. I kept leafing back to the page where the touchstones are listed to see which T is which, disrupting my concentration. Moskalenko himself admits this on the following page when he says that ‘keeping score on all the touchstones throughout the game is hard, if not impossible’, but then assures us we will acquire an intuition for it in due course. (By the way, recall what I said about having fun reading chess books. Did you enjoy all these T’s?)
However, I seriously wonder how it helps me to know that the manoevre Na6-b4 is a minus T5 and T2, if I know it’s such a common way to develop the knight in many other Slav lines? What makes the current situation different from, say the line 5….Bf5 6.Ne5 Na6!? as played by Kramnik? Indeed, isn’t 6.Ne5 in this line also a -T5 and a -T2, since after all it ‘wastes a tempo’, and why, then, is it the main line in the Slav all the same?

Another huge problem in just this one example is Moskalenko’s use of the word ‘dynamic’: he considers both 9.d5 and 9…e6 to be dynamic, but fails to give any reasons as to why he thinks this is the case. And wasn’t this precisely his problem with older methods – that they failed to define and realize the concept of ‘dynamics’? And even if we would have a definition, what use is dynamic play when the alternatives, such as 9.Be3, are sometimes better objectively? Shouldn’t we learn to play the best moves first?

Okay, perhaps I’m reading way too much in this one example. To be sure, there are better examples in the book, but they all suffer from the same illness: too much focus on the touchstones for the sake of the touchstones only. I’m sure you can improve your chess if you study the examples closely - but then again you can also learn a lot from studing the examples of any other good chess book that offers good explanations.

On top of that, there are numerous other flaws in the book. Moskalenko’s big chapter on the Opening features examples from 1.d4 openings only – bummer for 1.e4 players who thought they were being ‘dynamic’ by opening with the king’s pawn! (In fact most examples from the chapter on the middlegame are also taken from 1.d4 openings.)

Finally, it struck me that, unlike an author like Lars Bo Hansen, Moskalenko mainly uses his own games as illustration to a specific topic when he’s winning them. For me, this was the final nail to this book’s coffin. Don’t get me wrong, Viktor Moskalenko seems like a sympathetic author and he sure is a respected and very strong grandmaster, but in this book he comes across as a bit of a show-off who pompously presents his ‘revolutionary’ ideas whithout any kind of self-reflection and knowledge of chess-philosophical matters. The book does contains good stuff, but I liked the Viktor Moskalenko of The Flexible French much, much better. I hope he returns soon.

Links

• Get yourself a copy of Revolutionize Your Chess
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My first impression of Improve your Chess, subtitled by Learning from the Champions (published by Gambit), was rather mixed. (By the way, I think it’s always a good sign if your first impression is mixed: it forces you to think harder about the book. The same happened to me in Nabokov’s case.) The chapter titles of Hansen’s latest work suggested to me a textbook concept that’s not exactly original: ‘The Romantic Era’, ‘The Scientific Era’, The Hypermodern Era’, etc. This is a way of looking at chess history that’s been tried numerous times. Even the final chapters of the book, on ‘universality’ and ‘creative concreteness’, suggested essays on chess development in the style of Watson’s modern classics Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy (1998) and Chess Strategy in Action (2003). Even some of Watson’s and Hansen’s basic viewpoints on modern chess development seemed rather similiar. In 2003, Watson wrote on the evolution of chess thought:

Probably the most important distinction that I should make is between (a) the belief that valid rules exist and (b) the idea that there are specific generalities that are losing relevance in today’s game because players don’t think in terms of them. (…) Of course, I am only describing an evolution of thought, not saying that older generations played largely by rules or that modern ones have abandoned them outright. (…) This and other evidence indicates to me that players are much more tolerant of ideas that used to be rejected ‘on principle’.  Such openness has been increasing throughout the last century; but recently it has accelerated, in part due to the availability of computer analysis.

I remember being fascinated by Watson’s ideas at the time, enabling a view into an entirely different chess universe, and I had no doubt he was right with regards to top grandmaster games - but at the same time I felt completely disconnected with his theories in my own games and the games of the people I saw around me, which seemed to be decided not so much because of this ‘openness’ of ideas but because of a lack of knowledge of these very ’principles’ that modern chess players, according to Watson, tended to reject! In other words, I found it difficult to apply Watson’s ideas in my own practice. Browsing through Lars Bo Hansen’s new book, it seemed to me I could expect roughly the same stuff, reading first about the old dogmas and then about the new ‘concreteness’ and ‘the era of transformation’. But I was in for a surprise.

In what almost seems like a direct answer to Watson, Hansen starts his introduction by saying that:

Some experts claim that nowadays the rules and principles formulated by former giants like Steinitz, Nimzowitsch or Capablanca are no longer useful – chess has evolved into a concrete, contextual game where each position must be evaluated in its own right. Even the best player of all time, Garry Kasparov, has hinted in this direction. In How Life Imitates Chess, he writes ‘the stringest ideological dogmas are behind us and so are many of the antiquated doctrines of the chessboard. Trends still come and go, but now the only real rule is the absence of rules.’

However, I don’t believe this is true. I agree that the old rules and principles are hidden and difficult to dissect when looking at complex grandmaster games (…). However, ‘hidden’ is not the same as ‘absent’. The old rules and principles are still present, but under the radar – they are implicit. Rather than being the lever that distinguishes strong players from less strong ones, they are now everyone’s property. Tarrasch, Alekhine and Capablanca could win games – even against strong opposition – mainly through a better grasp of the emerging strategic principles. That is rarely possible today, as all strong players (must) know and understand the principles. That’s why chess has become so concrete and complex – it’s the only way to play for a win at grandmaster level. It does not mean that the rules an principles have decreased in importance – on the contrary.

