Nunnsuch "101 Brilliant Chess Miniatures" by GM John Nunn, 1999 Gambit Publications Ltd., Figurine Algebraic Notation, Softcover, 176pp. $19.95 Reviewed by Paul Kollar The typical, quintessential chess book, found in every player's library, however modest, is, of course, the game collection, annotated or not. This same, everyday book, however, presents dramatically atypical chess games. Excepting comprehensive books on complete tournaments, or massive collections of a given master's entire output, the common game collection generally contains contests that are anything but common. Indeed, the better books of selected games offer chess that is, quite literally, extraordinary and wonderful. We accept that at the higher levels draws, not wins, are the norm. We realize that many of the Grandmasters' victories are routine, workman-like efforts that are often error-filled, or even fortuitous. We are therefore not surprised to discover that the carefully selected and assembled collection of World Champion X's "best games" constitute only 10 per cent of his life's work. And we are surprised on occasion when we finish playing over and marveling at a beautiful game to learn that the maestro has deliberately excluded it from his book due to some minor yet irksome flaw. If the selection process is given another turn of the screw and only the best of the best are allowed, we end up with art, with joy and wonder. Or at least with 60 or 101 games that "entertain and instruct." Yes, that excellently played and beautifully conceived win, that classic that can justify permanent recording, respect, and admiration is uncommon by definition. But there are games that are rarer still: the "brilliancy", and, the miniature. And even more rare, the diamond-hard, brilliant miniature! The "miniature" game (16-25 moves) ,brilliant or otherwise, is a genuine rara avis, not so easily sighted. In Reinfeld's Great Brilliancy Prize Games of the Chess Masters (1961) we see only six out of fifty. Chernev's The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played (1965) has only three out of sixty-two (two of them by Petrosian!?). Timman's The Art of Chess Analysis has none. Karpov's Anatoly Karpov's Best Games (1996) has one, a 20- move win over Beliavsky from the last round at Linares 1994 (using a twenty-year-old opening novelty no less!). Interestingly enough, Karpov began, as it were, his World Champion career with a near-miniature (27 moves), now famous win over Korchnoi in 1974. Kasparov too, in The Test of Time (1986), recorded only a few miniatures, including one against ... Nunn. Such games are even harder to find in World Championship matches - since 1894 that is. In the very first World Championship, in 1886, there was one - the last game, won by Steinitz from a psychically destroyed Zukertort in 19 moves. Gunsberg produced three miniatures against Steinitz in their 1890-91 match! Tchigorin managed a few against Steinitz, too. And Steinitz himself returned the favor more than once. Beginning with Lasker World Championship play became extremely circumspect, and all the short games were draws only for decades. An eon later, Spassky virtually clinched the title by downing Petrosian in 24 moves in game 19 of their 1969 match. Had Fischer been clever enough to resign at the proper time, Spassky would get additional miniature credit for his one "real" victory at Reykjavik. Despite this evident rarity, the miniature game holds a pronounced place in chess culture, represented by many of the most famous, most beautiful, and most remembered games of modern (since Philidor) chess: Anderssen v Kieseritzky (1851) "Immortal Game" Anderssen v Dufresne (1852) "Evergreen Partie" Morphy v Duke of Brunswick and Count Isouard (1858) Rotlevi v Rubinstein (1907-8) Lewitzsky v Marshall (1912) E. Z. Adams v Torre (1920) Samisch v Nimzowitsch (1923) Reti v Bogolyubov (1924) Capablanca v Spielmann (1927) Alekhine v Nimzowitsch (1931) Botvinnik v Vidmar (1936) Alekhine v Book (1938) Tal v Smyslov (1959) Spassky v Bronstein (1960) Fischer v Byrne (1963) Karpov v Hort (1978) Piket v Kasparov (1989) Because such games are so rare and beautiful, and so incredibly concentrated and white-hot, a number of chess writers have been moved to collect them and turn their powers of analysis upon them, perhaps not only out of admiration, but also from a sense of wonder and delight. Just how, they must ask themselves, can one master so succinctly and summarily destroy another master's game? Someone once observed that poetry was nothing