Checkpoint by Alexander Baburin

Unorthodox Chess Openings by Eric Schiller, 1998 Cardoza
Publishing, Softcover, 528pp., $24.95

If the main purpose of any book review is to inform readers about
what they should expect to find in the reviewed book and
sometimes to warn them about hidden dangers, then this book is a
perfect one to review. This thick volume looks solid and glossy and
would certainly appeal to many readers when they find it on a
bookshelf. Its rather high price may not stop some of them, as the
information given on the back cover looks very promising. Here it
is: "This must-have guide to every major unorthodox openings
includes more than 1,200 weird, contentious, controversial,
unconventional, arrogant, and outright strange opening strategies,
750 diagrams, and hundreds and hundreds of named openings and
variations". All of this sound tempting, but one should really ask
himself a question: 'Why would I need this book and how can I
benefit from it?". Indeed, why does one need to learn how to deal
with moves like 1 a4 (the Ware Opening, page 473) or variations
like the Drunken King (1 e4 e5 2 f4 exf4 3 Kf2 page 277)? I guess
that simple common sense should be sufficient here. I must say that
I did not know or even heard of many of the lines covered in the
book and I am glad that I did not - for most of them are rubbish!
Do you really care about Double Grob (1 g4 g5), which is covered
on page184? (See Diagram)

Do you really want to know what the difference is between the
Omega Gambit and Arafat Gambit? If your answer is 'yes', then
consider buying this book, but don't be surprised when it turns out
to be of little practical value. Indeed, you may find a few lines in
the book, which you would like to try, but most likely you won't
need about 1190 other variations covered in this book!

Please don't get me wrong I am not against unorthodox openings as
such (though I consider myself to be a chess orthodox!) - many of
them are perfectly playable and sound, for example the
Trompowsky (1 d4 Nf6 2 Bg5 and 1 d4 d5 2 Bg5). English GMs
Hodgson and Adams have scored heavily with it, while GM
Morozevich has had good results with the Chigorin Defense (1 d4
d5 2 c4 Nc6). Such lines, as well as many others (for example the
English Defense, 1 c4 e6 2 d4 b6) are covered in the book, but if
you play one of these lines already, you will need to look elsewhere
for deeper coverage, as Schiller's book does not go into much
detail. For example, the English Defense gets about 6 pages in the
book, enough to give you an idea what it is about, but not sufficient
to start playing this complex line in tournaments. This is a very
important point: you might have a few off-beat lines in your
repertoire, but don't expect to learn much about them from this
book. It's massive, but of little practical value.

My feelings are that 99% of chess players can either do without
this book or will benefit very little from it. So, I would advise to
stay clear of this book no matter how appealing it looks on the
shelf - you can invest your 25 bucks more wisely! Yet, if you like
to have a reference book about almost everything in life, then
proceed to read my next paragraph to learn more about the book.

Suppose you do need such a book. Then it may offer you good
value: the book is well-written - with good balance between basic
introduction to the principles of opening play, observations of rare
opening lines and some factual material. I like that Schiller
introduces some players in the beginning of his book who favor
and advocate some off-beat openings and lines. For example, he
mentions GMs Miles, Benjamin and Hector - it is certainly nice to
know that even GMs use weird lines from time to time. Schiller
also quotes Tartakower: "As long as an opening is dubious, it is
playable!" I guess that many practicing GMs would subscribe to
this statement. The openings themselves are judged quite
objectively in the book, which is useful if you are looking for a
way to refute an obscure line that your club mate uses against you
all the time. A typical sub-chapter in the book consists of 2-3 pages
and a few diagrams; the lines do not go too deeply in most cases.
Here is an example (page 213). After 1 d4 Nf6 2 e4 Nxe4 3 Bd3
Nf6 4 Nf3 we have the following position (See Diagram):

Here the author writes: "This is the Arafat Gambit. Mr. Arafat also
plays the Omega Gambit. Territorial claims regarding the name
will be ignored here in the interest of world peace". This is quite
funny, particularly if you are interested in such gambits! In fact, the
Omega Gambit arises after 4 Bg5 in this line. Anyway, once
Schiller gives the general description of the line, which he
discusses, he then follows it up with 'Examples and Discussion'
section. The latter tends to include 4-5 practical examples (usually
up to move 15 or so). As I said earlier, in this book you might find
some obscure lines to try against inexperienced or heavily booked
opponents.