As we shall see, in most contemporary grandmaster games, the old rules and principles still form the basis from which the concrete action flows. Few top games are completely ‘random’. Knowing these principles may not lead to a ‘competitive advantage’ over the opponent, but it is necessary to maintain ‘competitive parity’. And you cannot hope to learn how to break the rules if you don’t know them. I like to say that you cannot win games only by following Steinitz’s or Nimzowitsch’s principles, but you will certainly lose games if you don’t know these principles!

This promises a completely different book that Watson’s. Most importantly, Hansen’s point of view is more practical and less philosophically-inclined. To be fair to Watson, his intention isn’t (I assume) to make his readers better practical players so comparing the two authors is like comparing apples and pears. But Hansen also suggests to me that he thinks Watson and Kasparov are wrong in principle: the advance in complexity and the increase of rule-independency isn’t so much a theoretical development as it is a practical ‘trick’ by strong players to get a competitive edge over their opponents. In general, I agree Watson’s look on chess is a bit too theoretical: he seems to think chess develops by philosphical ideas, almost in the Platonic sense of the word, whereas Hansen seems to regard chess development more like a ’survival of the fittest’ kind of principle: whatever works comes out on top.  

Okay, I do not want to delve too deeply into this matter, and I’m sure all sorts of objections can be raised against the above characterizations. All this philosophizing is very interesting, but the good thing about Hansen’s book is that it contains a lot of great chess – from historical games, from modern super grandmasters, and from Hansen’s own practice. This last element again confirms the author’s down-to-earth approach: he constantly links theory to practice in a very insightful way. After explaining Nimzowitsch concept of ‘overprotection’ in the chapter ‘The Hypermodern Era’ at some length, here’s how he illustrates it:

L.B. Hansen-Hellers
Hinnerup 1995

Now White faces a tough choice. Black is close to destroy the white centre, and initially I was pessimistic about my position. However, then I came up with an idea based on overprotection. Since Black has succesfully managed to undermine the chain’s base pawn – exactly as Nimzowitsch prescribes – White’s attention shifts to e5, which must be overprotected. Therefore I played…

15.Rde1!

If White can hold on to the e5-pawn for a few moves, he has time to build up play on the kingside. In the game this plan works wonderfully.

Hansen’s way of writing is not only down-to-earth, it’s also very personal and honest. After showing the great game Topalov-Kramnik, Wijk aan Zee 2008 (remember 12.Nxf7!!), he makes the following confesstion:

A brilliant game. That is how top chess is played these days: detailed computer-aided home preparation followed by forceful creative play over the board. Looking back at my career, I cannot help wondering whether my natural reluctance towards the nitty-gritty work of finding novelties in the midst of complicated opening variations was one of the reasons why I never managed to break the 2600 Elo barrier (2586 being my highest). I guess we shall never know, as I have always preferred the conceptual over the detailed, and thus have never been inclined to drive opening theory forward. That I leave to others. In that respect I am more of a follower than a researcher, to use the distinction made decades ago by Botvinnik. Only once in my career did I (intentionally) prepare a novelty with analysis running to move 30.

Elsewhere, he writes of his own changing preferences, suggesting that in the end, despite all the philosophical and scientific progress, chess is often also a game of simple taste:

At this point in my career I was very fond of the Hedgehog structure – pawns on a6, b6, d6 and e6. Its flexibility and dynamic counterattacking prospecs – …b5 and …d5 – appealed to me. In recent years, however, I have come to appreciate White’s superior space more, and so I have tended to prefer the white side of such positions. This is an interesting scenario: that over time a player may alter his understanding and evaluation of certain type of positions. It has nothing to do with specific variations in the Hedgehog: rather the change is grounded in general considerations regarding space vs dynamism. I have noticed a similar development in my perception of positions with an isolated d-pawn but here the trend is opposite. (…) I guess that as your experience grows, your perception of chess changes.

Hansen has a remarkable ability to make connections and switches between past and present, practical and theoretical,  personal and objective without ever losing the thread of his story. And he manages to make surprising choices in achieving his goals: the chapter on the Steinitz era of scientific chess, for example, contains mostly modern games rather than ancient ones. The chapter ‘Steinitz versus Lasker’ starts out rather scholarly, but then makes a surprise turn towards the most recent era in chess: instead of quoting one of the classic encounters from the First and the Second world champions, Hansen gives us the current champ:

One of the points where Lasker differed from Steinitz was in the perception of weaknesses vs targets. The Scientific School was very concerned not to create any ‘weaknesses’ in its own camp, and for some (weaker) players from that school it almost became an obsession not to weaken the position, so that they ended up playing too passively. However, Steinitz’s notion of weaknesses was rather abstract and general. In contrast, Lasker looked for specific targets in the concrete position. If a weakness could not be targeted, Lasker didn’t care much about it. This battle between the general strategic characteristics (Steinitz) and the specific features (Lasker) of a position is an ongoing debate even in contemporary top-level chess. A very good example is this one, which in a sense decided the World Championship in 2007:

Anand-Morozevich
Mexico City 2007

Here we go. Black has a backward pawn on d6 and consequently White has a great square on d5, so I am sure the Scientific School would on general grounds prefer White here. However, as we shall see, things are far from clear.

17.Nd5 Forcing Black to give up one of his bishops.

17…Bxd5 18.Rxd5 f5! Black seeks counterplay down the f-file.

