Chess Reviews: 160

ChessBase Magazine #138

ChessBase

Andre Schulz's magazine editorial focuses on the troubles facing chess in Germany, who were unable to field their top team at the recent Olympiad due to financial reasons.

'In brief: to achieve success you need to have constancy and a plan. It is well known that a plan is always necessary in chess. Unfortunately, we cannot see any plan in German chess'.

It was a surprise to me; I thought a country which has hosted top events such as a World Championship match and an Olympiad in recent years would have seen some benefits from having high-profile encounters on their home patch.

Three top tournaments - Shanghai (won by Shirov), Amsterdam (Youth v Experience - a triumph for the former) and Dortmund (a wonderful success for Ponomariov) receive full coverage. Shirov provides four video lectures about his Shanghai success. These are terrific (as always) and are the highlights of this issue. Shirov is always honest about his preparation, his thoughts during the game, what he was able to see and what he missed.

Shirov - Wang Hao

Shanghai 2010

Having calculated 23 fxg4 and been happy with the advantage it gave, Shirov made the mistake of touching the Bishop on d4 and had to play 23 Rxd4 instead. Black played 23 ...Ne3+ 24 Kf2 fxe4 25 Kxe3 e5 and the game was clearly turning. However, it still ended in a win for White after further adventures.

There are standard opening surveys on:

Old Indian Defence
Nimzowitsch Defence
Caro-Kann (Advance)
Sicilian (Grivas)
Sicilian Najdorf (2)
Ruy Lopez (2)
Slav Defence
Catalan
Queen's Indian Defence (4 a3)
King's Indian Defence (Samisch)

Fritztrainer videos are included on the Catalan (Stohl), French Steinitz (Kritz), Alekhine Defence (Lilov) and Ruy Lopez Exchange Variation (Martin).

ChessBase Magazine continues to offer excellent coverage of the World's top chess events, plus a lot more besides. There's something for everyone and offers great value for money. It's a product I can recommend to chess fans and serious students alike.

Chess Endgames 6

Endgame Principles: Domination and Prophylaxis

By GM Karsten Mueller

ChessBase

Karsten Mueller's fine series continues with a new volume looking at four key principles of endgame play:

'Domination and Prophylaxis', 'Don't Be Over-Hasty', 'Zugzwang' and 'Schematic Thinking'.
Sub sections include 'Waiting for the Right Moment', 'Realization of an Advantage', 'Sidestepping the Opponent', 'Kramnik's Technique', 'The Knight's Achilles' Heel' and 'Target Positions'.

The importance of prohpylaxis is demonstrated by the illustrative study given in the introduction, which sees Black making the only drawing move.

Study by Dvoretsky (inspired by a Karpov - Kasparov game)

White's threat is 2 Kg5, which leads to a domination of the Black forces (as shown later on the DVD). Black has only one way of preventing it, but it involves the loss of two pawns. Nevertheless, 1 ...Kf6!! draws, as after 2 Nxd5+ Ke6 3 Nc7+ Kd6 4 Nxa6, there is a path for Black's King to invade the Queenside via d5 and c4.

Prophylaxis is clearly a strong weapon in the arsenal of Magnus Carlsen.

Carlsen - Adams

World Cup 2007

Black looks set to use the open c-file to great effect, but White has a plan...

13 ...Rc2 14 Rb1 Rac8 15 Nb3!! Bc4 and now 16 Na1!

After 16 ...Ba2 17 Nxc2 Bxb1 18 Na1, Black's apparent control of the open file meant nothing; all entry points were covered and White's Bishop gradually outplayed Black's minor pieces (1-0, 77).

Grandelius - Hector

Try this one for yourselves, which will give a further indication of the trickiness of the material on offer. Black, to play, has only one way to draw...

This is a DVD offering tough material for serious, experienced players.

ChessBase Tutorials

Openings #1: The Open Games

ChessBase

This is the first volume in a brand new Chessbase series. Physically, the package resembles ChessBase magazine, with a magazine in both the English and German language (one flips it over to switch) and an enclosed DVD featuring video lectures.

A team of four commentators - namely, Lawrence Trent, Valeri Lilov, Lars Schandorff and Adrian Mikhalchishin - present material on the following openings:

King's Gambit (Lilov)
Vienna Game (Lilov)
Bishop's Opening and Centre Game (Trent)
Italian Game (Trent)
Evan's Gambit (Lilov)
Four Knights Game (Trent)
Two Knights Defence (Trent)
Scotch Game (Lilov)
Ruy Lopez (Trent, Schandorff and Mikhalchishin)
Petroff Defence (Schandorff)
Philidor (Trent)

There are 24 video lectures in all, with an average running time of just under the 15 minute mark. Each lecture takes the viewer through the theoretical basics of each opening and is aimed at club players.

