Hard Lessons Larry Tapper Alexander Yermolinsky, The Road to Chess Improvement. Gambit Publications, London 1999. 222 pp., large format, soft cover, figurine algebraic notation, $24.95. Of the many Russian emigres who have made a strong impression on the U.S. chess scene, Alexander Yermolinsky is surely one of the most remarkable. In the early 90s, his dominant presence at all the major Swiss tournaments led the wags at Chess Chow to start calling him The Yerminator. Since then Yermo (his own preferred nickname) has won the U.S. Open and Closed championships, qualified for both FIDE knockouts, and earned his share of invitations to high-category GM tournaments. Yet life has not always been so easy for Yermolinsky. In his Leningrad years he had some respectable results, but never really made it to the big leagues. In fact he didn't earn his grandmaster title until 1992, when he was 34 years old. Late bloomers tend to make good teachers, and in this respect The Road to Chess Improvement fully lives up to its promise. This is a many-layered and fascinating book. On the most direct level, Yermolinsky explains how to improve your chess, then shows in detail exactly how he did it himself. The main idea is not very mysterious: take Botvinnik's advice, analyze each and every game you play, and be sure that you do so thoroughly and without prejudice. The author shows that he takes this directive seriously by providing very detailed analysis of his own games, some of them played as recently as 1999. This book, however, is far from being a showcase for the most brilliant moments in Yermo's tournament career: on the contrary, we often find him struggling against lesser opponents. Several journeymen of the U.S. Swiss circuit players such as Emory Tate and Sunil Weeramantry may be surprised to find their efforts documented here with the same close attention Yermo gives to his encounters with top GMs. Much of the framework for RCI comes from a series of lectures the author gave at the Yermo Chess Academy, which he cofounded in Cleveland with Boris Men. The influence of Men's distinctive approach to chess pedagogy is especially evident in Part 1, which is entitled Trends, Turning Points, and Emotional Shifts. Men and Yermo insist that when you analyze your own games, it is very important to understand your characteristic psychological profile. Are you typically eager to set the board on fire, or would you rather maintain a feeling of control? When your position takes a turn for the worse, do you tend to react aggressively or passively? What style do you prefer when you're playing an opponent much stronger than you, or much weaker? According to the Yermo Academicians, such psychological questions often provide the key to understanding and correcting one's failures in critical game situations. Yermolinsky describes his own style as positional, with a "minus" tendency that is to say, a preference for maintaining control over inviting complications. (If you don't believe this, consider the following curious fact about Yermo: in his early Leningrad years, he and his friend Loginov were big fans of Ulf Andersson and studied all his games minutely. Can you imagine that? It's like a basketball player growing up in Chicago idolizing not Michael Jordan but Toni Kukoc.) Actually a "minus personality" is not as bad as it sounds, though Yermo does observe that a "plus" style such as Kasparov's generally tends to reap bigger rewards. The point is that either tendency can sometimes prove to be a liability. For example, in Yermolinsky-Braude, New York 1992, the author reached the following favorable position: {diagram: White Ke1, Qe6 Ra1, Rg1, Ba3, Bg4; pawns - c4, d4, e3, f2, f4, h5; Black Kh8, Qg8, Ra8, Rf7, Ba4, Nd7; pawns - a5, b6, e4, f5, g7, h6} Yermo thought about 27. Bxf5! but rejected it because he was afraid Black might get counterplay with an exchange sacrifice. Postgame analysis, however, revealed that this fear was unjustified. Yermo gives the main line 27...Rxf5 28 Qxf5 Qxc4 29 Rc1 Qb3 30 Qxe4 Rg8 31 Bd6 Nf6 32 Qb1 Qd5 33 Be5. The move he actually played was 27 Be2, which was not bad but ominously indecisive. After this turning point, Braude found some tricky resources, Yermo faltered trying to break through the defense, and Yermo eventually lost. The moral of the story is most instructive and a fair sample of Yermo's perspective on chess: "It is amazing how much calculating White had to endure (and that ultimately took its toll) to create a second wave of attack only because of the lazy move 27. Be2. Failure to calculate (and to go for it!) a seemingly risky line in a better position could be attributed to the fear of blundering. The problem is that the 'safer' move may lead to even greater danger due to increasing complications in the later play. Problems tend to snowball, multiplied by your perception; it seems like all 'dark forces' of chess rise against you to punish the coward." In Part 2 (Openings and Early Middlegame Structures) the author overcomes his principled reluctance to teach openings and recommends a learn-as-you-go approach. He thinks the best way to study openings is simply to try them out and get acquainted gradually with the fine points of the characteristic middlegame plans. Yermo does not deny that nowadays one can't get very far without scouring the databases and reference books; but he insists that these activities work best when combined with ongoing practical experience. Here the reader won't find comprehensive coverage of any given line, and this is a deliberate choice on Yermo's part. He's convinced that legions of American players have been led astray by quick-fix approaches promoting offbeat systems such as the Grand Prix Attack against the Sicilian. Yermo thinks most players will be better off in the long run taking the extra trouble to learn mainstream theory. The opening topics covered range from quiet Exchange Slavs to violent Keres Attacks. I particularly liked the section on Exchange Grnfeld formations. Yermo is a strong believer in the power of the passed