Checkpoint by Carsten Hansen Reviewed This Month: Richter-Veresov by Gufeld & Stetsko Informator 77 by Matanovic et al. Magazine Review Special - Part 1: Chess Life British Chess Magazine Kaissiber Schacknytt ChessMail In this month's Checkpoint we are doing something a little different. Aside from two book reviews, in addition to the first book on the Richter-Veresov Opening in years and the most recent Informator, number 77, I will be reviewing five popular magazines. Another five magazines will be reviewed next month. This month's magazines are an interesting mix of old and new, traditional and cutting edge. We hope that you will welcome this new idea. Next month's magazine reviews will be: Schach, New In Chess, ChessBase Magazine, Chess Monthly and Europe Echecs. We understand that there are editors out there that may think: why not my magazine? Well, there will be another chance later this year. Therefore, if you are an editor of a chess magazine or if you know of a great magazine that is not among the eleven mentioned above, please send us an e-mail with the name of the magazine and how we can obtain sample copies. We will contact you later this year when we put together the next batch of magazines to be reviewed.. Richter-Veresov - the Chameleon Chess Repertoire by Eduard Gufeld & Oleg Stetsko, 1999 Thinker's Press, Softcover, Figurine Algebraic Notation, 192pp., $22.00 When I first heard about this book, I experienced some mixed emotions. I was excited to see the first specialized book on the Richter-Veresov Opening (RVO) for many, many years, but at the same time I was disappointed to hear that it was Gufeld and Stetsko writing the book. I have previously covered a book by the pair here in Checkpoint, and back then I was, to say the least, not very enthusiastic. Their works often seem very superficial, and with only little creative input. They are not the only authors out there with this attitude towards writing chess books, which is fine with me - provided that their works don't get published! Sadly, many books by these authors do unfortunately make their way into the bookstores. I can only encourage people not to buy these books. But back to the RVO book. Does this book fall into the same category as the books just mentioned? I will return to that later. The book contains nothing less than 25 chapters, of which 17 involves the move order 1 d4 Nf6 2 Nc3 d5 3 Bg5. The remainder involves lines where Black avoids the RVO proper. These chapters are here to give the reader a complete repertoire based on the RVO move order. Furthermore, there is a section of "Newest Games", which is "Worthy R-V games played in 1998-1999 which have not been referenced in this work", an "Opening's Index", a "Players' Index", and, something quite unusual, "The Publisher's Notes". But taking first things first, I would like to compliment the cover of the book, which is colorful and different from the average chess book cover. The table of contents also looks fine, except from one minor error: chapter 25 is given as 2...Bf5/f5, both of which are illegal moves if Black has played 1...Nf6. Obviously these two possibilities are possible after 1...d5 by Black. Now to the theory, which obviously is the backbone of the book. As mentioned above, the authors are usually not among my favorites. Of the works I have seen, they mainly reproduce the work of others, and their evaluations are often based on the result of the game, rather than the actual position at which they stop their analysis. Let's have a look at what they give us with in this book. At this point, I have to ask the readers to bear with me. Like most other chess players, I only have access to a few sources that cover the RVO, and they are by no means exhaustive or up-to-date. However, considering the pace at which theory in the RVO develops, perhaps they are enough.. The first line to examine is the one that is given as the main line by the Small Encyclopaedia (SECO): 1.d4 d5 2.Nc3 Nf6 3.Bg5 Nbd7 4.Nf3 e6 5.e4 h6 6.Bh4 g5 [6...Bb4 7.e5 g5 8.Nxg5 hxg5 9.Bxg5 Rg8 10.Bxf6 Nxf6 11.exf6 Qxf6 12.Qd2 Bd7 13.0 0 0 0 0 0, with compensation for the pawn, H i-Smyslov, Copenhagen 1985] 7.Bg3 Nxe4 8.Nxe4 dxe4 9.Nd2 [9.Ne5 Bg7, Reynolds-Nunn, London 1987, 10.Qe2 Nxe5 11.dxe5, with an unclear game according to Nunn] 9...Bg7 [9...f5 10.Bc4 Nf6 11.Be5 Bg7, with an unclear position according to Nunn] 10.h4 Bxd4 11.Nxe4 [11.c3 Be5 12.Bxe5 Nxe5 13.Qa4+ Bd7 14.Qxe4 (14.Qd4 Ng6 15.h5 e5 16.Qxe4 Bc6 17.Bb5, Otero-Camacho, Cuba 1998, 17...Qxd2+ 18.Kxd2 0 0 0+ 19.Ke3 Bxe4 20.Kxe4 Ne7, with a clear advantage for Black) 14...Nc6 15.Nf3 gxh4 16.Ne5 Nxe5 17.Qxe5 Rg8 18.Rd1 Qe7 19.Qxc7 Bc6 20.Qxe7+ Kxe7, «-«, Otero-Camacho, Cuba 1998] 11...Bxb2 12.hxg5 hxg5 13.Rxh8+ Bxh8 (Mestrovic-Vukic, Yugoslavia 1974) 14.Rb1 with an unclear position according to Vukic. Let's see what the new book has to say about this line. In the alternatives to move 6, 6...Bb4 is covered more comprehensively. Furthermore, two other possibilities are given, 6...Be7 and 6...dxe4, and, according to the book, both moves offer Black equality. Both of these moves are also given in ECO D (2nd Edition) from 1988 (covered by Bagirov), while after 6...Be7 Gufeld & Stetsko (G&S) give: 7 exd5 Nxd5 (7...exd5=) 8 Bxe7 Qxe7 9 Qd2 Qb4 (9...Nxc3? 