19.gxf6 Rxf6 20.Qe2

An excellent position to illustrate the difference between a general Steinitzian and a specific Laskerian approach to chess. When I followed this game live on the Internet, I instinctively thought that White was better and that Black’s next move was a mistake. Trained as I am in the Scientific and Hypermodern traditions, I envisaged a white knight on d5, a bad black bishop and a weak backward pawn on d6. However, this (Steinitzian) evaluation is superficial. This line of thought is too general. While White certainly does dream of repositioning the knight to d5 (and eventually actually manages to do it), the d6-pawn is currently securely defended by the ‘bad’ bishop on e7. It is only a weakness in the long-term abstract sense, not in the short-term concrete sense. Black, on the other hand, has a specific and easily accessible target at f3. He simply intends to batter up against White’s f3-pawn, which in the short run – as long as White has not has time to execute his knight manoeuvre to d5 – is at least as vulnerable as the d6-pawn. A more balanced evaluation of the position is therefore that both sides have their plans and trumps, and the position is close to a dynamic equilibrium.

Hansen concludes his detailed analysis of this great game, which was won in the end by White, with the following sympathetic remark: ‘In 1894 and 1896 Lasker beat Steinitz in matches for the World Championship. In a way the present game can provide Steinitz some comfort – here ‘his approach’ turned out victorious!’

Apart from showing entertaining and instructive chess, Hansen also has interesting things to say about chess psychology. Again, he manages to combine insightful remarks with attractive present-day examples to bring home his points:

First and foremost, competitive chess is about defeating the opponent, and to do that you sometimes have to ‘play the man’ – exploit your strengths and pound on your opponent’s weaknesses. (…) The matches Kasparov-Kramnik and Anand-Kramnik are testimony that the objective approach sometimes succumbs to the subjective approach even at the highest level. (…) One young player who exhibited shrewd psychological alertness from an early age is Magnus Carlsen. (…) Just take a look at how easily he disposes of one of the strongest and best-prepared players in the world, Veselin Topalov.

Topalov-Carlsen
Morelia/Linares 2008
1.e4 Nf6!

Alekhine’s Defence – a rare guest on the highest level. However, it is a clever choice by Magnus against Topalov. The Bulgarian is one of the best-prepared players in the world (…) but Magnus had noticed that he mainly focuses on the most fashionable and topical variations. It is probably a while ago that he last seriously analysed the old Alekhine! While Carlsen had occasionally played this opening in the past, I am sure that it was a surprise for Topalov. (…)

11.Re1?! Black’s opening gamble pays off! Topalov drops his guard and plays an unfortunate ‘natural move’ without delving sufficiently into the position. With the immediate 11.c3 White could claim an edge – now he has to fight for equality.

11…Bg4! Suddenly White has problems with his d4-pawn.

12.c3 c5!

Oops – it was probably only here that Topalov noticed the small trick 13.dxc5 Nxc3! 14.bxc3 Bxc3. Now we see why 11.Re1 was inaccurate: the rook is hanging on this square. Still, White should have entered this line – he could bail out to a draw by 15.Bh6! (…) I am sure that a more defensively inclined player would have chosen this option. However, here we see a minor psychological weakness of activists: the willingness to take risks sometimes backfires. Even when he has been tricked in the opening, Topalov prefers to keep the game going. A reflector, on the other hand, would presumably have chosen to bail out with a draw. As I pointed out in Foundations of Chess Strategy, reflectors are sometimes accused of playing too many draws, but these draws sometimes occur because reflectors possess a keenly developed sense of danger, which helps them sense when it is time to bail out.

As you’ve probably noticed, I like this book so much that I can’t help quoting more and more from it. What I perhaps like best of the above description is that it’s completely recognizable to me: on my local club, too, there are players who are typical ‘activists’, prone to mistakes as the one Hansen describes. It’s such a delight to read about Topalov as someone who plays like the local dudes at my club! However, while I was copying this quote I also noticed a minor flaw: Hansen sometimes has a tendency to repeat himself a bit. The phrase ‘to bail out’, for instance, occurs no less than three times in this last paragraph, and if you scroll up to the fragment and Lasker and Steinitz, perhaps you’ll see what I mean if you pay attention to the words ‘weakness’ and ‘target’. Well, to be honest these were about the only points of criticism I could find in his book, so you know I had to mention them…

With Improve Your Chess, Lars Bo Hansen has produced yet another wonderful book which is both extremely valuable to the practical player and very interesting for the philosophers among us. By explaining relevant chess games and theories from the classics, his own practice and recent super grandmaster tournaments, without ever sounding pompous or over-ambitious, the Danish grandmaster has stumbled upon the winning (if not entirely original) formula of modern chess books which is sure to inspire more works in the future – all of which will be worth your attention. 

This was the last book review of 2009. I hope you enjoy your Christmas holidays with some good chess books and I wish you a very successful 2010!

Links

• Get yourself a copy of Improve Your Chess
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By Robert T. Tuohey

It was this last point, in fact, that nearly caused me to shut the cover on this book before I had even opened it. To be blunt, non-chess players writing about chess is something akin to Norman Mailer scribbling about boxing (i.e. just this side of ridiculous). Ostensibly, only the seasoned practitioner or the true aficionado (as, for example, Papa on Death in the Afternoon), can have anything of depth to say.

Well, life has a wonderful way of proving us wrong, and I was certainly wrong about Shenk’s book. The Immortal Game is well-researched, interestingly written, and, in a general way, informative. Shock of shocks, it’s actually entertaining. I can’t even remember the last time I said that about a chess book.

Having now had time to consider the matter, I believe that David Shenk’s unique qualifications (i.e. expert writer, very average player) are what make this book so good. For the novice, Shenk serves up a general history in fine style: key points are presented in an engaging, non-technical manner. For those of us who have been pushing wood for longer than we’d care to admit, much here we may have heard before, but the perspective is rather different. Shenk is always thoughtful, and often very insightful.

It’s really something of a rarity that players at either end of the chessic spectrum can profit by the same book. In fact, anyone who has even the vaguest interest in chess would find this little book a good read.

Wow! I had to interview this guy.