The delivery is perhaps a shade on the speedy side. Judicous use of the pause button will be necessary to avoid being overwhelmed by a torrent of information. Mikhalchishin comes off worst with the shortened time slots; his accent is rather strong. Schandorff has the most relaxed style of delivery and I enjoyed his lectures most of all. It may have been better to have fewer lectures and given each one a little bit longer in terms of time, allowing the material more room to breathe.

100 unannotated games, all starting with 1 e4 e5, are included on the DVD. These stretch from 1610 (with Polerio demolishing the Two Knights Defence with a Fried Liver Attack) through to Carlsen's use of the Scotch game to beat Leko in 2009.

Needless to say, further study will be required to bring meld the instruction offered here - which serves to whet the appetitie - into a workable repertoire.

Further volumes are promised, focusing on semi-Open, Closed and Flank Openings.

Tricks and Traps Vol.1

1 e4 Openings

by GM Nigel Davies

ChessBase

1 e4 is also the subject of another new series.

'It's human nature for players to want to win their games as quickly and as efficiently as possible and for this reason there's a great interest in tricks and traps, especially very early on in the game.'

Things start off at a very basic level, with the four-move checkmate, before moving on to the famous Fried Liver Attack.

In all, there are 31 video lectures, featuring ideas from the Philidor, Fried Liver, Two Knights Defence, Ruy Lopez, Petroff, Italian Game, Vienna, Modern, Pirc, Caro-Kann, Sicilian and French.

There's plenty of food for thought here and some of the ideas will be startling to those who have not encountered them before. One such line was seen in the game Kindermann v Gass from 1978.

1 e4 d6 2 d4 Nf6 3 Nc3 g6 4 Bc4 Bg7 5 Qe2 Nc6

6 e5 Nxd4 7 exf6 Nxe2 8 fxg7 Rg8 9 Nge2

With three minor pieces for the Queen, this is indeed tricky stuff.

The classics are well represented. It's good to see Tarrasch getting a section all to himself, covering his traps in the Ruy Lopez.

In a couple of games, Tarrasch's opponents played the natural 11 ...Qd7 but can you, dear readers, see why this is a blunder?

The psychological aspect of tricks and traps receives attention too. The final lecture, 'Look Alikes', focuses on positions in which players mistakenly think they are on safe ground but fal to appreciate impoertant differences in specific positions.

The delivery by GM Davies is up to his usual high standard. He breaks the material down into easily digestible, bite-sized chunks which should suit improving but relatively inexperienced club players. Juniors will do well to study the examples too; they are exactly the sort of things they need to annoy their older rivals down at the chess club.

Corr Database 2011

ChessBase

This database contains 834,849 games from the world of correspondence chess, covering the years 1804-2010. Games are included from all of the World Correspondence Championships, Olympiads and other top events.

Correspondence chess has moved on from the days of sticking stamps on envelopes and the mercy of the postal service. Email has changed the way of the world and computers have added incredible depth to chess analysis. This means that games such as these can be a fruitful place for those seeking very sound opening choices.

These days, minor slips are mercilessly punished at the top levels. Sicilian Najdorfs are popular against 1 e4 (anything other than an Open approach by White is considered as letting Black get away with an easy life) and the Nimzo and Queen's Indian are frequent sights for 1 d4 fans.

A minority of the games feature annotations. There's an occasional appearance by top Grandmasters; Leko, Karpov and Yusupov are amongst those making rare forays into the world of email chess.

Over the board players can treat correspondence with suspicion and will probably see this as a non-essentiual purchase. Those with broader minds will be able to pick up valuable ideas from these lesser-known games.

For further details regarding ChessBase products, please visit their website.

Robert Plant and the Band of Joy

Robert Plant and the Band of Joy

The Sage, Gateshead

20 October 2010

It's been another busy week, with three very enjoyable shows in quick succession. For the first of these, my favourite music venue - The Sage - once again provided an opportunity too tempting to miss.

Robert Plant's 2007 collaboration with Alison Krauss, RAISING SAND, marked a new direction for the former Led Zeppelin front man and was very well received indeed. The change of direction has continued deeper into Americana territory on the BAND OF JOY CD, released earlier this year. This time, Alison Krauss is nowhere to be seen, but it's not all bad news. The Band of Joy in question features Buddy Miller (guitar), Darrell Scott (guitar et al), Byron House (bass), Marco Giovino (drums) and - best of all, as far as I’m concerned - the inimitable Patty Griffin on harmony vocals and acoustic guitar.

