Practical Middlegame Tips by GM Edmar Mednis, 1998 Cadogan Books, Figurine Algebraic Notation, Paperback, 175pp., $19.95 Reviewed by Paul Kollar If you are a chessplayer of even moderate experience you probably have heard or read the phrase "weak grandmaster" used in discussions of certain players who have reached a level of skill and understanding that you will, in fact, most certainly never attain, even in the next millennium. I, myself, have used that epithet more than once to blithely characterize various powerful chess personalities as mere bit players in the ongoing world chess drama. Those stars we all know of, those one hundred or so celebrities who occupy, firmly or tenuously, the thin air nearest the aerie of the world's championship, are, of course, immune from that moronic oxymoron. But why should the members of the very exclusive club of grandmasters who have earned seats in the tier just under, say, ELO 2500 ever be so slighted? Yes, we know it's a relative term. As at the North Pole any one step is to the south, Kasparov may (currently) refer to all other chessplayers in the world as weak-er, but speciousness shouldn't be accepted because it's dressed up as theoretical. Chances are very good that, even if you are, after years of diligent study and practice, a master, the "weak grandmaster" can beat you "like a child" over and over again while dozing. So, let's ascend to the particular, to the real world of accomplishment and failure, achievement and disappointment. Let's focus on one of these GM's with a so-called so-so rating; let's look closer at the author of our book under review, Edmar Mednis, an American grandmaster "in full." Born in 1937 in Riga, Latvia, birthplace of Nimzovich and Tal, Edmar Mednis later became a U.S. citizen. Trained as a chemical engineer, he eventually, perhaps inevitably, opted for a life of chess. While never threatening to capture the world championship crown, he nevertheless, by dint of pure hard work, steady application, and a pragmatic, common-sensible, level-headed approach to chess and life, attained world renown and respect on several counts. He became our Levenfish, our Averbakh, our Romanovsky. Emerging from the generation that brought us Robert Byrne, Donald Byrne, Arthur Bisguier, William Lombardy, and Larry Evans, Mednis holds, with them and others, an estimable chair in U.S. chess's round table. This group reached prominence in the cold war era when world chess was utterly dominated by the former Soviet Union, and when our complex little board game was as politicized as much as it would ever be. In those days America had the biggest cars, the best cigarettes, movies and television, and many hydrogen bombs; the Russians had the best ballet, the leading space program, the most successful Olympic athletes and grandmasters, and many hydrogen bombs. Americans were glued to sitcoms and Yankee-Dodger World Series; Russians were glued to poetry and unending world chess championships held in Moscow. In the fifties the Soviets had chess in their schools, we had "rumbles" in ours. When Mednis was moving up the FIDE ladder the game was apparently all but owned permanently by the USSR, not, I believe, because of any 'ism's', but simply because of the weight of numbers. More of "them" played more often with more dedication and more enthusiasm in more places and with more passion. Despite this imbalance unaccountable results sometimes happened: Robert Byrne beat Paul Keres in '55; Donald Byrne downed Averbakh in '54 and Smyslov in '62; Bisguier defeated the young superstar Spassky in '55; and Evans beat Taimanov with black! William Lombardy led the U.S. student team to Olympiad victory, winning from Spassky, causing Muscovite consternation. And our Mr. Mednis came as close as possible to winning the World Junior Championship, finishing second behind... Spassky. It's probably wrong to see portents in this. The younger Bobby Fischer, skinny and difficult, frequently exasperating to this more mature group of Mednis and his peers, had a number of rows to hoe before he also topped Boris. But that's another story. While Fischer was moving from jeans and tee shirts to suits and wing-tips, and from being impossible to being incomparable (as well), Edmar Mednis was amassing a creditable record and considerable international strength. When not coming in the middle (or higher) in U.S. championships he was beating people like Timman, Korchnoy, Gheorghiu, Portisch, and Sax. As many know, in 1962 he also handed the now world-class Fischer his first-ever defeat in a U.S. Championship, with black! This was after Bobby had won four championships in a row with a score of 28 wins and 14 draws! Incidentally, this defeat must have really burned Bobby for in the next year's championship he not only resumed his habit of not losing, he wouldn't condescend to a single draw either. He put together an incredible eleven wins out of eleven games played! Fischer lost only two more U.S. Championship games in his life (that's out of 43 more games). We should remember that it was Mednis who first drew blood from that cold stone. By the time Mednis tied for third in the 26th U.S. Championship in 1978, and before he attained his GM status (in 