Please tell us something of your general background.
Thanks for your interest, Bob. I’m a non-fiction author of six books, and a contributor to National Geographic, Wired, Harper’s, The New Yorker, The New York Times, and NPR. I am currently a correspondent for TheAtlantic.com My ambition is to write literary non-fiction, to explore fascinating worlds usually known to a relatively small group of insiders and to make those worlds accessible to a general audience. Often, if I do my job right, my books can also be interesting and informative to the experts themselves. There are many disadvantages to my outsider approach, and one big advantage. The advantage is that I can stand back far from the trees and hopefully see things about the whole forest.

What was your inspiration for the book? What type of research did you do? And how long did it take you to write it?
Several things led to me to chess. I’m interested in the history of ideas, and also in the workings of the brain. When I learned that chess was 1500 years old, and not just 400 or 500, I became intrigued. I wanted to understand how a game could last so long, and be so accessible to people of all ages and cultures. I also have some chess ancestry I wanted to explore.

I spent three years researching and writing the book. What type of research? Everything. I read everything I could get my hands on, talked to historians and players, traveled, chased down apocryphal stories, etc. etc. I went to Germany and to London to spend time with chess historians and to learn more about the Immortal Game from 1851.

David Shenk

The overall structure of the book is paired chapters of basic analysis from the famed Immortal Game (by Adolf Anderssen and Lionel Kieseritzky), followed by a chapter of more general historical review. I believe this idea is somewhat unique in chess literature, and certainly serves several purposes. Could you tell us how you came up with this interesting design?
It goes back to one of first tenet of writing: You have to keep people reading. A basic 1500-year chronology is so boring I don’t think I could even stay away awake writing it. I had to come up with a way of organizing all this fascinating information that would keep people reading all the way through. A great story or idea on p. 192 is completely worthless unless readers actually get to that page and read it. Interspersing The Immortal Game was a way to keep people reading, and a way to talk about the basic dynamics of the game — all inside an amazing story.

Your great-great-grandfather Samuel Rosenthal was something of a luminary in the 19th century Paris chess scene. Only the hardcore aficionado would know his name today. Please give us a bit of background on this by-gone chess teacher.
From my book:

“Rosenthal’s young competitors in Warsaw [Poland] had been among the very sharpest in Europe, and he brought to Paris a stamina and consistency that immediately overwhelmed most of his native French competitors. He won the [Café de La] Régence’s championship in 1865 and repeated his triumph in 1866 and 1867. As the new dean of French chess, he began drawing invitations to the leading international tournaments. He represented Paris in Baden-Baden in 1870, in Bonn in 1877, and in London in 1883, where he twice defeated the great champion Wilhelm Steinitz.* In 1884–85, Rosenthal led a Paris team against Vienna in a two-game correspondence match that lasted twenty months. (For his effort, Rosenthal was presented with a spectacular engraved gold pocket watch—the watch that entered our family lore.) In 1887 he was awarded, by the Spanish queen regent, the Charles III Order for his contributions to chess.

With his public displays, café and tournament wins, magazine columns, and private tutoring, Rosenthal was said by Wilhelm Steinitz to be one of the few chess players in the nineteenth century who made a nice living from chess. It didn’t hurt that he mentored some of the leading public ?gures in France—Prime Minister Pierre Tirard, the society portraitist Raimundo de Madrazo, and the powerful French banking family Pereire. His star pupil was Prince Napoleon, a nephew of Napoleon Bonaparte.”

In the book you touch upon the phenomenon of chess prodigies, and come down on the side of nurture, as opposed to nature (i.e. great chess players are made not born). Of course, this is contrary to the popular conception. Could you summarize your view for the readers?
It’s not quite that simple, because “nature” and “nurture” really cannot be separated. But having spent another three years researching and writing a follow-up book about human talent and intelligence, I’m convinced that most people are not doomed to mediocrity by their genes. There is an extraordinary abundance of talent waiting to be tapped if individuals, families, and cultures can learn how to do it. My new book about this is called The Genius in All of Us. It will be published March 9, 2010. I write regularly on the subject for TheAtlantic.com.

Having now studied something of the greats in chess, do you have any favorites as players, or even just as personalities?
I admire Ben Franklin, because he was very serious about both the game itself and about chess as metaphor.

Computers and the internet have certainly been a boost to chess activity; however the contemporary view of chess is also radically different as a result. Having worked through the history of chess this must be apparent to you. Could you make some general comparisons?
On the whole, I think computers make chess a lot less interesting. I personally can’t stand to play against a computer, not because I always lose — that happens with my human competitors too — but because it’s not a human experience. Chess is many things, but above all else it is a game between two individual human beings.

After all you research and thought on chess, can you take a stab at what you think is the enduring fascination of the game?
Sure. It’s a game that is simple enough that a five year old can learn to play, but complex enough that a 95 year-old can still be flummoxed even after spending his whole life studying it. The five year old can play the 95 year old and they can share an intimate human experience, even if they don’t know each other’s name and don’t speak the same language. It’s a game that can endlessly fascinate the human brain and also being human beings together.

Any predictions on the future of chess?
It will last forever. Longer than cockroaches.

Last, was this book a one-shot for you, or do you plan any further works on chess?
I’m very proud of the book and the work that went into it. An epic project like that lives on forever in a writer’s head and affects everything he or she does in the future. But I doubt that I’ll ever write another full-length book on chess per se.

Links

• Get your copy of The Immortal Game
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If chess books in general are really improving over time, it would be another example of the incorrectness of the widely held opinion that everything becomes worse and worse over time. (Here’s a very interesting essay on the decline of violence over time.) One of the explanations for this in the world of chess books is, of course, that there are simply more chess authors around. Another reason is that chess education has improved a lot. Yet another is that it’s much more important to write in an appealing, accessible style because of the arrival of new media such as chess videos and online lectures. I guess all are valid, and I think we should be glad that we’re living in such interesting times. These days, it’s possible to be extremely enthousiastic about a chess book almost every month.