less than perfect speech. Are miniatures perfect games then are endgames too prosaic? Personally, I cannot believe that, but, while putting their amazing brevity down to "simple" ruthless efficiency, I must nonetheless admit to a kind of awe at the apparent magic embedded in a 20-move victory over a fellow world-class player. Some books that may have sprung from that same (or higher) level of appreciation would include: Chernev's The 1000 Best Short Games of Chess (1955); Reinfeld's Great Short Games of the Chess Masters (1961); Modern Chess Miniatures (1960) by Leonard Barden and Wolfgang Heidenfeld; Larry Evans' Modern Chess Brilliancies (1970); and Karpov's Miniatures from the World Champions (1985). As an aside, please note that of the 101 (magic number?) games in Evans' book, only one third or so are miniatures. As a further aside, please know that Karpov's book includes short games by "uncrowned kings", and also has analysis of the famous brilliancy, Bird v Morphy that is worth the price of two books! One last digression, please. Chernev's 1000 , incidentally, is only partly a collection of miniatures (by my definition). The first 400 or so games are "brevities" or "chess caviar" games that are 15 moves or less in total. I admit to a strong bias against these games. Botvinnik's remarkable 12-move win over Spielmann notwithstanding, and my respect and admiration for proper miniatures noted, I confess that ultra-short games are of no interest to me. Most of such are ridiculous aberrations from simuls, or rather hideous examples of pathetic inattention. For many years now I have reluctantly and uncomfortably felt abject pity for the loser of the first game in this book, a certain Gibaud, who, unable to face the prospect of playing without either a king or queen, gave up to the alert, incisive Lazard after four (4) moves. It is my hope that the reader will forgive this, my one known chess prejudice. Dr. John Nunn, a charter member of Great Britain's chess renaissance of some twenty-odd years ago, a grandmaster of world-renown for both his play and his literary output, has turned his analytical laser on the chess miniature. This decision, one we can certainly second and applaud, may have stemmed from his recent collection, The King Hunt, a somewhat related area of game classification. We second the Doctor's efforts to present the chess world with a new raft of miniatures for reasons expressed above. We applaud the work because he is unarguably one of the best analysts in the world, now and ever! Yes, he has won four individual gold medals at chess Olympiads. Yes, he finished third in two World Cup tournaments. And yes again, he has won the hallowed Hastings Tournament twice. But his powers of analysis are absolutely stupefying while I'm writing these words he has probably definitively analyzed a dozen games to their mathematical limits, or even infinity. He's actually scary! Get this: he writes in his preface that, having elected to cover only recent miniatures (since 1970 and about fifty from the 90's), and settling on decisive games with a 25-move limit, he went through his database, and came up with... 65,000 games! So he added some additional filters and "narrowed" the selection down to 1300. Then he "...played over all these to choose 120 for the book!" One has to wonder what Nunn does when he is really serious. Then he analyzed and annotated them for our edification and pleasure, this time, due to format considerations, "pruning the notes down to the essentials." Anyone who has experienced Dr. Nunn's annotations from, say, John Nunn's Best Games 1985-1993 (1995) or his Secrets of Grandmaster Play (1987) will have mixed feelings about the "pruning". Nunn says that there is an educational benefit to be derived from a close study of these games. He notes that high incidence of failing to castle, or grabbing the b2-pawn, or removing important defensive pieces from the king's neighborhood in the losers' play, and so should we. And we should see how to exploit these sins with merciless speed and devilish efficiency. But he's not fooling me. The primary purpose of his 101 miniatures, albeit analyzed to an extremely high degree, is to entertain, even thrill us. These are games to inspire, to leave us stunned with smiling, head-shaking amazement. There should be another word besides "fun" to describe what his selection, his notes, and the games themselves can provide. Nunn's selected 101 games include an interesting variety of players. There are the usual suspects: Tal, Spassky, Fischer, Kasparov, Timman, Kramnik, Shirov, Geller, Topalov, Adams, Korchnoi, Short, Gelfand, and others (where is Karpov, John?). Two Polgar sisters make an impressive appearance. There are two guys we hardly know Akopian and Khalifman anybody familiar with them? And there are relative unknowns who managed to play like gods at least once. The good Doctor and Gambit Publications have experimented with an innovative format "designed for easy reading." There are plentiful diagrams, three per page, always on the outside edge of the page, and the text is presented in a single, somewhat wider than normal column, with the actual moves in boldface and the notes and variations in plain type with the usual parenthesis when called for. I prefer the time-honored two-column format, believing it to be easier on the eyes, especially with the density of notes Nunn supplies, but I will allow that it permits more material per available space without too great a sacrifice of optic elbowroom. Nunn tells us that this new format's "up side" is that "...the games and most of the analysis can be followed without a chess set." I would be absolutely delighted with myself if I could follow intricate games such as these, and annotations such as his, with a chess set! We have to criticize the omission of indices: there are neither those by player nor by opening. These three or four missing pages should be mandatory. Also, the openings as identified in the game headings are not ECO coded, a fault also lamented in Nunn's Chess Openings. Finally, other than the locale and date of the games there is no contextual or background information given regarding the players or the games we don't know the circumstances. We liked the introductions to Nunn's King Hunt games, and we missed that kind of ambient lighting here. These are rather minor reservations, though not perfunctory. Nunn devotes a page of text per game to about thirty-five of the games, two pages to the rest of his selections, excepting a couple of "long", very dense games that demanded even more analysis. The annotations are, as we have come expect, rather deep, fairly exhaustive, and probably flawless despite Nunn's putting some supporting lines of analysis "behind the scenes." If you're a new kid in town, looking to make a name for yourself, go ahead and try to find any errors or omissions in these notes and variations. Good luck. As a bonus, or teaser, perhaps the reader will enjoy the following excerpt (one of the "easy" games). Beliavsky Gelfand Linares 1992 Queen's Gambit, Slav Defence 1 d4 d5 2 c4 c6 3 Nc3 e5 4 dxe5 d4 5 Ne4 Qa5+ 6 Nd2 Nh6 After White's success in this game, most players switched to 6...Nd7. 7 Nf3 Nf5 8 g3 Ne3 9 fxe3 dxe3 10 a3! (See Diagram) This novelty practically put 6...Nh6 out of business. 10 Bg2 exd2+ 11 Bxd2 Bb4 had been played previously, with an equal position. 10...Bf5?! Black seeks to develop his pieces actively, but this unde- fended bishop gives white a free tempo later on. Black should try either 10...Be6!? or 10...Na6 11 Bg2 Be6 (but not 11...Be7 12 b4! Nxb4?, when 13 Kf1! unexpectedly wins a piece). 11 Bg2 Bc5? Consistent, but one risk too many. 11...Nd7 12 Nd4! exd2+ 13 Bxd2 Qxe5 14 Bc3 gives White an initiative, but this would be much better than the game. 12 b4! 12 Nh4 Be6 13 b4 Bxb4 14 axb4 Qxa1 15 Ne4 is also good for White, but the text-move is more forceful. 12...Bxb4 Black is obliged to accept the sacrifice. 13 axb4 Qxa1 14 0-0 exd2 15 Qxd2 (See Diagram) 15...0-0 16 Bb2 White can look forward to two free tempi, one from Black's queen and one from the loose bishop on f5. 16...Qa6 16...Qa4 17 Nd4 followed by Ra1 wins. 17 Ng5 Bg6 17...Be6 18 Qd3 g6 19 Nxe6! fxe6 20 Rxf8+ Kxf8 21 Qd8+ Kf7 22 Qf6+ wins easily. 18 e6 White's attack is overwhelming. 18...f6 Or 18...Qxc4 19 exf7+ Bxf7 20 Rf4 Qb5 21 Rxf7 Rxf7 22 Qd8+ Rf8 23 Qe7 and wins. 19 e7 Re8 20 Bh3! Qb6+ 20...fxg5 21 Be6+ Kh8 22 Rf8+ mates. 21 c5 Qc7 22 Be6+ Kh8 23 Rxf6 (See Diagram) 23...Nd7 23...Qxe7 24 Rxg6 hxg6 25 Qd4 mates quickly. 24 Rxg6! 1-0 24...hxg6 25 Qd4 Nf6 26 Qxf6! Qxe7 27 Qxg6 is an attractive finish. The remaining 99+ % of Dr. Nunn's latest labors await your further guaranteed delight. All in all, the anthology is a rather handsome work, and while emphatically not for novices, should provide rich feasting for the analytically hungry, and pure pleasure for the beauty seeker. Strong club players, masters, International Masters, and IGM's can enjoy this book proportionally. Good things come in small packages. These miniatures may enlarge you.