1980), he had added to his resume the following accomplishments: member of several U.S. international teams, syndicated columnist, college chess instructor, TV commentator, and, to my mind his most significant and lasting contribution, author of well-regarded, widely praised chess books. His debut effort was the hubristically titled How to Beat Bobby Fischer (1974), a reasonably well-annotated collection of all of Fischer's losses since the then world champion won his first U.S. championship at fourteen. The book is an interesting period piece and was, I think, good practice for Mednis's later, more proficient and meatier How Karpov Wins (1975), which included all of the newest World Champion's wins beginning with Moscow 1971, and which was published right after the American champ entered a living oblivion. One has to wonder if Fischer read either of these books, and if so, what on earth he thought of them. Regarding the latter volume, analysis of games and style of the subject aside, I, for one, have to commend Mednis for coming up with the idea of an appreciation of Karpov's strength and style at a time when American chessplayers were either so heartsick or disgusted at the way Fischer lost his title that they were completely unable to be objective about the worthiness of the young Russian. At the time many American chess players were blaming the Soviets for Fischer's decision and didn't want to look at a bogus champion's career, but Mednis did, clinically and without any agenda other than a healthy curiosity about a new phenomenon that deserved attention and study. This ability and willingness to be objective and clear, and its concomitant respect for practicality and soundness manifests itself in most, if not all, of Mednis's books. In the very well known Practical Endgame Lessons (1978), based on his column, "The Practical Endgame", Mednis produced a work that illustrated his forte beautifully. This book is a perfect antidote to the regrettably necessary theoretical manuals such as Basic Chess Endings, and Practical Chess Endings (by Fine, and Euwe & Hopper, respectively), which, as we all know, can turn one to stone or induce stupor. It's the liveliest volume on endings there is besides Nunn's Tactical Chess Endings, and the most engaging outside of Abraham's Technique in Chess. And again Mednis gets extra credit for the then unique position of seeing the true value of the 1974 match games between Karpov and Korchnoy, a bitterly intense, and vicious fight that proved to be for the World Championship. While all the rest of us were grudgingly admitting the first game was "ok" (it was a masterpiece), and everything else was rather boring, Mednis showed us that there was gold there to be found and devoted a section of this fine book to proving it. It shouldn't surprise us that so demanding and discriminating a critic as Mark Dvoretsky praised this book and chose it over one of Keres' ending books. Mednis wrote many more entertaining and instructive books over the next two decades, including From the Opening into the Endgame, and From the Middlegame into the Ending during the eighties, and How to Beat a Superior Opponent, and Strategic Chess: Mastering the Closed Game in the nineties, among quite a few others. These four are certainly worth looking at, the last being a well-chosen collection of thirty games illustrative of closed games, the various openings that lead to them, and the typical strategies that are employed by the strongest players of such, and why. It is, like Bronstein's The Chess Struggle in Practice, a rich mine of ideas and understanding. Our current book is the last of a trilogy that began with Practical Opening Tips (1997) and Practical Ending Tips (1998). I regret that the trio, while still bearing many of the positive hallmarks of the author, does not quite reach the highest level of quality that he has formerly and frequently demonstrated. The first of the set was reviewed earlier in The Chess Caf‚ (see Archives) and received, justly, a guarded commendation as "respectable," a judgment with which I can concur. The second entry, which, like the first and last, is a collection of "updated" and "enhanced" material from his various popular columns, is closer to the high standards Mednis himself set in the earlier works mentioned above. This is perhaps due to the fact that ending know-how and explication is less trendy and far more stable than that of opening explorations, and Mednis has always seemed supremely confident and adept when dispensing end-game expertise. This book's "tips" are a very helpful augmentation to the more usual endgame knowledge, especially the section that covers the situation when "The Stronger Side has only a Double Pawn". If you can fit this admittedly non-essential yet "respectable" volume into your budget and bookshelves, I believe it will stand quite nicely next to Averbakh's Essential Endgame Knowledge. "Once my opening and endgame series were completed it was natural that I should consider a book on the middle game. It was obvious that this would involve entirely different problems The theory of the middle game is a very difficult thing to tackle " -Dr. Max Euwe Turning at last to the ostensible subject of this