10 Qxc3 c5 11 0-0-0 etc.) 10 0-0-0 (10 Nxd5!? Qxd2 11 Kxd2 exd5 12 Re1+ +=/=) 10...Nxc3 11 Qxc3 Qxc3 12 bxc3 c5 with an equal endgame according to Stetsko; ECO only gives 7...exd5 following the game Saigin- Averbakh, USSR 1963, which promised Black equality without too much trouble. The coverage of 9 Ne5 by G&S is better, but for some reason Nunn's 11...Bg7, after 9 Nd2 f5, isn't mentioned at all, but instead the less adequate 11...Be7 and 11...Bd6 are covered. The remainder of the line is given in greater detail than my other sources have. So far so good. My next source of information is NCO (this part by Gallagher). This too doesn't provide any material substantially different from that presented by G&S; it's quite skimpy. But a little played opening such as the RVO will never receive much attention in a work like NCO. Quite different is the situation with the ECO D (2nd Edition). Here Bagirov has made a very thorough effort of covering the RVO, although without making a lot of suggestions of his own. But all the relevant material can be found here, and it is also found in G&S's book. But a lot of previously unknown material has surfaced and a lot new suggestions and analysis is given by G&S. Something more or less unheard of in their previous efforts. But there are things about this book about which I'm less enthusiastic. First there are the Q & A sessions throughout the book. These happen whenever the publisher, assisted by the chess program Junior, comes across something that looks questionable; then a question is submitted to Gufeld, who then answers it. Some of the comments are fairly relevant, but I'm not so pleased when I see something like the following (after 1 d4 Nf6 2 Nc3 c5 3 Bg5 cxd4 4 Qxd4 Nc6 5 Qh4 e6 6 e4 Be7 7 0-0-0 0-0 8 f4 h6 9 Bxh6!? gxh6 10 Qxh6 Ng4! 11 Qh5 Nf2?! 12 Rd2! Nxh1 13 Rd3 Bf6 14 e5 Bg7 15 Ne4, and here the position is evaluated unclear/clear advantage for White?!): (See Diagram) "Ed. Notes: This position and Gufeld's intuition are amazing. I suspect from lengthy independent analysis, that 15 Ne4 ultimately fails. However, in conjunction with 15 Nh3 it may succeed! E.g., 15...Re8 16 Ng5! Re7 (16...Qe7, after 17 Nce4 Rd8 18 Nh7 bombs also) 17 Nce4! Nxe5 18 fxe5 should win for White." If an editor doesn't agree with analysis, I'm of the opinion that he should confront the author who can then address it. But if an editor finds an error such as the above, he should at least give the main line that proves that a particular move doesn't work. If he further decides to provide his own (computer-aided) analysis, he certainly has to make sure that the analysis is correct. In the analysis given above, it seems that Black can improve with 15...f6!, after which White will have a hard time breaking through the Black defenses and showing that he has sufficient compensation for the sacrificed material. As an aside, I haven't found a defence against 15 Ne4 yet. There are many such comments throughout the book and this is not particularly good. Such corrections should have been addressed by the author and the editor together before the book went into print. There are eight chapters covering various deviations from the RVO proper. I guess this is done to form a complete repertoire for White, but a few things seems to be missing, e.g. 1 d4 d5 2 Nc3 c6 and 1 d4 d5 2 Nc3 e6, which transpose to the Caro-Kann and French Defence respectively. Furthermore, there is a chapter called "Pirc-type Deviations", which covers lines beginning with 1 d4 Nf6 2 Nc3 d6 3 Bg5 Nbd7 4 e4 e5 5 Nf3 Be7 6 Bc4 0-0 7 0-0 c6. This to me looks more like a Philidor Defence than a Pirc. The annotations to the featured game of this chapter contain something that surprised me. The Game is Winants-Cifuentes, Wijk aan Zee 1995, and the annotations belong to G&S: "1 e4 (Our reader shouldn't be surprised. Chess' ways are sometimes unpredictable, and we still will run into the Richter-Veresov system.) 1...d6 2 d4 Nf6 3 Nc3 e5 4 Nf3 Nbd7 5 Bc4 Be7 6 0-0 0- 0 7 a4 c6 8 Re1 Qc7 9 Bg5 (A paradox in contemporary theory. Having passed through the Pirc Defence, the game transposed into a Philidor's, and with the last move 9 Bg5 (9 h3 is considered a main move in the Philidor), it transposed to one of the basic positions of a Richter-Veresov type structure.) " How the authors can claim the above to be one of the basic positions of a Richter-Veresov type structure is simply beyond me. The above is fair and square a Philidor's Defence and has as little to do with a Richter-Veresov as the Caro-Kann or French Defence. In each chapter there are a few complete games which are annotated. As usual in G&S's books, these annotated games are something to look forward to, although, as mentioned above, some of the annotations don't quite make sense. For some reason there is no index of these game. It's true they can be found in the player's index, but they are in no way distinguished from the other game references. But overall, the theoretical chapters are well done, the coverage is good, and it seems like a lot of work has put into them. Towards the end of the book we find a section called "Newest Games". This section contain "worthy R-V games played in 1998- 99 which have not been referenced in this work". My question is, if they are worthy, why aren't they referenced in the previous chapter? Next follows the "Openings' Index". This is quite a bizarre section that I find very difficult