Bogo Trails Alekhine Again Taylor Kingston Grandmaster Efim Bogoljubow, by Victor Charushin, CD-ROM computer software, 2000 Pickard & Son, Wylie, Texas, USA, $29.95. Ukrainian-born Efim Bogoljubow (1889-1952, pronounced bah- gahl-YOO-bahf, also variously spelled Bogolyubov, Bogoljuboff, etc.) has been a relatively rare subject for chess writers. This is somewhat odd, for he was hardly an unimportant or uninteresting figure in the game's history. He was twice a world championship challenger (vs. Alekhine in 1929 and 1934), and was for most of the 1920s and early 1930s one of the top 5 or 10 players in the world, winning several major tournaments and hitting an estimated peak Elo rating of 2610. He had a far from colorless personality and lived a life of some dramatic incident, for example his imprisonment by the Germans during WW I, and his angry break with the USSR in 1926. Yet, perhaps because he lost the two matches with Alekhine by lopsided margins, or because the Soviets made him an un-person, today's general public probably remembers him less, and perhaps considers him a lesser player, than Nimzovitch, Rubinstein, Tartakower, R‚ti and others of his time. Until now he has been the subject of only one book in English (in two volumes by Jack Spence, 1971 and 1975). It is a bit ironic that this figure from a somewhat dusty historical shelf should now be a "pioneer" in a modern high-tech medium. Chess publishing seems to be turning more and more to the compact disk. Its usefulness for databases, opening monographs, training software and such has been obvious for some years, but with this release it ventures into a genre, the single-player biography and games collection, which had consisted almost solely of printed books. The CD medium, as used here, has both advantages and drawbacks compared to the traditional book. It presents a reviewer with the danger of being distracted by its technological novelties, to the neglect of evaluating the work itself. Here we'll try to assess both the functionality and the content of Grandmaster Efim Bogoljubow. For those in a hurry, here's a quick summary. Functionally, the CD performs very well, with one exception. As a collection, GEB is well-researched, has more Bogoljubow games than any other we know of, and is fairly well annotated (though in the sterile Informant style). As biography, it shows sporadic merit but also mediocrity, superficiality and inaccuracy. As literature it is an improvement over the author's past performance, but still something of a joke. A worse joke is the publisher's shameless hype, which would have us believe hamburger is filet mignon. Now into more detail, first on the technical side. The usual list of hardware specifications (mHz, RAM, drive capacity, etc.) is unimportant; as long as one has a working CD-drive there should be no problem. There is however a software requirement: ChessBase (version 6.0 or higher) or ChessBase Light. The former is an expensive database system, the latter is a scaled-down freeware version that can be easily downloaded at no cost from www.chessbase.com. Our testing was conducted under CB Light; we will use the abbreviation "CB" to mean either here. Another software requirement for full functionality is Adobe Acrobat Reader, but this (release 4.0) is supplied with the CD. We found the CD easy to use. To begin, start up CB, click "Database", then point the "Open" command to your CD-drive. Select the file "bogo.cbh" and click "OK". A red icon labeled "Bogo" should appear on your database window. Double click on the icon and a screen like this will appear: HANON, PLEASE PLACE 'bogomenu.bmp' IMAGE HERE. This is the basic menu for the CD, a table of contents. Double- clicking any item will bring it up almost instantly, hitting the "Esc" key will return to the menu. Items are primarily of two types: text and games. The text items include the biographical narrative (equivalent to 70 printed pages, according to the publisher), photos, memorabilia, crosstables, etc., just as one would expect in a book. The narrative is divided into 19 chronological periods, each followed by the games for that period. Here we encountered the one technical problem: text could not be printed from the CD. However this appears to be a problem with CB, not the disk, and one can probably circumvent it by downloading to the hard drive and/or cutting-and-pasting to MS Word or a similar program. It was possible to print the tournament and match crosstables, but those are in a .pdf file read by Acrobat Reader rather than CB. The main menu is not the only way to access games. A great advantage of this CD is that one can use CB to create lists of games by various criteria. The standard CB search algorithms (header, position, material, etc.) all work properly, and very quickly, so that one can find, say, all games Bogoljubow won with Black 1914-1919 that opened 1 e4, or all with a certain opponent, or all his rook endgames, in seconds. A sample game screen appears below: HANON PLEASE PLACE 'bogogm.bmp' IMAGE HERE From here one can print moves and diagrams, play over a game and variations, invoke analysis engines, etc. CB and Fritz users are already familiar with such displays, others should find them intuitively easy to master. The games can be downloaded to one's hard drive (requiring about 1.2 MB; see instructions in the "readme.txt" file on the CD). In numerical terms, the collection is