review, I again must regret, even lament, that Practical Middlegame Tips does not sufficiently approach the best that Edmar Mednis can do, and has indeed done. If you bought the first two-thirds of this trilogy, it may be that the best reason to buy this final offering is that, like the 'toon Roger Rabbit, you are irresistibly driven to add, after "shave" and "haircut", "TWO BITS"! The middlegame in chess is too vast, too rich, too complicated to be served up in hors d'oeuvres fashion. After all, its "infinite variety" is so incalculable as to be beyond the grasp of even the infernal computer. I recognize that Mednis' title has promised only "tips", but the disparity between the depth and breadth of his subject and the trimness of this book is so great as to render his grandmasterly advice starkly insufficient. (It is curious and ironic that Averbakh, with whom Mednis compares as a writer-teacher, has also, with his Chess Middlegames: Essential Knowledge, fallen into the same trap of trying to put infinite space into a nutshell.) We are entitled by a precedent set by he himself to expect more than a foamy Chess Lite from Mednis! Mednis states in his preface that "[his] purpose is to cover the most important aspects of middlegame play whether it be tactics or strategy, attacking or defending." But, understandably, in my estimation, he cannot begin to "cover", adequately, all the manifold aspects of the immensity that is the middlegame simply by arranging thirty-three recent games on the hastily erected scaffold that is his table of contents, no matter how professional the annotating. The introductory section texts are too often no consolation, impressing one as rather thin and perfunctory, cooked up after the games were collected, rather than before, and somewhat forcibly made to fit what was selected earlier for other purposes. His criteria for selection of these illustrative games was, he says, (1) that "the game course illustrated the principle clearly", a rationale that is both obvious and characteristic, and above criticism; and (2) that "the opening is one still popular in present- day play," a test for inclusion that I find less compelling, but possibly more convenient for the author with a cache of pre- analyzed material. Incidentally, Mednis need not have apologized for including twelve of his own games selecting more games, by anyone, that more strongly reinforced and illuminated more principles would have served him and us better. About two-thirds of the games were played in the 1990's, (the rest but one in the 70's,) and feature efforts by Kasparov, Karpov, Anand, Shirov, Ivanchuk, Leko, and Lautier among others. This selection gives the book a contemporary flavor that doesn't detract from Mednis's purpose, although it will, in time, "date" it including some classic games from pre-silicon ages would not have hurt it. A much more subjective complaint regarding the example games, and admittedly problematic, or a pure matter of taste, centers on the number of diagrams. Some few of the games are over-saturated with them. Games 12, 14, and 15, which are 40, 30, and 44 moves in length, respectively, have eight or nine diagrams each! I see this as misdirected generosity which, taken to extremes, can lead to those chess book monstrosities that "provide" a diagram after every move. The pictorial largesse is at the expense of space that should have been used to further the reader's understanding of concepts. Evidently working under a tight spatial budget, self-imposed or not, Mednis might have used more matter and less art. Again from the preface: "In each game I concentrate on that area of the middlegame which the section features. As a corollary to this, I try to avoid lengthy discourse on other parts. When a thorough knowledge of the opening variation is important to follow the middlegame presentation, I spend substantial time on that opening. Otherwise I just give enough information to set the stage for the middlegame discussion to follow." Now, isn't that just how you or I might do it? Yet all thirty-three games have "substantial time" spent on opening discussion. This time was at the expense of middlegame narrative and again suggests that proper emphasis is diluted by lack of focus. Were most of these games "out takes" from "Opening Forum" columns? One can contrast this with Euwe and Kramer's wonderfully comprehensive two volume work, The Middlegame, wherein all complete games are printed with the opening moves simply listed in run-on fashion without comment, so as to amplify concentration on the middlegame feature or concept at hand. Perhaps our author was unconsciously composing a book to be titled From the Opening to the Middlegame. "This [the middle game] is the part of the game in which it is hardest to set down rules and give good advice. For every rule one proposes, there will be so many exceptions that the rule may be more misleading than helpful." -Dr. John Nunn Mednis has divided this small collection of games into four "major parts", and further subdivided the parts into 23 "sections". The parts are entitled: 1.) Attacking the King; 2.) Defending the King; 3.) The Center; 4.) Important Strategic Elements. Only Part Three has introductory