to understand. The basic content of each of the chapters is of course mentioned, but so are a lot of moves that are not covered in the book. See for example the index for chapter One: Chapter One (pages 13-20) 1 d4 Nf6 2 Nc3 d5 3 Bg5 c5 (25+35-40 - 159) 4 Bxf6 (24=34-42 - 89) A.Magergut-M.Kamishov (1947) 0 4 Nf3 (23=39-38 - 13) A.Ilyin-Zhenevsky-V.Ragozin (1929) 0 4 e4 (33=34-33 - 12) K.Richter-K.Opocensky 4 dxc5?! (50=25-25 - 4) A.Poliak-A.Lilienthal (1945) 0 4 f3 (25=25-50 - 4) Semkovic-P.Szilagy (1976) 0 4 e3 (see Chapter 2) The numbers in the parentheses indicates the number of times the particular moves have been played, including the percentage score they have achieved in ChessBase's Mega 99. Beyond that, I don't understand the game references. They are not the annotated games, but they may be the earliest available game with the particular move. I'm not sure. In contrast, the Players' Index is excellent, covering all game references throughout the book. The last pages of the book are "The Publisher's Notes", which is very unusual. The headline is "Mr. Bob Long, you are the toughest chess publisher I have ever worked for! - GM Eduard Gufeld". Beneath it continues with "Does this say something good about Thinkers' Press or something bad about many other chess publishers? Probably both." Admittedly Gufeld has probably never had to work as hard on a book as much he has had to on this one. The result is admirable. But I have to add that it was about time that someone forced him to do a proper and thorough job. Further in the publisher's notes, Mr. Long writes the following [my comments in brackets]: "I had been unable to get several top writers to work on this subject for us. Too bad for them. I discovered many neat things about this opening I have played for 25 years. Here is a quick synopsis: a) The Richter-Veresov can be just as combinative and complex as any other opening; [CH: which is true] b) It is rich in transpositions to a number of favorable K-pawn openings; [CH: rich - yes, favorable K-Pawn openings - hmmm?! The Pirc, French and Caro-Kann Defences should all be okay for Black according to recent theory] c) This opening is still being played with regularity, and has even been played many times by Super GM Morozevich, one of the top players in the world! [CH: "many times by Super GM Morozevich". The book quotes five games by Morozevich, which was also everything that could be found in Chessbase's Megabase2000, with the most recent being in 1994, when he was still rated below 2600 (2595), and therefore by definition not a Super GM (2600+)] d) After seeing GM Tony Miles' treatment, I have come to the conclusion that the only thing wrong with this opening is that most of the other players who have White don't play very well, or have a very limited imagination. [CH: this may be the case, but for the record, I have been unable to find any games by Miles playing the RVO, including in this book, from any other year than 1982, except one from the 1986/87 Bundesliga, where he played Black!] e) I do not buy the spewings by GMs that 2 Nc3 in place of 2 c4 is a questionable move. Should Kasparov or Anand ever take up the Richter-Veresov, if only for a couple of games, writers from all over the world will be tripping over their feet trying to explain the 'genius' of 2 Nc3. Look at the players index. [CH: there is no doubt that 2 c4 is the more flexible move and that 2 Nc3 with correct play from both sides does not offer White any advantage. And even if Kasparov or Anand should try 2 Nc3 (which I very much doubt), then it would probably be called a psychological trick more than anything else] The point is, if you feel comfortable with something, and you get decent games, play it..." In the last comment he is really on to something. If you like an opening keep playing it and don't be ridiculed into thinking that you can play the Gruenfeld and the Najdorf like Kasparov, because only he can play it like Kasparov. My final comments about this book are that a new book on this opening was long overdue and this book fills the void very well; I definitely recommend it to people under USCF 2100 (or ELO 2000 or even BCF 191, if you like). Stronger players can of course also make use of this book, but the often missing flexibility may only make it suitable as a surprise weapon in the long run. My assessment of the book:**** Informator 77 by Aleksandr Matanovic et al., 2000 Sahovski Informator, Softcover, Figurine Algebraic Notation, 396pp., $32.00 I don't know if other people out there feel the same, but whenever I receive the most recent copy of Informator in the mail, I get this funny feeling you get when you see an old friend with whom you have spend countless hours in the past and now you're together again. Back when I was 15, I became the strongest chess player of my chess club in S nders in Denmark. It wasn't a big club, but it was reasonably strong, and for a couple of years we even played in the Danish second division. But without a good training partner (PC programs as well as computers weren't what they are today), Informator became my training partner. My dad had, for some reason, started collecting the Informator back in 1981 (Informator # 30), and with this source of almost countless numbers of games, I started packing my brain with sometimes useful (and quite frequently