impressive: 1,247 games, from the years 1909 to 1952. This is considerably more than is commonly available, for example the Chess Assistant 5.0 and Master Chess 2000 databases have, respectively, "only" 862 and 868 Bogoljubow games. The 45% increase has little of the usual dross of simul games. There are some genuine rarities, for example some of Bogoljubow's correspondence games, and his secret 1921 match with Alekhine (a +1 -1 =2 tie), the scores of which only came to light in 1996. About 625 of the 1,247 games have annotations, all Informant-style, mostly by Charushin (a correspondence IM), others based on work by contemporary analysts (e.g. for New York 1924, Alekhine's tournament book annotations are condensed and converted, somewhat imperfectly, into Informant symbology). While we did not examine every game, it seemed that generally the lengthy, in-depth annotations were only on games from major matches and tournaments, about which, like New York 1924, books had already been written. Charushin annotates mostly lesser games, usually in brief. The tournament crosstable collection is close to complete, with 96 out of 103 known events; for matches, though, there are only 11 out of 29. Qualitatively, Bogoljubow was, according to Euwe, "one of the strongest players of the 20th century". Here are several samples of his play. First a lesser-known game, from one of the "prison tournaments" that played an important role in his development, Boboljubow-Fahrni, Triberg 1916 (see diagram). Black's queenside position looks threatening, but Bogoljubow stirs up an attack: 29 Nd7 Rfc8 30 Nf6+ Kh8 31 Qh6 Nf8 32 Rd4 R2c4 33 Rd5 Qc2 34 Rg5 Ne6 35 Rh5 Nf8 (see diagram) A draw by repetition looks likely, but not after 36 Kg2! (intending 37 Rc1!) Qg6 37 Rg5!! putting rook and queen en prise, but either capture allows mate 37...b3 38 Rxg6 fxg6 39 Re1 R4c7 40 Ne8, 1-0. And here, on the defensive, Bogoljubow parries a fierce attack by a world champion at the height of his powers (Bogoljubow- Alekhine, world championship match, 1929): 25 Qd8! Nf6 26 Bxf4 Nf3+ 27 Bxf3 Qxf4 28 Qd6 Qh4 29 g3 Qh3 (see diagram) 30 e5! h6 (if 30...Ng4 31 Bd5+ is decisive) 31 Bd5+ Kh7 32 Qxf8 Nxd5 33 cxd5 Bg4 34 Rd3 Qh5 35 Nd6 Be2 36 Nf7 Rb6 37 Rd2 Bc4 38 Qc5, 1-0. And here, at age 62, the year before his death, he shows a young GM-to-be that he can still punish a mistake, Bogoljubow-Donner, Birmingham 1951 (see diagram): 18...Re6? (better 18...Qe6) 19 Re3! Qc5 20 Nxf6 Qf5 21 g4, 1-0. These short, tactical samples show nothing of Bogoljubow's strategic talent, which was considerable. The CD format is well suited to and cost-effective for a big collection like this, to our knowledge the most complete set of Bogoljubow games available. In addition there are a number of his composed problems and excerpts from his books. Speaking of books, your reviewer's first exposure to Victor Charushin came from Chess Comet Charousek (Schachfirma Fruth, 1997), a badly written book made accidentally hilarious by inept translators (review available in the archives). Better translation but no better writing was found in his "Tactician's Handbook" series (e.g. Mitrofanov's Deflection; again see archives). More seriously, as an historical account Charousek was so superficial and slipshod that to call it a biography was like calling a paper airplane a jumbo jet. Since Bogoljubow lived much longer than Charousek and thus offers even greater scope for shallow, sloppy pseudo-biography, we approached this part of GEB with pessimism. We must admit it shows considerable improvement, though much more was in order. Charushin has actually done some research and consulted sources beyond ordinary encyclopedias. The bibliography lists 41 books by 24 authors (plus others cited in the text), including Russian and east European works not widely available elsewhere. Bogoljubow and events around him are sometimes described in vivid and interesting detail. A sample excerpt: "Executing the decision of the 3rd All-Union chess congress, N.V. Krylenko received from Sovnarkom the funds (30,000 rubles) to conduct the 1st international tournament in Moscow. Bogoljubow moved to Berlin and personally persuaded foreign Grandmasters to play in the USSR. He managed to gather all the strongest chess- players; even Capablanca and Lasker gave their consent. Only Alekhine (who was not invited) and Nimzowitsch were absent. ... Much has been written about this tournament, but most of it is one- sided. We note that this was the time of NEP [New Economic Program], which in the modern press is usually described only in enthusiastic tones. But in reality the country endured a crisis. NEP- men were growing fastidious, and proletarians were dying from hunger. ... The spectators crowding the halls of the 'Metropol' restaurant were, as a rule, NEP-men and NEP-women, who often could not even recognize the chess pieces. Visiting the tournament was considered to be prestigious in their circles." Discussed in similar detail is Bogoljubow's time in Nazi Germany, from which, like Alekhine, he acquired a collaborator's stigma. According to Charushin, Bogoljubow was not pro-Nazi, but took a state job as a chess coach just to earn a living, and joined the Nazi Party only to help his children gain university admission. Citing Soviet defector Fedor Bogatyrchuk, Charushin reports that Bogoljubow secretly rejoiced in German military losses and regarded both Bolshevism