material, the other three parts are simply headings. Each Section, however, is headed by "a discussion of the principles involved", but only three of these discussions take up more than one page, and that because of an imbedded diagram. Many of the other twenty preludes, meant to give the reader "theoretical underpinning required for understanding the subject-matter" fail to fill their allocated one page. More than one half of these very sparsely worded introductions are followed by only a single illustrative game from which the reader is to "learn from practical examples about real-life situations". The other sections are festooned with a bounteous two games each. Turning attention to quality, I find the exposition generally fair to good, and, as is his wont, simple, clear, and practical. Some samples of the better, albeit brief overtures: From Part One, Section 7: Speculative Sacrifices " 'Substantial risk' [which characterizes speculative sacs] does not refer to sacrificing a pawn for some reasonable compensation. It means risking a lot of material sufficient to lose the game if the sacrifice is not successful. Moreover, a speculative sacrifice is not to be confused with a foolhardy one. If you sacrifice a rook and your calculation shows that one response by your opponent gives you the win, yet the other nine continuations refute your sacrifice, then obviously it is stupid to risk such a sacrifice. Your odds of success based on your objective evaluation should be at least 50% that the sacrifice is either inherently sound or that your opponent will lose his way." From Part Two, Section 11: Strategic Sacrifices to Stop Attacks "Most of the time the person doing the attacking is the one who does the sacrificing. However, the defender should not close his eyes to such a happening either. There are plenty of times when the attacker has sacrificed a pawn (or more) and/or taken on some strategic deficiency to get his attack going as quickly as possible. Under such circumstances it is often advisable for the defender to look for an opportunity to sacrifice some material himself. Not only can this serve as an objectively valid way to break the attack, but often enough this also has psychological ramifications. The attacker may be unprepared for the major change on the board and cannot cope with the need to look for the new truth in the position." As an aside, I might mention that this is an unanticipated observation from a player whose style and persona may have been unfairly judged, in some quarters, to be too stolid and overly methodical, even dull; we should see here that practicality does not preclude either gambling or street fighting at the right moment. By way of contrast here are some few samples of introductory matter that do not inspire: From Part Two, Section 12: Defending Lost Positions " for best competitive results we need to save as many lost positions as possible. The single most important principle is to be of stout heart and never give up the fight. The very top players excel at this because they simply cannot stand losing. I would like to formulate the principles of defending lost positions as follows: 1) Tell yourself: I have only begun to fight! 2) Do nothing to make your position worse. 3) Prevent the obvious major threats. 4) Force your opponent to make decisions regarding how to proceed. Any time he has to make a decision he may make a wrong one. 5) Look for opportunities for counterplay. If you do achieve genuine counterplay, your opponent again will have to make decisions. 6) Hope for the best. 7) Remember that you have nothing to lose the position is already lost!" Well, Edmar, thank you very much. I, not a top player by any means, "simply cannot stand losing" as well, but must say that I find this advice, these "tips", very close to mere cheerleading. Excepting points 4 and 5, this stuff closely approximates glossy magazine, pop-psych, throwaway info-babble. From Part Four, Section 18: Strategic Attacks "Another important type of 'attack' is not about the king. Here the player tries to create opportunities on the other flank. As examples I can mention the Minority Attack and the Mar del Plata Variation In each case White works aggressively to create weaknesses in Black's queenside However, such middlegame strategy is so much part of the opening variations that these middlegames are covered fully in treatises on those particular openings." [and are therefore not examined any further.] Oh well, perhaps Boris Shashin's Attacking the Queenside would help, or Euwe's Judgement and Planning in Chess. From the same section: "There is yet another kind of strategic attack that is important in itself because it depends solely on the particulars of the position and requires creativity both in visualization and execution. In our illustrative game you will see sacrifices and attacks yet the safety of both kings is never in question." Never in question until Ivanchuk lost his to Anand, that is. The accompanying game, notwithstanding the fuzzy introduction, would have better exemplified the sacrifice of the exchange, and/or minor piece vs. three pawns situations in a chapter on the relative value of the pieces, but there is no such section in this