Following an intriguing support act of Justin Adams and Juldeh Camara - blending the Blues with traditional West African music - Robert Plant and the Band of Joy took to The Sage to great applause and launched straight into Tall Cool One. ‘I’m like a strange cat running in the heat of the night’...and indeed, with his flowing mane of hair and beard it is hard to shake the image of Robert Plant cast as Narnia’s Aslan.

Right from the off, it was clear we were in for a special evening. Harmony vocals abounded, sometimes with four voices at once. The musicianship was just as good as one can rightfully expect from such an eclectic group of people.

Robert Plant has lost none of his posturing. The microphone stand went where he did, a Rock ‘n’ Roll prop carried around in both hands. His voice certainly isn’t stuck in one era or genre though and he showed a terrific range in both lead and harmony vocals.

Two stand-out songs included Please Read The Letter and Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down. A sprinkling of Led Zeppelin classics - including Tangerine and Rock and Roll - sat nicely amongst the pure Band of Joy set list. Those who came along expecting more of the old greatest hits would perhaps have been disappointed but maybe the broadening of horizons would have been ample compensation.

Robert Plant was happy enough to step out of the spotlight midway through the show to provide harmony vocals on songs by Buddy (Somewhere Trouble Don’t Go), Patty (Move Up) and Darrell (A Satisfied Mind). Nor was Plant confined to vocals throughout the evening; a harmonica was strongly in evidence while the other artistes took centre stage and at one point he even produced a skiffle-style wash board. He said he’d always wanted to play an instrument, but claimed ‘I was held back’.

The three-song encore concluded with I Bid You Goodnight, featuring a four-way a capella harmony. It was a beautiful finale to a magical evening. Will the Band of Joy ever return, or will it remain a short-term project? Let’s hope it’s the former.

Here's a few photos from the evening...

Strutting with the microphone right from the start

Robert Plant, Patty Griffin and Darrell Scott

Marco Giovini on the drums

Buddy Miller

Byron House on the bass

Patty Griffin - one of my all-time favourite artistes - singing Move Up

The skiffle element!

The set list:

Tall Cool One
Angel Dance
House Of Cards
Please Read The Letter
Misty Mountain Hop
Rich Woman
Twelve Gates To The City
Tangerine
Somewhere Trouble Don't Go
A Satisfied Mind
Move Up
Satan Your Kingdom Must Come Down
Central 209
Houses Of The Holy
You Can't Buy My Love
Down To The Sea
Gallows Pole
Another Tribe
Rock and Roll
I Bid You Goodnight

It was an excellent concert and another indication of how lucky we are to have such fine acts visiting the North East.

Chess Reviews: 159

Part 3 of our round up of Quality Chess releases focuses on opening tomes. Once again, there is a lot to get through so I will return to some of the books in forthcoming articles to add more detail.

The first three for consideration all form part of the Grandmaster Repertoire series.

'Grandmaster Repertoire is a new series of high quality books based on the main lines, written by strong grandmasters. The aim is to provide the reader with a compete repertoire at a level good enough for elite tournaments, and certainly also for the club championship.'

There are valid points about the role of this series in modern chess literature:

'There is a glut of opening books at the Starting Out level. These books have certainly been refreshing, but they have almost completely replaced high-level opening books. As chess fans, we felt we were missing out, and because we can, we decided to do something about it.'

'It s our conviction that you will eventually be more successful by playing the main lines, simply because they are based on better moves.'

Grandmaster Repertoire

1 d4 Part 2

By GM Boris Avrukh

616 pages

Quality Chess

I haven't seen the first volume of GM Avrukh's treatise on 1 d4 (which analyses the reply 1 ...d5) but I am aware that it received excellent reviews. I had been looking forward to reading one of the author's books so I was pleased to get my hands on '1 d4: Part 2'.

The main focus of attention falls on the Indian Defences, with the material split into the following sections:

The Bogo-Indian Defence

The Budapest Gambit

Benoni Systems

The Dutch Defence

The Grunfeld Defence

The King's Indian Defence

The Modern Defence

Minor Systems

The backbone of the repertoire is 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 g3

Each Black defence is covered in great depth, with a fine blend of analytical variations and prose explanations. At 616 pages, this is a real hand-filler.

This is a very impressive book and the pick of the bunch from this review article. I will be returning to it in another article soon.