also unnecessary) information. But it helped me decide which openings to play and what the latest developments in a particular line were. Nowadays, when my opening repertoire has long been cast in iron, I don't get that excited about the big novelties that get one or two exclamation marks. Because, as we all know, in the next issue there will be an improvement for the other side that proves that although the idea was interesting, it didn't win on the spot. But what I enjoy more than anything else is sitting with my chessboard and pieces, with a good mug of coffee and playing through top class games, usually annotated by one of the players. What other source can offer anything comparable? Look at the following selection of annotators (in alphabetical order): Adams, Anand, Bareev, Beliavsky, Dreev, Fedorov, Gelfand, Ivanchuk, Yusupov, Karpov, Kasparov, Khalifman, Kortchnoi, Kramnik, Leko, Morozevich, J. Polgar, Shirov, Short, Svidler and Timman. Impressive company, and I have left out at least a dozen of other players, rated over 2600. This proves that the legacy of Informator, despite modern technological changes, still lives on. In this edition there are 583 games or major game excerpts (games that are not complete, but contain theoretical value and as such are annotated) plus numerous minor game excerpts. This is the beef of the book. But there is a lot of garnish, the things that have been added over the years. There are sections with combinations and endgames from recent games. The endgame section in particular is something every serious chess students pay attention to. Some of the endgames are easy, but others are extremely difficult, which makes this excellent study material. When you're playing your own games, endgames are never either easy nor difficult; they are a tricky blend of everything. Former Correspondence World Champion J rn Sloth told a group of young talented Danish chess players that upon receiving a new Informator, we should spend two months studying the endgame section before proceeding with the remainder of the book! You may shake your head like we did back then, but there is some truth in his statement. The key to understanding the opening and in particular the middlegame is to have a deep knowledge of the endgame. Newer add-ons are the sections with best game of the preceding volume and the most important novelty of the preceding volume, both of which are decided by a jury of 9 present or past top players. In this volume, the best game prize went to Leko for his win against Adams from the Dortmund tournament 1999 (the punctuation is Leko's from Informator): 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0 0 Be7 6.Re1 b5 7.Bb3 0 0 8.c3 d5 9.exd5 Nxd5 10.Nxe5 Nxe5 11.Rxe5 c6 12.d4 Bd6 13.Re1 Qh4 14.g3 Qh3 15.Re4 Bb7? 16.Rh4 Qe6 17.Nd2 f5!? 18.Qh5! h6 19.Nf3 Be7 20.Rh3 c5! 21.dxc5! Bxc5 22.Bf4! Rae8 23.Rd1! (See Diagram) 23...Re7 24.Bg5! Rd7 25.Re1 Qb6 26.Re2 Kh7 27.Rh4!! a5 28.Bxh6!! Qxh6 29.Qg5 a4 30.Re6, 1 0 The most important novelty prize went to Zvjaginsev for his TN in the 2nd match game in his FIDE-Wch mini-match against Judith Polgar in Las Vegas last year: 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 e6 3 Nc3 Bb4 4 Nf3 c5 5 g3 cxd4 6 Nxd4 0-0 7 Bg2 d5 8 cxd5 Nxd5 9 Qb3 Qb6 10 Bxd5 exd5 11 Be3 Bxc3 12 Qxc3 Qg6 13 h4!TN Although the game later ended in a draw, this was considered the most important opening innovation. To me this decision is quite surprising as it is an improvement over the blitz game Kasparov- Kramnik, Moscow 1998. But part of the reason is that the 2nd most important novelty (according to the vote of the jury) only received two points (out of ten) from Anand, who incidentally was on the receiving end of the novelty in a game against I.Sokolov last year. By the way, nowadays the most important novelty of the preceding volume is followed by an encyclopaedia-style overview of the line in which the novelty has been made. This overview has appropriately enough been made by Zvjaginsev in this case. Towards the end of the book, we have the ever-present tournament results from the most important tournaments, and a more recent addition a celebration of a particular chessplayer. This time we take a look at Anatoly Karpov. It's collection of his (1) best games; (2) most important theoretical novelties; (3) excellent moves and combinations; (4) endings; and (5) statistics. You can always question the choices of which games, novelties etc. to feature, but overall I think most of the choices seem appropriate. Regarding the statistics, which are split up by ECO codes with both Black and White, there are a few interesting facts: in the games published in Informator, the only openings avoided with Karpov as White are C2 & C3, which means all openings where White doesn't answer 1...e5 (after 1 e4) with 2 Nf3. With Black, more openings are excluded: A5 thru A9 (the Benoni and the Dutch), D8 (the Gruenfeld Indian) and E7-E9 (King's Indian Defense). Isn't it curious that aside from the Dutch, these openings can all be found in Kasparov's opening repertoire. In last month's Checkpoint I took a look at the Electronic Edition (EE) of Informator 77. My overall impression was that it left a lot to be desired. That, however, isn't the case with the printed edition. My assessment of the book: ***** Magazine Review Special - Part 1 Welcome