book. The very last section, 23: Queen vs. Two Rooks, is the only chapter that touches on material equivalents. In Section 1: Attack and Counterattack, we get two Sicilian Defense examples, both featuring the Richter-Rauzer Attack (B67) appropriate choices for counter-punching lessons, but the introduction offers this eye-opening advice: "The best practical advice to give to Black is to get going as quickly as possible along the c-file and hope for the best!" Whether attacking or defending, Mednis apparently "hopes for the best" on principle. There is one original revelation in the whole book. Section 21: Two Bishops aren't Everything (when the Knights are Better). Mednis has here explored a "truth...not sufficiently appreciated by the chess public." He notes that there are open positions where "...the bishop-pair 'by rights' should be the superior minor-piece combination, but in fact the knights are better." This discovery may be terribly arcane to some, but extremely novel and interesting to many. It's a pity that Mednis could not treat this subject more fully. The breezy brevity of that which was included in this book is only part of the problem I have with it. What was excluded by Mednis (or by Cadogan?) could have filled a ... valuable book on the middlegame. There is no material on planning or combinations, two broad, definitive areas that constituted the halves of Romanovsky's great work and feature highly in so many other major works on the middlegame. There's no overview of tactics such as can be found in the chapter on the middlegame in Tarrasch's The Game of Chess, or Reuben Fine's The Middle Game in Chess. There is virtually nothing on the initiative, on exchanging or liquidation, on maneuvering, on play on open lines, on play in even positions, on weak pawns, on prophylaxis. Euwe and Kramer, in their Middlegame, discuss about thirty pawn formations; Mednis does not. Succinctness can be a virtue, of course. J.E. Littlewood's How to Play the Middlegame in Chess, which somewhat resembles Mednis's book, is very compact, given the subject, and includes summarized "hints for beginners" at the conclusion of its chapters. It is superior to Practical Middlegame Tips because, while not all- inclusive (what book is?), or part of a trilogy, it still possesses an impressive density and relative fullness that I did not see in this review's subject. What we have here, then, are not enough games stretched much too tautly over not enough middlegame themes and signposts, making for a very rickety shelter that barely stands alone, relying more on reputation than inherent design or artfully rich content to stand up to inspection. Naturally, because he is Mednis, after all, and has that marvelous reputation, there are some bright points to be found, it's just that they, like the number of examples and the size of the chapter introductions are disappointingly scanty. Venturing into the oceanic reaches of the game's most uncharted, inexhaustible phase, Mednis might have produced something to rival Reti and Nimzovich, to compete with Euwe and Pachman, but, he barely got wet. If the reader is looking for "tips" or "hints" alone, the try Hartston's Better Chess, or Nunn's Secrets of Practical Chess, or, better, anything by the amazing Purdy. If looking for full-blown middlegame treatises, then try the Masters I have alluded to. If, however, you are, like me, looking for a magnum opus from Edmar Mednis, who could be, someday, the dean of American chess, then hang in there, and "hope for the best." I expect we "ain't heard nothin' yet!" Post Script: As the foregoing was my "maiden" Chess Caf‚ effort, perhaps the reader will allow, if not forgive, a short story that just might stretch the boundaries of acceptable book reviews. For many years I have been noticing with bemused curiosity the recurrent acknowledgment in the preface of almost all of my Mednis books. It was the author's expressed thanks to his wife for "never-ending" support. Not so remarkable probably millions of authors did so, or even dedicated their book to their mate. What was singular was the repeated phrase, "As always, my deepest gratitude goes to my wonderful blonde wife, Baiba...". I thought this rather uncommonly descriptive, unexpectedly specific, but, of course, not for me to question, much less criticize. Well, in 1990 I met Edmar Mednis and his wife. We were coincidentally at the K vs. K match that took place in New York City, in a mid-town hotel that was buzzing with the excitement and the electricity of such a great event. Being a mere spectator with no particular credentials did not stop me from approaching Mr. and Mrs. Mednis. I button-holed him with no regard for his time or probable need to get to the press room, and began to shake his hand and compliment his columns and books, and generally gush, while Mrs. Mednis stood patiently by. It was when I turned to her out of the remembered need to be polite and also include her in "my" conversation, that I suddenly and totally realized the absolute truth and fittingness of her husband's adjectives! I think now as I thought then that his brief allusion to her in his books was rather understated. Capablanca was right... the good player is always lucky!