Grandmaster Repertoire

The Caro-Kann

By GM Lars Schandorff

256 pages

Quality Chess

It's Black's turn to enjoy some expert advice on repertoire-building. This book covers all of White's lines in four sections:

The Classical Variation

The Advance Variation

Panov Variation

Minor Systems

More specifically, Black's main line is:

1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 Nc3 (or 3 Nd2) 3 …dxe4 4 Nxe4 Bf5

A very solid system which offers Black reasonable chances to play for a win.

The Advance Variation is met in classical fashion too: 1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 e5 Bf5 rather than the trendy 3 ...c5

The Panov Variation is combatted by the early development of both Knights: 1 e4 c6 2 d4 d5 3 exd5 cxd5 4 c4 Nf6 5 Nc3 Nc6

I like the author's style; this is a very readable book. Regarding one variation in which Black snaffles a stray White pawn, he comments: 'Why not? An extra pawn is always nice to have. We are Caro-Kann players, remember. Not some chaos pilots from the King's Indian.'

The depth is not as great as in Avrukh's volume but there is certainly enough material for Black to be able to face 1 e4 with confidence. I felt quite at home in this book and would like to read more by GM Schandorff.

The edition I received was one of the hardbacks produced for certain Quality Chess volumes. The softcovers are beautifully produced, but the hardbacks are even better and are well worth the extra cost.

Grandmaster Repertoire

The Sicilian Defence

By GM Lubomir Ftacnik

432 pages

Quality Chess

This time, Black is encouraged to push the c-pawn one square further when White plays 1 e4. GM Ftacnik offers a full repertoire based around the Najdorf Variation of the Sicilian Defence - 1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 d6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nc3 a6.

The basic list of contents shows what to expect.

Minor Systems

Closed Systems

Anti-Open Systems

Minor Open Lines

English Attack

Classic Main Line

There is a very strong 'film' theme running through the book, with the names of individual chapter titles freely name-checking favourites from the silver screen. Two examples:

Up Close(d) and Personal

The Rock - 6 Be2

Black isn't always advised to stick to the pure Najdorf lines in Ftacnik's repertoire; a switch to the Scheveningen is recommended at various times, such as against 6 Be2.

Najdorf players absolutely must have something serious prepared against 6 Bg5. Expecting to see the Poisoned Pawn given as Black's best choice, I was surprised to see 6 ...e6 7 f4 h6 instead.

Black has options of a ...g7-g5 thrust at various times. A second option of 6 ...Nbd7 is given for those preferring something a little quieter. However, with the whole 6 Bg5 scenario covered in 40 pages, I can't shake the feeling that this is the weak point of the book's repertoire.

Perhaps I simply identify more with 1 d4 and 1 e4 c6, but I didn't enjoy this volume quite as much as the other two in the series.

The Cutting Edge

The Open Sicilian 1

By GM Milos Pavlovic

168 pages

Quality Chess

Happily name checking two series of books from rival publishers (namely the New in Chess SOS range and Everyman's Dangerous Weapons), The Cutting Edge series aims to:

'…identify the most important theoretical battlegrounds of the moment and then analyse as deeply as possible in search of improvements'.

Volume 1 looks at some deep positions from the Sveshnikov, Rauzer, Chinese Dragon, Dragon, Taimanov and Kan variations (a volume covering the Najdorf is in preparation.)

With the starting point of the analysis often starting at move 12 or beyond, and explanations regarding earlier moves escaping the scope of the book, this series is not for beginners. Indeed, it reminds me more of the New in Chess Yearbooks than their SOS series.

The depth of modern theory is quite alarming. In the position given above (from the Sveshnikov Variation - move 23!), no fewer than seven White moves are given attention, the most startling of which is 23 Kd3!?

Sicilian aficionados will embrace the depth of analysis the book offers. Lesser experienced players and those seeking a quick fix for a one-off encounter and/or are lacking the time for serious opening research should look elsewhere.

The Alterman Gambit Guide

White Gambits

By GM Boris Alterman

440 pages

Quality Chess

GM Alterman presents a clubplayer's spin through a series of gambits. This volume concentrates on White gambit lines and features:

Danish Gambit

Urusov Gambit

Philidor

Cochrane Gambit

Morphy Attack

Max Lange Attack

Evans Gambit

Panov Attack

Morra Gambit

Milner-Barry Gambit

It is a bit of a stretch to describe some of these as gambits. The likes of the Danish Gambit (above) certainly fit the bill, but the Panov Attack against the Caro-Kann appears to qualify due to it's gambit-like style of play rather than actually being a gambit.

The theoretical overviews are somewhat lacking in parts - those wishing to play these lines in serious games will have to indulge in some further reading - but improving club players will find this a useful volume if they want to experiment with some sharp and lively openings to brighten up their repertoires.

For further details on Quality Chess books, please pop along to their website.