The Hedgehog is surely one of the most difficult and fascination opening systems around, confusing and often frustrating thousands of chess fans around the world, not only club players  but also strong masters. Still, grandmaster Sergey Shipov, editor-in-chief of the well-known Russian website www.crestbook.com shows that such ignorance can actually become a force and a source of joy once you’re willing to embrace the principles of the Hedgehog with full conviction.  The Complete Hedgehog, published by Mongoose Press, is one of those rare chess books that are both enthusiastic and completely honest.

So what is the Hedgehog? I’ve never seen a better explanation than the one Shipov provides in the introduction:

Opocensky-Saemisch
Bad Pistyan 1922

Observe: four of Black’s pawns have lined up along the sixth rank (sometimes they are joined by the g- and h-pawns) and with their short, strong spines (thus ‘hedgehog’, not ‘porcupine’!), they control the fifth rank in front of then. The hostile armies complete their reorganizations inside the space set aside for them. White has four ranks, Black three. The appearance of a pawn or a piece usually signals the start of sharp conflict, in which the winner will be the one who is better prepared. Besides the outward resemblance, these kinds of setups also resemble the woodland creature in the way they deal with an enemy who is superior to them in spatial measurement: Black spends a great deal of time in strictly defensive maneuvers [sic], under cover of his pawn-spines, in order to find the right moment to leap out suddenly and bite White. (…)

The possible permutations of the Hedgehog position are huge, many of them without any real theoretical significance. Thus, for example, I remember that in my school days, when facing weak opposition, I used to play the weirdest Hedgehog positions in blitz games. For instance, I might open a game as White with 1.a3, followed by 2.b3, 3.c3, 4.d3, 5.e3, 6.f3, 7.g3, 8.Bg2, 9.Ra2, etc., regardless of what Black played, reaching a very strange and non-viable version of the Hedgehog. (…) The Hedgehog is a garden of branching paths that suddenly can come back together as one. The problem of transposing or combining variations prevents us from describing these Hedgehog setups in encyclopedic fashion – that is, move after move. So the logical approach is to divide them up, not accordin to openings, but by the pawn structure that exists after the development of the pieces is completed.

This is a lengthy quote, but some very important things can be extracted from it. First of all, the reader will note Shipov’s style: often personal and anecdotal, and he’s not afraid to make lively analogies look more than just a play with words. In this respect, I was often reminded of Ilya Odessky’s book on 1.b3, which I also reviewed and liked a lot. Is it me or are Russian authors often funnier than Western European chess book writers? Well, perhaps not: a second thing that becomes clear from the above excerpt is that Shipov adopts a completely different style than Alexander Khalifman’s book series Opening Repertoire for White according to Kramnik, which also deals (Vol. 2) with the Hedgehog.

Khalifman’s series - not exactly ‘funny’ but very good nevertheless – does use a rather ‘encyclopedic’ approach to explain openings, and from Shipov’s explanation it becomes clear why, in my mind, Khalifman doesn’t always succeed here.  (By the way, Shipov’s book unfortunately does not have a bibliography, so I don’t know whether he was implicitly referring to Khalifman here.) At any rate, Khalifman in his book does not attempt to explain what the Hedgehog really ‘is’, anyway, primarily focused as he is on variations and moves. A book that does try to explain the system from a more conceptual, almost philosophical point of view is Mihai Suba’s classic The Hedgehog. The main difference between Shipov’s and Suba’s book is, in my view, that Suba still doesn’t go all the way in describing the Hedgehog as a holistic concept that can be applied to entirely different openings than just the English after 1.c4 or 1.Nf3.

To illustrate what I mean, here are two positions from Shipov’s chapter ’Getting to the Hedgehog Opening Structure’:

These are positions from the Paulsen Sicilian and the King’s Indian Defence - both resulting in Hedgehogs. However, this is not the end of it. The fact that the Hedgehog can result from many different openings doesn’t mean it should always be expected. In fact, even one of the players aims for a Hedgehog-type setup, this is not enough. As Shipov explains:

In order to reach the required structure, one only needs to exchange Black’s c-pawn for White’s d-pawn and allow White to occupy the center. (…) I should warn my young and impressionable readers that Hedgehog structures can occur only if both sides are willing; so there’s no point in studying the Hedgehog with the aim of making it your principal system for Black, because ‘wicked’ opponents might not allow you to set it up at the board. (…) And so, obtaining the Hedgehog depends first of all on White’s desire to attack Black’s apparently passive and vulnerable position.  

This is the kind of explanation that I missed in the book by Suba, who often seems merely overjoyed by the fact that the Hedgehog should appear at all in a game, and that it should always be the right strategy. Shipov himself dismisses such wet dreams best, when he reproaches his youthful self for trying to reach the Hedgehog at all times:

No, my friends – one should not make a fetish out of the Hedgehog, striving to set it up in every situation regardless of the consequences. (…) Chess is rich in possibilities, and can’t be restricted to a catechism of spiny little beasties. 