to Part 1 of the Magazine Review Special. Below you will find reviews of five different chess magazines from five different countries. The contents and aim of the magazines are very different and that's what makes our task interesting. We hope that these reviews perhaps will open our reader's eyes to new and interesting magazines that they, for some reason, have never considered receiving or perhaps never even heard of. Chess Life (USA) - Editor Glenn Petersen - 12 issues/year - A4- size - English language - Basic Subscription US$ 40.00 - E-mail: cleditor@uschess.org - Website: www.uschess.org Chess Life (CL) is the official magazine of United States Chess Federation USCF) and as such has to cover all the interests of its members as well as possible. We all know that when you have to please everybody all the time, the result usually isn't very good; on the contrary, it comes out quite stale. This is the feeling you get when open Chess Life. The basic format of CL is built around a number of core columns which may be found in every issue. These are: Letters to the Editor, Letter from Europe (by Bjarke Kristensen), Chess to Enjoy (Andy Soltis), Larry Evans on Chess (Larry Evans), Endgame Lab (Pal Benko), The 65th Square (Robert Byrne), Easy Does It (Robert Lincoln), Key Krackers (David L. Brown), Game of the Month (Michael Rohde), The Check is in the Mail (Alex Dunne), Solitaire Chess (Bruce Pandolfini), Chess Sense (Larry D. Evans), Understanding Chess (Jeremy Silman) and finally Tournament Life. Among these I find Understanding Chess, Chess Sense and to some extent also Solitaire Chess very good, articles directly aiming helping the beginner improve. In particular Silman's material is great; he writes well, is instructive and maintains an entertaining tone without straying from the facts. Byrne's 65th Square and Rohde's Game of the Month are usually worth a look. Both articles contain recently played games, but their approaches are different. Rohde focuses directly on the game, while Byrne writes more broadly about things that surrounds the game. Benko's Endgame Lab is another favorite of mine. Obviously he looks at the endgame, but he looks in-depth, often correcting studies and creating new masterpieces. However, sometimes it gets very technical and I imagine that a lot of people skip this column, because technical stuff often is boring stuff. But if you invest the time, there is a lot to learn from Benko's work. The Check is in the Mail, Key Krackers and Easy Does It, are typical examples of great topics that are being substantially pruned to fit it in, and therefore really don't do justice to the columnists. Alex Dunne, though, often manages to get a decent article out of the allotted space. The remaining regular columns are not too my taste, but for various reasons. The Letter from Europe column by Bjarke Kristensen is an easily digestible news round-up of all the European events in 1-2 pages per issue. There is of course no way you can cover any event with some sort of depth with this little space, but in many ways it resembles the way world news is covered by the American television networks (for non-Americans: CNN is on cable and not considered a network), some of which on local LA stations cover world news in 60 seconds! Larry Evans on Chess is in my humble opinion a waste of space. A lot of the questions are long and are of little interest to the majority of the readers. On occasion there are good questions, but they are few and far between. I have saved Soltis' Chess to Enjoy for last, because in my opinion it's the worst column of the bunch. I know that Pandolfini and others give him credit for writing good articles, but I really can't see it. First of all, all chess moves are given in the old descriptive English Notation (1 e4 = 1 P-K4), which nobody uses anymore, not even in Great Britain. Why his column is written like this is beyond me. But the content is also of questionable quality. In the March column "Eternal Questions", he asks and answers some questions that he thinks interest a lot of people. One is "Are annotators getting lazier?" He proceeds with his answer: "The answer to check the Laziness Index: how often the ambiguous '!?' is used. Informator No 1 (1966): Average of less than one per game (216 in first 250 games). Informator No. 30 (1981): Average of a little less than 2 per game (452 in the first 250 games). Informator No. 73 (1998) Average of 4.7 (4.67 in the first 100 games) - including 18 in a single game. And that's lazy." Is this for real? Has he any idea what he is talking about? I happen to have all three Informators in question. In the first Informator there is hardly any annotations to the games, and for that obvious reason, there are less '!?' than in more recent volumes. If you really wanted to check whether annotators are getting lazier, you should check the number of comments that are given to the games plus the length of their analysis. Comparing '!?'s, that's lazy! Another example of his shortcomings is taken from the May issue: "One of the hot openings of the 1990s was something called the Chebanenko Variation of the Slav Defense (1 d4 d5 2 c4 c6 3 Nf3 Nf6 4 Nc3 a6!? [moves converted from descriptive notation by CH]) - even though it doesn't help Black's development, advance a plan, or do anything particular useful. Yet a few masters