Brevity Examined at Length Taylor Kingston The Quickest Chess Victories of All Time, by Graham Burgess, 1998 Cadogan Books, London, 224 pages, figurine algebraic, $19.95 Chess, like music, literature and food, offers different things for different tastes. If a work such as Alekhine's My Best Games of Chess can be likened to Beethoven's symphonies, Melville's Moby Dick, or a multi-course gourmet dinner with fine wine, then a collection of chess miniatures is more like an album of three- minute pop songs, a stack of comic books, or a bag of Fritos and a Coke. Maybe not sophisticated fare, but fun. This sort of "quickie collection" has been a staple of chess literature for years. Some, such as Chernev's 1000 Best Short Games of Chess (1955) or Wall's 500 Miniatures series (1980s), have gone for sheer quantity; others, such as Reinfeld's Great Short Games of the Masters (1961), or IM Neil McDonald's Modern Chess Miniatures (1995), have opted for fewer games (80 and 50 respectively) with longer annotations. In the present instance, compiler Graham Burgess, a British FM and recently quite the prolific author, has clearly gone for quantity. His shorter standard for "miniature" (only 13 moves maximum vs. the usual 20 or 25) and his extensive use of computer databases have resulted in a book of extreme density: including both the main lines and the notes, over 2,000 games are presented. However, the emphasis on quantity does not mean that quality is lacking (with a caveat or two; see below). Burgess has organized and indexed this mass of material usefully, by opening (though there is no index of players). Thus one can easily concentrate on one's own repertoire, or examine any given opening, and learn many (though not all) of the traps and recurring tactical themes peculiar to it: Bishop sacs on f7 or h7, forking Queen checks from a4 or h5, Knight sorties aiming at c7 or c2, central pawn pushes, etc. For example, in lines with a fianchettoed KB for White and a fianchettoed QB for Black, Burgess notes how the following idea "keeps claiming victims." Maivald-Bockius, 1994: 1. d4 Nf6 2. Nf3 e6 3. g3 b6 4. Bg2 Bb7 5. 0-0 Be7 6. Bg5 d6 7. Qd3 0-0?? (See Diagram) 8. Bxf6 Bxf6 9. Ng5, winning the Exchange. Several similar examples are provided. The squares f7 and f2 are frequent targets, as in Mantia-Duhlmeier, Cincinnati 1964: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 a6 4. Ba4 Nf6 5. d4 b5 6. Bb3 Nxd4? 7. Nxd4 exd4 8. e5 (See Diagram) 8. ... Ng8? 9. Qf3, 1-0. By no means are patzers the only victims in such games. Here, for instance, Black is rated 2490, but he goes down in only five moves. Ibragimov-Zhelnin, Moscow 1998: 1. d4 d6 2. Nf3 Nd7 3. e4 g6 4. Bc4 Bg7?? (See Diagram) 5. Bxf7+, 1-0. Either the King or Queen goes after 5. ... any 6. Ng5 etc. Goofing grandmasters are found in surprisingly high numbers. Some are from past eras, as in Tarrasch-Gunsberg, Manchester 1890: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 Nc6 3. Bb5 Nf6 4. 0-0 Nxe4 5. d4 a6 6. Ba4 b5 7. Bb3 d5 8. dxe5 Be6 9. c3 Be7 10. Re1 0-0 11. Nd4 Qd7?? (See Diagram) 12. Nxe6 and either recapture loses a piece to 13. Rxe4. Zukertort also fell into the same trap against Tarrasch. However modern GMs prove quite fallible as well, e.g. Ilescas (GM, Spain) - Sadler (GM, England), Linares 1995: 1. d4 d5 2. c4 dxc4 3. e4 Nc6 4. Be3 Nf6 5. Nc3 e5 6. d5 Na5 7. Nf3 Bd6 8. Qa4+ Bd7!? 9. Qxa5 a6! (See Diagram) 10. Nb1? (better 10. Na4) Nxe4 11 Kd1 c3!, and though White can extricate his Queen, after 12. b4 b6 13 Qa3 a5 14 Qc1 axb4 his position is "a total mess," hence 0-1. There are a fair number of premature resignations, such as O. Bernstein-Tartakower, Paris 1937: 1. e4 e5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 Nf5 4. dxe5 Nxe4 5. Bc4 Be6?! 6. Bxe6 fxe6 7. Qe2 d5 8. Qb5+ Nc6 9. Nd4 Qd7 10. Qxb7?! Bb4+ 11. c3 Nxd4 12. Qxa8+ Ke7 13. Qxh8 Qb5 (See Diagram) and White resigned, believing mate on e2 was inevitable, when in fact after 14. Qxg7+ Kd8 15. Qg8+ Kd7 16. Qxh7+ Kc6 17. Qh5 he probably had no worse than a draw. Perhaps this is where Tartakower got his famous dictum "No one has ever won a game by resigning." Burgess divides the games into 6 main types: 23 pages on flank openings (e.g. English, R‚ti), 15 on miscellaneous queen pawn lines (Trompowsky, Torre, Benko, Dutch and other non-Indian lines without 1. ... d5), 78 on semi-open king pawn openings (French, Pirc, Sicilian, Caro-Kann et al), 65 on open king pawn lines (Giuoco Piano, Ruy Lopez, Vienna, various gambits), 21 on Queen's Gambit and other symmetrical QP lines (mostly Blackmar-Diemer), and 13 on various Indian lines (King's, Queen's, Nimzo-, Gruenfeld). Apparently, to avoid early death Indian defenses are the best bet. The line most prone to premature demise? Unsurprisingly, the Sicilian, with 32 pages. Though I have omitted them here, the games are generally interspersed with dense notes, some of them evaluative comments but the majority being alternate variations, including many full games. Between main lines and notes each page contains on average about 10 games and often dozens of minor variations, but usually only one diagram. This makes the book a tough read, virtually impossible to use without pieces and board, and none too easy even with them, due to the overwhelming swarm of fine print. As I said, Burgess has definitely opted for quantity here, but at the expense of readability. I point this out not to fault his work (any significant improvement would have either greatly reduced the number of games, or greatly increased the number of pages and the price), but to make clear that this is not a book designed for casual reading; it requires work. The reward for such work, says Burgess, is improvement in pattern recognition: "[S]eeing the same idea a few times changed it from being something I would not have seen in advance to being an idea I recognized as an inherent possibility in certain types of positions, an idea to be taken into account ...