So what exactly are the characteristics of the infamous Hedgehog – in other words, what makes it such a feared, complex and respected system? Well, you should really read the entire chapter Shipov devotes to the ‘Hedgehog philosophy’, but here are a few of Shipov’s main points:

• “In the Hedgehog, Black operates in guerilla style: avoiding direct contact, he hides in the bushes, observes his foe, waits, and then attacks at the most unexpected moment.”
• Contratry to what common chess wisdom teaches about cramped positions, in the Hedgehog, “exchanges are bad for Black, because they decrease his fighting potential.”
• “Right away, and with no regrets, I will tell you that, in the larger sense, the Hedgehog is a risky opening.”
• In the Hedgehog, Black “sets up a solid wall of pawns, behind whose protection he can arrange a universal piece placement that’s guaranteed to be a good one.”
• Psychology plays an important role: “When [White] takes over the center without a struggle, he gets a feeling of superiority, regardless of his rating. (…) It’s a drive that frequently leads to an unprepared attack.”
• “The Hedgehog displays only an insignificant part of its possibilities. Its handlers must calculate many variations during the course of the game, and consider many nuances, the vast bulk of which never will turn into actual moves. (…) Literally at every move, the players must examine Black’s possible breaks with … b6-b5 and …d6-d5, as well as White’s active possibilites. (…) So time scrambles are an objective necessity for those who play the Hedgehog.”
• “Those who feel uncomfortable in close quarters – in elevators, for example – should not be playing the Hedgehog. (…) The blood of the Hedgehogger must run cold as ice – at least, until a certain moment arrives…”

At this point, perhaps you think I am giving away the contents of the book already. Well, not exactly: all my quotes are from the first 20 pages only, and the book has over 500. The rest of the book, of course, is more concrete and deals with variations and moves. The main focus of these lines is on the so-called ‘English Hedgehog’, arising after 1.c4 Nf6 2.Nc3 c5 3.Nf3 e6 4.g3 b6 5.Bg2 Bb7 6.0-0 Be7.

The book then divides into two main chapters: the classical continuation 7.d4 and the more modern system starting with 7.Re1. And Shipov deals wonderfully with the relevant games and variations and especially its ideas. Here’s an example of his clear way of explanations (and his talent for picking good examples):

DeFirmian-Zivanovic
Smederevska Palanka 1981

Let’s study this position carefully. The knight on c5 is pinned, the c6 square is weak: the white knight is heading there. Black’s king is far from the battlefield, so the invasion of White’s rook at d7 or d6 could be very dangerous. In addition, there’s a real weakness: the b6-pawn. White’s knight is very strong on e5; he also has a pawn majority on the queenside, with the possibility of creating a passed pawn there. All these nuances, taken together, define White’s advantage in this endgame as tangible and stable.

16…Bf8

The most natural reply. Black unpins the knight on c5 and draws the sting from the white knight’s leap to c6. In that case, Black would reply …Rd8-c8 and the rogue would be forced to retreat.

17.Bxc5! Yet another unpleasant surprise!

17…Bxc5 On 17…bxc5 White would also answer 18.Na4!, when the weak c5-pawn becomes a permanent weakness. (…)

18.Na4! A very unpleasant sortie from Black’s point of view. The ‘b6+Bc5′ construction is now under pressure.

 However, a warning seems appropriate. The book is mainly devoted to systems where after 7.Re1, Black does not play the critical moves  7…d5 or 7…Ne4 but instead strives for a ‘real’ Hedgehog with the black pawn on d6. All we read about these lines is this:

 The advance 7…d5 is the most logical move, from the standpoint of the principle of fighting for the center. After 8.cxd5, Black has two cardinally different paths. On 8…exd5 9.d4 0-0 10.Bf4 Na6, we have a standard Queen’s Indian type of structure. This is a great theme for a different thick book, and would probably also be best handled by a different author. In the variation 8….Nxd5 9.e4 Nb4 10.d4, a sharp clash of pieces begins in the center, which you may get a first-hand look at from the classic game B.Larsen-S.Gligoric, Bled 1979.

About 7…Ne4 we get just one variation and the assertion that “the continuation 7…Ne4 may be labeled perfectly safe; but it still doesn’t lead to a full-fledged Hedgehog.  The positions it produces are empty and boring – like a dinner without salt and pepper: tasteless!” To his credit, Shipov is the first to admit that this selection is biased and decided by taste rather than objectivity. Still, I can imagine readers who want to know all inside-out details of the Hedgehog will be disappointed by this omission. Shipov hasn’t written a compendium but a personal account, and readers who are more interested in objective variations only, should probably think twice before buying this book.

There are probably more things to this book that could be called a little odd: sometimes, the translation seems a bit forced (’the player of White‘ isn’t really a conventional way of indicating players). As said, there’s no bibliography and neither is there an index of variations (which is particularly impractical what with all the possible transpositions, although perhaps it’s done on purpose to avoid the ‘encyclopedia’ image). Finally, I have been unable to figure our what we are to expect from part 2. Shipov mysteriously (or vaguely, depending on your state of mind) ends the final chapter Looking into the Future, with the words “Time will tell! And everything will find its place…” and his Conclusion with “Play the Hedgehog! More to come…”. I honestly don’t know what to make of this.

But frankly, it doesn’t really matter. The Complete Hedgehog vol. 1 is a great book, probably the best ever on its subject. Shipov is a highly entertaining author, a true master in explaining ideas and the underlying stragies and psychology. And all this is written in an unmistakenly humouristic, erudite and personal style that distinguishes him from many of his predecessors; in short: Sergey Shipov is your ideal chess instructor.  Now go buy his book and enjoy your holidays.

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A casual reader, superficially browsing through the Dutch GM’s latest book, may easily get confused by it. Suppose he lands on page 296, where the Marshall Gambit of the Ruy Lopez is explained. After 14 moves, the following well-known position is reached:

Van der Sterren writes:

This position illustrates the character of the Marshall Attack very well. White’s position is not exactly bad, but he will have to work hard to catch up on his piece development and for the moment his extra pawn has no significance. An opponent with a good eye for attacking chances is likely to put no end of obstacles in his way.

15.Be3 is the traditional move. Black then continues 15…Bg4 and after 16.Qd3 he has 16…Rae8 17.Nd2 and now 17…f5 or 17…Re6, to name just a few of the more characteristic ideas. In order to prevent this easy attacking plan, the ingenious 15.Re4 has been tried. This prevents Black from playing 15…Bg4 and gives him the opportunity of blundering his queen by 15…Bf5?? 16.Rh4. After the equally ingenious 15….g5 (based on 16.Bxg5?? Qf5) this too leads to a fierce and unpredictable battle.