played it more often than tried-and-true systems such as the Tartakower and Tarrasch defenses. Why? The answer to each question [there are three other questions] is simple - and at the same time inexplicable: fashion." For Soltis and others who may not know this, the idea is to play ...b5 and gain space on the queenside, forcing White to make a decision about his c-pawn. That's why White often plays either a4, c5 or cxd5 to give Black less of an incentive to play ...b5. I could come with other examples, but I will stop here. I think Soltis writes good books, when they are NOT about openings, but his CL column is of poor quality. If the effort he put into his books was duplicated in this column, they would be far better and much more interesting. Chess Life has a lot of good writers, but their output isn't very good - more like bland and disappointing. On a final note: the pictures of the columnists should be changed; they all seem at least a decade old. My assessment of the magazine: ** British Chess Magazine (Great Britain) - Editor John Saunders - 12 issues/year - A5-size - English language - Basic Subscription GBP 36.50/US$ 60.00 - E-mail: BCMChess@compuserve.com - Website: www.bcmchess.co.uk Being the oldest chess magazine in the world that is still being published demands a certain amount of respect because it takes a lot to continually change in order to meet popular demand. In the chess world, unlike any other sport - particularly soccer, rugby and cricket - the English seem to be able to look at themselves with a certain amount of sarcasm and self-irony. This makes for fun reading if conducted well (for a sample of this writing style, please check out Tony Miles' Miles Report here at The Chess Caf‚). Regular features in the British Chess Magazine (BCM) include: Tournament Reports, Spot The Continuation, Book Reviews, The Kavalek File, News In Brief, Notes & Queries, Problem World, Endgame Studies, Forthcoming Events, and more recently 120 Years of BCM. There is an impressive list of contributors. Some of the more notables are John Emms, Jonathan Speelman, Michael Adams, Matthew Sadler, John Nunn, Ian Rogers, Lubosh Kavalek, Jonathan Rowson and Ken Whyld. The last is a well-known chess historian, while the others are grandmasters (mainly British). The Tournament Reports in BCM are excellent and well-written, so is the inclusion of a high number of color photos, something virtually unheard of in chess magazines. There is an obvious focus on British tournaments, with a lot of attention put on the 4NCL, the British league, which increases in strength every year. Also the major tournaments such as Wijk aan Zee, Tilburg and other super tournaments receive some attention. The inclusion of Spot The Continuation, Problem World and Endgame Studies reminds us of the time when BCM was the chess publication for the English chessplaying public. As mentioned above, I find this a sad attempt to please everybody, which, due to space limitations, will never come out right. In BCM's defense it has to be mentioned that only Spot The Continuation can be found in every issue. The Quotes & Queries (or similar articles) can nowadays be found in many magazines. Interesting historical facts, rarely found games by chess greats, corrections of other people's work and a pot-pourri of other things that don't fit in anywhere else. In BCM, this column is edited by Ken Whyld, for whom I have the greatest respect. But one A5 page per issue is hardly enough to make an interesting column. Often the result seems half-hearted and appears expendable. Despite the fact that I'm not too interested in this kind of chess journalism, it attracts a lot of readers. Therefore I think that the people at BCM should rethink how much space is allotted to this column. This year BCM turns 120 years old, and to celebrate this rare occasion, every issue contains a few pages of what happened in a particular decade, starting from the beginning. The quality of the articles vary quite a bit because they are written by different people, but overall they are quite interesting and worth a read. Despite the age of BCM, the publisher produces a magazine that is very readable. The articles and game annotations are first rate with a great diversity in the subjects covered and written by excellent writers. My assessment of the magazine: **** Kaissiber (Germany) - Editor Stefan Bcker - 4 issues/year - Size: - German language - Basic Subscription DEM 48.00. E-Mail: redaktion@kaissiber.de - Website: www.kaissiber.de With the previous knowledge I had of Stefan Bcker I wasn't quite sure what to expect before I received some sample copies of the magazine. He's the man behind openings such as the Vulture (1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 c5 3 d5 Ne4), the Weasel, the Norwalder Variation of the King's Gambit and a couple of other variations that I can't recall. So would it be a magazine about bizarre openings (such as the other German magazine Randspringer) or would it be a different kind of magazine altogether? And if so what kind? From his web page I knew that he had gotten Danish GM and former world championship candidate Bent Larsen to write for him, a treat for any chess magazine. I have to admit that I was very pleasantly surprised when I opened the magazine. Aside from Larsen's articles on various topics and