[A]n ability to sense potential disasters from afar will improve the general level of your play in the openings." I would have to agree. Despite my earlier comparison of the book to snack food, it does have nutritional value, especially for club-level players, who generally make and encounter, more than masters do, the kind of mistakes it presents. I would not expect to find every possible trap in your pet line; a specialized work is likely better for that, but this book is generally superior to other "trap collections" such as Hodgson's Quick Chess Knockouts or some Pandolfini works. I would add that the reader should not regularly expect victory in 13 moves, no matter how much he studies this book. There is no consistent shortcut to victory, and a quick win will always involve a degree of luck. In the sense, though, that luck is the meeting of preparation and opportunity, this book could help one become luckier. Earlier I mentioned "a caveat or two." Readability was the first, here's the second. In Chess Notes #2226 (New In Chess), Edward Winter calls Quickest Chess Victories "the recent book with [probably] the largest quantity of incorrect data for old games," citing two examples: "multiple imprecision" in a Capablanca game on page 160, and a game on page 67 "with the wrong name for Alekhine's opponent, the wrong year, and the wrong conclusion." I could not check the former (Capablanca-NN, USA simul 1914, Three Knights), but using Skinner and Verhoeven's encyclopedic Alexander Alekhine's Chess Games, 1902-1946 I was able to check the three Alekhine games on page 67. Two were correct, a third was given by Burgess as Alekhine-Navarro, Madrid 1940: 1 e4 c6 2 Nc3 d5 3 Nf3 dxe4 4 Nxe4 Bf5?! 5 Ng3 Bg6? 6 h4! h6 7 Ne5 Nd7 8 Nxg6 fxg6 9 d4 e5 10 Qg4 Qf6 11 Be3 Ne7? 12 Ne4 1-0. In AACG there is no such 1940 game but there is Alekhine- Naharro, Madrid 1941, which is identical through White's 12th but then continues 12 ... exd4 13 Nxf6+ Nxf6 14 Qxd4 Rd8 15 Qxa7 Nf5 16 Qxb7, 1-0. Winter notes that the correct score exceeds Burgess' 13-move limit. It would appear that here Burgess was the victim of spurious database entries. A search on Master Chess 98, using criteria of "Alekhine" vs. "Na" for 1940-41, found two matches: "Alekhine- Navarro, Madrid 1940," identical to Burgess' text, and "Alekhine- Nabarro [sic], Madrid 1941" which matched the AACG score (if not the name). In his introduction Burgess admits the occasional unreliability of such sources and says he made efforts to cull out specious games, but it would seem that at least two (counting the Capa game) slipped through the cracks, and Winter says there are more. Checking further myself, I found at least one other: a game Mieses-Chigorin, Ostend 1906, that actually went 15 moves is truncated to 13. Also an anecdote given with Botvinnik-Spielmann, Moscow 1935 may have some facts garbled. And while not an historical matter, quite definitely garbled is page 45's incomprehensible statement "it is easier to exploit extra material than it is to exploit a material advantage in a position of material imbalance." Say what? Therefore, while it's not certain that Quickest Chess Victories has the largest recent quantity of incorrect data for old games, I will not recommend it as an authoritative historical reference or literary exemplar. Burgess might want to take care, lest he be started down the slippery slope that would make him England's Eric Schiller. However, while technically valid, criticism on this basis seems somewhat beside this particular book's point. Was it an authoritative historical reference that Burgess was trying to write, or that his likely readers want? Almost certainly, no. Buyers of this kind of book are looking to win, and win fast. They are less interested in exactly when or whether Alekhine played Navarro, Naharro, Najdorf, or Nabokov than they are in the traps, tricks and tactics that were used to win, whether truly or apocryphally. This book is basically a survey of openings, and one can easily find comparable or worse mistakes in many respected opening manuals. While not condoning its errors, I still give a conditional recommendation to The Quickest Chess Victories of All Time, as a supplemental part of opening study, to players of any rating below senior master, as long as they have good eyesight or a powerful pair of reading glasses, the willingness to work through a lot of fine print, and the prudence not to take it as historical gospel.