And this is all the author writes about this tabiya of one of the most popular variations in modern chess. What are we to make of this? Well, before accusing Van der Sterren of lack of depth, we should read what he writes in the introduction. First, he states the perfectly obvious: that the amoung of opening knowledge required really depends on your ambition and the amount of time you’re willing to spend on chess. Then comes the interesting part:

But there is another aspect of studying opening theory to be mentioned. Anyone with even the slightest intellectual bent of mind (and which chess-player isn’t?) may find getting to know a little bit about opening theory very interesting. Even without any ambition to improve your results and independent of your level of play, you may simply find the study of openings very enjoyable. You may also discover that this has absolutely nothing to do with memorizing variations or the need to occupy yourself with chess more than you want to. This sheer fun is in my view an essential element of studying opening theory.

I don’t know about you, but this is music to my ears. Van der Sterren here expresses what I’ve always thought myself but were never eloquent enough to express, namely that the study of opening theory doesn’t have anything per se to do with the practical aspect of playing chess. Don’t listen to bores who tell you that studying chess openings is or is not good for your chess. That’s simply irrelevant! It’s just fun to know stuff about chess openings. To paraphrase Richard Dawkins (who said it about science), “chess opening theory is interesting, and if you don’t agree, you can f*** off!”

Once you take on this state of mind and let go of any practical objections, leafing through Fundamental Chess Openings is a real joy. I’ve always stayed as far as I could from the Catalan Opening, but after reading what Van der Sterren says about it, I already feel I understand so much more about it that I might actually try it myself some day. (And even if I don’t, I’ll be able to enjoy Kramnik’s games a lot more!) Let me quote one relevant part in some detail:

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Nf3 Be7 5.Bg2 0-0 6.0-0

Black now faces the same choice again: 6…dxc4, 6…c5 or 6…something else; which is best?

6…c5 is again very likely to transpose to a Tarrasch after 7.cxd5 exd5. There is also the Closed Catalan, where Black develops his queenside without either taking on c4 or playing …c5. This idea may be pursued with either 6…Nbd7 or 6…c6. The two moves often transpose. An important scheme of development is to play … b6 with an eye to developing the queen’s bishop to b7 or a6 depending on where White puts his queen’s knight (Nc3 leaves c4 undefended, which makes … Ba6 an attractive option.) After Black completes his development (for instance …. Bb7, … Nbd7 and … Rc8) the liberating …c5 comes into view again. Another idea is to play … c6 followed by ….b5. White’s main plan is to open the centre by playing e4 at some point.

The Open Catalan approach is still available, although taking on c4 now is very different from taking on c4 two moves ago. In fact 6…dxc4 is one of the most popular variations of meeting the Catalan. The idea is to counter the plausible 7.Qc2 with 7…a6. This leads, after 8.Qxc4 b5 9.Qc2 Bb7

to a type of position that we have already encountered in the 4…dxc4 5.Qa4+ variation. Again, Black is aiming at completing the development of his queenside by playing …Nbd7 and …c5. White has tried to prevent this or at least to make it as unattractive as possible in numerous ways, the most direct being 10.Bf4 and 10.Bd2 Nbd7 11.Ba5. Still, hundreds of games at the highest level have shown that White must be a supremely good positional player to squeeze any advantage from this line. (…)

For me, an obvious ignoramus in the Catalan, the idea behind the manoeuvre Bd2-a5 was already a big eye-opener, while I also liked the way Van der Sterren links various ideas to variations encountered before in the book. The only problem I have with the way the material is presented is that the Catalan Opening actually does not have a chapter of its own: it’s in the chapter on the Queen’s Gambit Declined, with the move order 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.g3. This is slightly counter-intuitive to me, but perhaps I have been conditioned too much by old-fashioned opening manuals who treated the Queen’s Gambit and the Catalan as entirely different complexes.

Van der Sterren himself seems aware of this, since he writes after 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3: “This is the most popular way of introducing the Catalan, although an immediate 3.g3 is also not bad.” However, it’s somewhat confusing to read just one move further (after 3…Nf6 4.g3): “This, the basic position of the Catalan, is reached via many roads. Perhaps the most common one is 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Nf3 (4.Bg2 is equally sound and is likely to transpose after just a few moves.)” Well, maybe it’s best to ignore this kind of confusions, although in my experience somebody’s bound to take advantage of it sooner or later in a practical game.

Another minor point of criticism is also inherent to the book’s concept: because it mostly lacks concrete variations, it’s also not exactly cutting-edge. This is sometimes just a pity, because there’s so much beautiful chess to show! To give just one example, in the Gothenburger variation of the Sicilian Najdorf (1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Be7 8.Qf3 h6!? 9.Nh4 g5 10.fxg5 Nfd7) in my opinion it’s really not an option to NOT mention White’s sharpest and most famous move here, 11.Nxe6! (played for the first time by Keres, Spassky and Geller in 1955 in the city that in fact gave its name to the entire line) but there you go.

Fundamental Chess Openings is conspicuously called FCO on the cover, trying to build on the ’stickiness’ of earlier book titles such as ECO (Encyclopedia of Chess Openings), NCO (Nunn’s Chess Openings) and BCO (Batsford Chess Openings). FCO was first published in Dutch (a 3-volume series under the rather less hip name of The World of the Chess Openings) a few years ago. I think it’s a good thing that it now has a broader audience, because the concept of the book is really charming and also somewhat revolutionary. Most opening books teach you how to play it and how to be succesful with it. Van der Sterren teaches you how to have fun. Which do you prefer?