the questions for him, there are articles about theory, computer chess, historical themes (past masters, historical games, old opening books, etc.), book reviews, letters from the readers and much more. The articles from Larsen are excellent, but so are most of the others. Alfred Diel's "Aus vergangenen Zeiten", the book reviews (by Stefan Bcker & Gerard Welling) and the theoretical articles are, most of the time excellent and insightful. Note however that not all of the theoretical articles are to everybody's taste. Openings such as the Elephant Gambit (1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 d5) is a favorite and so is all sorts of lines in the King's Gambit. But what distinguishes these articles from those in other magazines is the fact that their use of old sources often reveal material that long has been forgotten, not because of the quality, but because the lines haven't received much attention in master games since the turn of the previous century. In which other magazine will you find articles where books such as Bilguer's "Das Zweispringerspiel in Nachzuge" (1839); Bilguer's "Handbuch des Schachspiels" (1st Edition, 1843); Steinitz's "The Modern Chess Instructor" (1889) and von Bardeleben''s "Zum Zweispringerspiel im Nachzuge" (1893) are quoted? And while mentioning this, I have to compliment Dr. Thomas Stock for his article on the Muzio-gambit; it was thorough, insightful and very well-researched (and quite long too - about 30 pages!!). A number of photographs and drawings of the masters of yesteryear are often to be found in Kaissiber, which is good because you rarely see them in other magazines. I also like the illustrations Z. Nasiolowski; they are brilliant, while the ones by Paul Flora have very little to do with chess and in my opinion should be omitted from future issues. The articles by Chrilly Donninger "Von Bytes und Bauern" are not to my taste either, but I'm probably not the right person to judge the quality of these articles, as I find the combination of computers and chess a very practical, but semi-boring necessity. I suppose other people will disagree with me on this point. Many will think this is just the right magazine for them and for many I'm sure it will be. It's entertaining, surprising and a treat for anyone interested in chess history. But the obstacle for many will be the German language. Without a reasonable familiarity with it you will not get 1/10 out of the quality articles in Kaissiber. But if you are interested, please send Stefan Bcker an e-mail to the e- mail address above; he has generously promised everybody who's interested a sample back issue. My assessment of the magazine: **** Schacknytt (Sweden) - Editor Carl Fredrik Johansson - 8 issues/year - A4-size - Swedish language - Basic Subscription - SKR 320.00 - E-mail: carl.fredrik.johansson@telia.com When I was younger, the Swedish Schacknytt was one of my favorites, but I haven't seen the magazine for many years. Therefore I thought it would be interesting to include it in this special review section. A lot has happened since then. The editor, writers, and look of the magazine have all changed. According to the editor, Schacknytt was in trouble a few years ago, so something had to done. Therefore the format, the columns and pretty much everything else have been changed, everything that is except the quality, which is still first rate. Like their colleagues at New In Chess magazine, they are not stuck with one format, a particular set of regular columns or anything like that. This makes for a flexible magazine with plenty of room for interesting one-shot articles, and that's what the magazine mainly consists of. With a number of Swedish GMs (GM Hillarp- Persson is, among others, on the editorial team) and IMs as main contributors, the chess level is high and when the contributors also manage to target their material for the average reader and make it understandable for everybody, you're on to something good. Most of the articles cover events either in Sweden, with Swedish participation or involving the top players in the world. With no regular columns, it's quite difficult to point out what is good and what is not, aside from the fact that the articles on the whole are much more than just good. However, something that I found particularly excellent was the Millennium issue. Rather than making it a regular issue like any other, they had a good idea. They selected eight Swedish chess players. Each player then picked two games which they annotated themselves. Only one of these games could be their own. The players selected were the grandmasters Hillarp-Persson, Schssler, kesson and Andersson, the international masters Hall, Ziegler and Wessman, and finally Sandstr”m, who is untitled, but a very colorful player. It was very interesting to see which games they found particularly interesting and why Andersson, for example, chose the game between Reshevsky and Bronstein from Zurich 1953, a game Black won after superb play in a King's Indian. Schssler showed his game against Bilek from Helsingfors 1978 (Bilek was White): 1 c4 b6 2 Nf3 Bb7 3 d4 e6 4 g3 Bxf3 5 exf3 d5 6 Nc3 dxc4 7 Bxc4 c6 8 d5 exd5 9 Nxd5 Ne7 10 Nf6+ gxf6 11 Bxf7+ Kxf7 12 Qxd8 Nd5, and after some discussion, a draw was agreed. But it's not as much about the game as it is about the story behind the game that's