d-pawn, and he gives many illuminating examples in support of this point. Part 3 (Tactical Mastery and Strategic Skills) is the most speculative part of the book. Here Yermo expands on the themes he introduced in the first two parts, and pumps up the volume in his blunt and entertaining criticisms of the bland generalizations that have (in his view) too frequently passed for chess instruction. As his paradoxical title shows, he doesn't think much of the traditional distinctions between strategy and tactics. Here Yermo firmly aligns himself with the concrete, dynamic school of modern chess strategy (more about this later). For no particular reason, the author has added a brief epilogue on how to play chess computers. It doesn't have much to do with the rest of the book, but it's interesting. Yermo explains the lessons he learned from a series of encounters with Fritz4. The most striking general quality of this book, one which no objective summary can capture, is the roaring emotional intensity of Yermolinsky's writing. At tournaments Yermo is usually a picture of serene confidence, but apparently his inner life is as turbulent as anybody's. As he puts it: "During the game we are exposed to surges of emotions: elation, fear, hate, indifference, boredom, desperation. And we still have decisions to make." Yermo can be very funny and he never hesitates to get up on the soapbox. For example, here are his comments on the vaunted Soviet school: "Many things have been said about the Soviet School of Chess and how it produced legions of good players due to the elaborate system of chess education. I tell you what, the picture in the western eyes is distorted. There was no building bearing such a sign, 'The Soviet School of Chess'. There were no secret methods of teaching, or 800 numbers with grandmasters to provide you with chess advice 24 hours a day. 'I would have been a much better player if I had been born in the Soviet Union', is what I often hear from underachieving chessplayers, and I wonder what makes them think so. In my 30 years of tournament experience I have seen a lot of bad players, and most of them lived in the Soviet Union. With that kind of attitude, those complaining underachievers would still have been bad players if they had been born in the USSR." Yermo's writing style shows that he's absorbed the nuances of his adopted culture with remarkable thoroughness. It's startling, for example, to find him comparing a queen maneuver with hitting the cutoff man in baseball. There are times, though, when the slang is laid on a bit thickly. For example: " 'A Knight on b6 is always bad', as the founding father of chess dogmatism Dr. Tarrasch told us a long time ago. Man, was the dude right, or what?" Apparently Yermolinsky's British editors were so nonplussed by such expressions that they decided to adopt a strict laissez-faire policy. Still, one might have expected them to know that even slack-jawed Yanks frown on such errant constructions as "has ran". This is really a minor complaint, however. Yermo's writing may be quirky but it is never dull or obscure. Temperamentally, Yermo seems to be a born rebel who loves to explode popular myths. This makes his argumentative digressions especially interesting. For example the author, like everyone else, grew up believing that the Tal-Botvinnik matches represented a classic confrontation between tactical wizardry and strategic depth. But Yermo claims that he's made a detailed study of these matches and there's no extreme contrast in styles as far as he can see. The author is particularly rough on classical truisms: "Many books have been written since WW2, and guess what, a lot of them just repeat each other. Same boring lists of positional elements, same 'tactics serve strategy' and 'attack only when prepared' hollow advice, same carefully selected games, which are nothing but one-way beatings delivered by chess heavyweights to the tomato cans of amateur ranks. After the years of repetition the positional theory of chess has raised to become a religion with its sacred objects the untouchable classical games. Take Janowski- Capablanca, New York 1916. Not a bad game, but the annotations! ..." So Yermolinsky is sharply critical of all sorts of books ranging from classics by Capablanca and Botvinnik to the typical run of latter-day self-help tomes. There is one book, however, for which Yermo reserves unqualified praise: John Watson's Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy, which has deservedly won Book of the Year awards on both sides of the Atlantic. Yermolinsky says he reads Watson "like a bible," and the content of RCI seems in many ways consistent with this remarkable statement. Especially in Part 3, the reader may detect quite a few distinctly Watsonian themes. For example, Yermo mentions a kind of role reversal we often see nowadays, with White absorbing Black counterplay and hoping to convert stable advantages later. He quotes Malaniuk's curt observation that when we compare the Bird to the Dutch, the extra tempo doesn't seem to help. And Yermo, like Watson, sees parallels between learning chess and learning a language. He makes the point that being able to describe a language systematically is not the same thing as being able to communicate. The Yermolinsky Watson connection raises the intriguing possibility that in spite of the current glut of routine, trashy publications, something of real importance may be happening in the development of chess theory. The best writers of our day represent quite varied outlooks and temperaments: Watson is by nature a scholar, Yermolinsky a firebreathing polemicist. But they share certain qualities: a thoroughgoing skepticism about received opinions combined with a certain fascination with the turbulent patterns we discover when we analyze a game with minute attention. Viewed in this light, The Road to Chess Improvement may prove to be of lasting interest not only to practical players, but also to those who are motivated by a more general curiosity about the nature of the game.