and Nazism "with disgust." The high level of depth and vividness is not maintained, however. Missing from the bibliography are some important Russian historians, such as Vasily Panov. His 40 Years at the Chessboard was frequently cited in American GM Andrew Soltis' Soviet Chess, in particular with regard to Bogoljubow, yet the Russian Charushin omits him. A number of important matters in Bogoljubow's life: what induced him to return to Russia in 1924, a rift between him and Alekhine that year, or FIDE's declaring him and not Alekhine its official world champion in 1928, to name only three, are not discussed in adequate depth. A 1941 quote from Euwe is given, "The fact is that I had a grudge against Bogoljubow," but is never explained. Also, Charushin writes from a definite Russian perspective. Sometimes this gives him insight a Westerner might not have, but other times it leaves a Western reader puzzling over unfamiliar, unexplained names like Ilf, Koreyka, and Murometz. And in some chapters Charushin slips completely back into his old Charousek ways. For example chapters 13 and 14, covering the years 1930-33, are little more than quick rehashes of Bogoljubow's tournament results, lacking any of the personal or historical detail shown above. Outright errors surface, for example that "after his match loss [Capablanca] never participated in tournaments where Alekhine might appear" completely forgetting Nottingham 1936 (which included Bogoljubow, as Charushin later discusses!) and AVRO 1938. In his last tournament (Belgrade 1952) Bogoljubow is reported as scoring "9 points of 12" but somehow finishing 13th (there were actually 20 players). Chapter 5 opens "At the beginning of 1921 Bogoljubow returned to Germany," apparently meaning from a long stay in Sweden, yet the end of chapter 4 places him in Berlin at a tournament that began 4 December, 1920. And language problems, though not so great as in Charousek, still persist. Names are oddly transliterated: "Pshepshurka" for Polish master David Przepiorka, "Gotgilf" for Leningrad's Boris Gotthilf, "E. M. Remark" for German writer Erich Maria Remarque. Tartakower's familiar term "hypermodern" is oddly rendered as "ultra-modern." Words and phrases are sometimes used inappropriately, e.g. "fastidious" in the above excerpt, world title challengers being consistently called "pretenders," or a tournament being absurdly described as "forestalling" the formation of the German Federal Republic. Bogoljubow at college graduation is said to have "completed the institute" and in a negotiation he "accepts out of principal." Consistently we see "it's" when "its" is meant. Such errors are minor but persistent and annoying. Occasionally something bizarre crops up, e.g. the phrase "mental and physical podagra" (gout of the foot, our dictionary says, but the medical term is as esoteric as its metaphorical sense in this context is obscure). We saw no translator credited; perhaps just as well. Charushin does a better job depicting Bogoljubow as a man than he did with Charousek, though the character sketch remains somewhat vague. The good is somewhat exaggerated (Charushin has a bothersome tendency to floridity), but some bad is also shown, as when circa 1926-27 Bogoljubow antagonized tournament organizers with tactless, exorbitant demands. For example when invited to play at New York 1927, he telegraphed "Instead of a mediocre tournament I advise a match for the world championship with Capablanca." Charushin also does not minimize the evil of the Nazis for whom Bogoljubow played, such as the notorious Hans Frank, governor of occupied Poland, but as noted he does insist no Nazi guilt applies to Bogoljubow. Actually, by the end, "Bogo" comes off as a pretty regular guy who likes chess, his family, and a glass of beer about equally; if he is occasionally pretentious it seems more in the style of a likeable blowhard. Our guess is he would be somewhat embarrassed by Charushin's flowery flights of near-hagiography (e.g. "our hero" ad nauseam). So while GEB is a great improvement for Charushin the writer, that's only in comparison to his egregious past record. A work like this should be entrusted to a writer of proven ability, not one who is still learning his trade on the fly. The publisher's statements that Charushin is "uniquely qualified to undertake a project of this scope" and "the conviction ... grows stronger with each reading, that Bogoljubow's dramatic story could not have been told any differently!" are silly, patronizing hype. One could say Bill Clinton is "uniquely qualified" to play saxophone, but that does not make him Sonny Rollins. The sooner Pickard & Son drop both Charushin and this kind of preposterous blurbage, the better for chess literature. To conclude, Bogoljubow here, just as he did in in chess competition, runs well behind Alekhine in terms of literature. Alekhine gets commemorated in a book of consistent excellence (Alexander Alekhine's Chess Games 1902-1946, by Skinner and Verhoeven), while Bogo must posthumously settle for a work similar in ambition but not in quality. The publishers apparently intend this as the first in a series of "Famous Grandmaster" CDs, all by Charushin. The plan has merit, but cannot be taken seriously as history and biography as long as he is the author. For now, potential buyers must weigh which features of this uneven package matter most to them, and decide accordingly.