interesting. One of the most interesting articles I came across in the magazine I received was one by GM kesson on endgames played in Batumi at the European Team Championship. He picked a number of good and instructive endgames and annotated them thoroughly. For anyone who may have this issue handy: Please study this article carefully; merely understanding these endgames should increase your rating by at least 25-50 points. Schacknytt is a really great magazine with an amazing number of very high-quality articles. But for many of you who are reading this, there is one big problem: the Swedish language, which can be quite difficult to understand, unless you are from Scandinavia. Aside from that, you don't find many magazines that are better, in any language. My assessment of the magazine: **** ChessMail (Ireland) - Editor Tim Harding - 12 issues/year - A5- size - English language - Basic Subscription US$ 46.00/GBP 28.00. E-mail: editor@chessmail.com - Website: www.chessmail.com ChessMail is now in its fourth year, started and run by Tim Harding (who writes The Kibitzer column at The Chess Cafe). As the name indicates, we are talking about a magazine that primarily focuses on correspondence (CC) and e-mail (EMC) chess, and which, despite the emergence of strong computers, still is very popular for a great number of people (I for one will play in the first E-mail Olympiad, which starts under the auspices of ICCF - the International Correspondence Chess Federation). Many people probably know of the German publication Fernschach which for many years was the only CC magazine that was distributed to a wide audience. It was in written in German, but there wasn't a lot of text in those magazines, and therefore it tended to be quite boring. This is not the case with ChessMail. Tim Harding has made sure that the magazine contains a lot more than a few annotated games, simple biographies, and, for its biggest section, result pages. A typical issue is difficult to describe because they vary considerably in content, but here are a list of the topics that frequently are covered in the pages of ChessMail: News & Games from top events, Interview with a strong CC player plus a selection of the best games by the interviewee, Interesting chess web pages, ICCF rules - interpretations, Computer-related issues (ChessBase, PGN), Theoretical articles, Book reviews, A look at historical CC events, ICCF Results, and a more recent addition: GM Baburin Annotates. As you can see from the above, there are a lot of interesting topics covered. The majority of the articles are written by Harding himself, which is very impressive, considering that the magazine is a monthly. But not only are the articles there, they are well-written and well-researched (a trademark of Harding), which makes the magazine a very interesting read. The fact that the magazine doesn't repeat topics from issue to issue makes ChessMail something to look forward to. The material is very diverse, covering a great variety of topics. I mentioned the recent addition of the column by GM Baburin. Each month he focuses on an interesting game. The first game he annotated for ChessMail was the obvious choice of Kasparov vs The World. The annotations takes up 4.5 pages, which may sound like a lot, but they are well-written, instructive and very interesting. However, interesting as it was, I found his annotations to the game Bang-Andersson even better. For those who are not quite sure who the players are, Bang is Danish and widely considered one of the strongest CC players in the world, and Andersson is GM Ulf Andersson from Sweden, who has been rated over 2600 in OTB chess since the late seventies or at least as far back as I can remember. The only thing I would like to point out is the theoretical articles, which I find a little disappointing. In the magazines I have available, one article was on the Ponziani (1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 c3), another on Winckelmann-Reimer Gambit (or WRG among friends:1 e4 e6 2 d4 d5 3 Nc3 Bb4 4 a3 Bxc3 5 bxc3 dxe4 6 f3!?), and one on the Marshall Gambit Declined in the Semi-Slav (1 d4 d5 2 c4 c6 3 Nc3 e6 4 e4 Bb4!?). While I found the two former articles well-written, although of little interest (who plays these openings?), the coverage of the last was interesting, but, uncharacteristically for Harding, it left something to be desired with only few new suggestions and somewhat uninspired treatment. But this, in my opinion, is the only finger I can point at this excellent publication. For anyone interested in CC or EMC chess, I can highly recommend ChessMail. This magazine also has a lot to offer, interesting material and access to a lot of CC games from top events, where the TNs often are of as of equal importance as those seen in many 2600+ OTB events. For those who are interested, I can also recommend Mega Corr, which is a CD-ROM published by ChessMail. It contains about 271,000 CC/EMC games, of which approximately 25,000 have been annotated. It is an aid that any serious CC/EMC player should not be without. But there is an added bonus: most of the back copies of ChessMail can also be found on this CD. With Adobe Reader (which can be downloaded free on the internet), you have access to all the older issues and an abundance of interesting material. My assessment of the magazine: ****