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Neil McDonald’s recent book The Giants of Power Play, published by Everyman, is exactly such a feel-good chess book. In it, the author shows basic chess themes and motifs from games by five great ‘power players’: Paul Morphy, Alexander Alekhine, Efim Geller, David Bronstein and Veselin Topalov. Some of these players are obvious choices, but personally I was pleasantly surprised by the inclusion of Geller, of whom I hadn’t seen too many games until now.

Such a selection of players always tends to be a bit forced: I’m sure you could find plenty of examples from, say, Kramnik or Karpov’s games to show that they, too, are great ‘power players’, or that you could pick games from Bronstein and Topalov to prove they were subtle strategists. But that’s not the point. McDonald wants his readers to enjoy chess to the max and I think his selection of players is highly suitable for this purpose, whether or not his selection is ‘fair’ or not. Take, for instance, the following example:

Topalov-Ponomariov
Sofia 2006

The situation in the diagram above looks absolutely hopeless for White: he is the exchange and two pawns down, his knight is hanging and his bishop on a2 is pinned against his rook. However, Topalov defied materialistic considerations in a manner that would have delighted Alekhine.

32.Nxf6!! Bxg6 33.d4!!

You only need control one square to win a game of chess, and here that square is h7. White threatens 34.Bb1 with unstoppable mate. Black can defend with 33..Rg8 34.Bb1 Rg7, but then 35.Rxa5 grabs the queen. The fact that there is a discovered attack on the black queen with 34.Bb1 is integral to the combination. Well, so much for a spirit of self-sacrifice when we end up nabbing the queen. In fact the conflict between materialism and sacrifice makes chess a rich and exciting game, even when materialism triumphs!

Here, McDonald not only shows entertaining chess, but also makes good valid general observations - just like in a good feel-good movie. Admittedly, after about a hundred pages of such great examples, I found myself completely convinced that chess really was an easy game and that if you just put your mind to it, you could win any game with a cunning trick, a combiation or a postional sacrifice, such as, for instance:

Geller-Dreev
New York open 1990

11.Bxc4!!

Or:

Bronstein-Ljubojevic
Petropolis 1973

15.Bg5!!

Or even:

Morphy-Amateur
New Orleans 1858

21.Re8!!

In reality, sadly, chess (and life) just doesn’t work like that, not even for the likes of Bronstein and Topalov (most of the time, anyway), and I must say McDonald’s accumulation of example after example of such successful combos executed skilfully by our five heroes - however clearly explained - sometimes reminded me more of a porn movie rather than a feel-good film: the difference being, of course, that porn is just a one-sided fantasy, while the feel-good movie genre at least attempts to show life from different angles.

Fortunately, McDonald does have just enough eye for the flip side of the coin. Here’s an example where his hero Alekhine actually loses a game:

Euwe-Alekhine
The Netherlands (2) 1935

42.Qh1! Menacing a discovered check and then Rf7+.

42…Rb2 Alekhine stalemates the white king to prevent the threat, but now his rook is no longer fighting the passed pawn.

43.Rf7 Qe8 44.c7 The intention is 45.Qd5 and 46.Qe6, forcing the pawn home.

44…Rc2 45.Qb7!! 1-0

White wins after 45…Rxc4 46.Rxh7+ (but not 46.c8Q, threatening mate on h7, as Black escapes with 46…Qxf7! 47.Qxf7 Rxc8) 46…Kxh7 47.c8Q+ Qe7 48.Qxe7+ Bxe7 49.Qxc4. The paradoxical threat of 42.Qh1! followed by the ‘ambush’ 45.Qb7! would have greatly appealed to the ‘maverick’ chess mentality of Bronstein.

In the end, however, McDonald is just so enthusiastic that it’s easy to forgive him for not paying too much attention to what I would call the downside of chess: the flawed combination, the would-be masterpiece lost on time, the breakdown of nerves at the crucial moment. Rather, in this book McDonald proves to be a master in showing the energizing potential of chess, even though he sometimes does this by showing fragments that are so well-known even players who barely know the rules will recognize them. But this the lasting impression I got from reading this book really is this: chess is a great game, with wonderful possibilities, and they’re waiting to be realized!

As said, I found it especially refreshing to become more familiar with the games of Efim Geller, who I feel is a bit underrated in the West. (Geller, by the way, was praised several times by Kasparov in his DVD on the Queen’s Gambit Declined, and he was one of the few players with a positive score against Fischer.). But it was also nice to see how well Morphy was aware of modern problems of chess (and how little his opponents, including the great Anderssen, knew of them), and how strong the young Topalov already was. (McDonald gives several Topalov examples from his early youth.) Here’s an example of McDonalds often personal style of writing, from the chapter ‘The Goldilocks Queen’:

Alexander Alekhine was particularly adept at finding secure but powerful posts for his queen on the third rank. From such a vantage point she could survey the whole board, and conduct an attack without being in any great danger. I have always been impressed by his subtle handing of the queen in the two games that follow. In both examples a single manoeuvre led to a massive shift in the energy balance between the two armies.

There’s also an interesting and original chapter called ‘The Psychology of Preparation’ about some of the matches our five heroes have played. After Morphy lost the first two games of his match with Harrwitz in Paris, 1858, McDonald  imagines himself to be Morphy, resulting in the following monologue intérieur:

“As Black, it’s obvious I should avoid a fixed centre pawn structure like that in the Queen’s Gambit. Harrwitz mustn’t be allowed a clear plan. He should be engaged in a complex battle over the whole board, which means combining threats to his king and his pawns. As White, I should build up in the centre in my usual style. But once I have gained a positional advantage, I need to target more than just his king. The struggle must be as wide as possible, to wrong-foot his pieces. I should only sacrifice when the outcome  is entirely clear.”

In all, this book is great for anyone who wants to learn more about some of the greatest players in chess history, or wants to learn about some of the basic principles of chess, or just wants to enjoy the good side of chess. Feel good, and your chess will feel good too.

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