The book might appeal to youngsters, as some of the names used in
it sound very exotic, for example: The HyperAccelerated
Pterodactyl (1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 g6 3 d4 Bg7, page 404) or the Mafia
Defence (1 e4 e5 2 f4 c5, page 265). Children may be also excited
by the names like Gaga Gambit (1 e4 e5 2 f4 exf4 3 g3) or Rat
Defense (1 d4 d6 2 e4 f5, page 374), but I guess that more mature
players would only smile... Talking about names, it's interesting to
see that there is Schiller Variation (oh, such modesty!) in the book,
which apparently arises after 1 e4 d5 2 exd5 Qxd5 3 Nc3 Qd6.
Most of the names, which Schiller uses in the book, has little
practical value and will not find a place in chess literature. Some of
them are confusing for example, I wonder whether Dragon
specialists IMs Jeremy Silman and John Donaldson know that the
line 1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 g6 3 d4 Bg7 4 c4 Qa5+ 5 Nc3 d6 is called the
Pterodactyl... By the way, in that section I found a few mistakes: in
one of the lines on page 297 White plays 10 f3, while having his
knight on f3 already. On page 298 in the diagram after 1 e4 c5 2
Nf3 White's d2-pawn is missing. Or is it now a new line? Then I
suggest calling it the Printer's Gambit! Presumably there are other
typos in this massive volume, but I did not dare to look too closely
into most lines covered there, for I fear that my opening play might
suffer from it...

My assessment of this book: **. 

The Nimzovich Defense (1.e4 Nc6) Ultimate CD, 1999 Pickard &
Son $29.95 Here we have yet another example of an unorthodox
opening, which is nevertheless quite playable - for example GM
Miles employs it often and enjoys good results with it. When you
answer 1 e4 with 1...Nc6, it may have psychological value, as for
some opponents it might act like a red flag to a bull, causing them
to lose objectivity. It's also important to note that 1...Nc6 can be
played against 1 d4 as well, although that line is not dealt with on
this disk. As this CD might be of interest for many players, it's
worth taking a look at what one should expect from it.

To work with this CD you will need ChessBase. An older version
(CB4) will do, but you will get more (text, etc) with the later
versions of ChessBase, Nos. 6 and 7. If you don't have the program
already, then you should download ChessBase Light (for free!),
which you can find at http://www.chessbase.com/. Chess Base is
now known to thousands of users, so I will not get into much
details here on how to work with it, bur rather concentrate on the
contents of the disk instead.

The publishers claim that this CD contains 5,500 high-quality
games and over 600 annotated games, while its list of
commentators amounts to a 'who's who' in chess. Alas, these are
just selling points, designed to make you buy this CD - the quality
of games varies a lot, while there are few really famous players
among the annotators. I think the reason for this is apparent
publishers of such CDs cannot pay various GMs to annotate their
games and therefore have to do with notes from old sources and
with comments by lesser players instead. In the case of this CD,
notes are usually without text and feature mainly symbols. This I
see as a major drawback, as in my opinion, for the student,
explanations are more important than variations. Most hints in the
CD come from the Introduction by Hugh Myers and comments to
his own games. (American master Myers has written several books
on this defense.) When you run ChessBase 7 or Chess Base Light
and open the database called Nimzo-Main, you will see something
like this:

This really shows what you are getting with this disk - an
introduction by Myers, a few reports, which were generated by
ChessBase itself and some surveys, taken from different sources.
The Introduction is very interesting - it immediately becomes clear
that for Myers the Nimzowitsch Defense is a pet line. He gives a
fascinating account of early tests of this system, as well as the story
of his personal involvement with this opening. The Introduction is
very interesting and very subjective (Black almost always wins the
games featured there!). Myers does not try to cover all possible
lines, instead giving his opinions about the system and his personal
preferences.

He clearly prefers 2...d5 (after 1 e4 Nc6 2 d4), though he says that
2...e5 is playable too. Nimzowitsch himself favored 2...d5. There
are 18 games included in the introduction - after clicking on one of
them a game window will pop up. Most games are either not
annotated or contain very brief notes, which is a pity. Another
drawback of the Introduction is the presence of typos, something
which a simple spell-checker would have found! The same is true
for the linked games - for example the game Engstrom-Myers,
concludes with "Black resigned...", while in reality it was White
who gave up. The publishers could have done a better job with
proofreading - I don't think that readers should tolerate annoying
typos even on CDs.

After the Introduction come Reports. However, they are
computer-generated and therefore you should be careful and not
trust them blindly - learning an opening using statistics may not be
the best idea. To be fair to the publishers, they do warn you about
that in the Foreword. Yet, these Reports also give some idea about
what's going on in the particular line: who plays it, what the most
popular moves are, etc. Again, there are links to games in the
Reports, which is a nice feature with the later versions of
ChessBase. There are 6 reports on the disk and they deal with the
most important variations of the Nimzowitsch Defense. As you can
see in the graphic featured above, the reports cover most important
lines like 2 d4 d5 3 Nc3, etc. A very risky attempt to seize the
initiative with 2...f5 after the 'normal' 2 Nf3 is considered too, but
in my opinion this line is dubious. I think that after 2 Nf3 Black
should play 2...d6, if he wants to keep the game within lesser
known areas. The last report covers the line arising after 1 e4 Nc6
2 Nf3 d6 3 d4 Nf6 4 Nc3 Bg4 5 Be2 e6 (See Diagram)

The report says that there are 12 games in it, featuring this position,
but when you click on them, a list containing 130 games pops up.
Perhaps this is a bug in the program itself...

Ones you are finished with the Introduction and the Reports, you
are really left with the Surveys and games themselves. Each survey
looks like one game with an extremely large amount of games and
variations merged into it. They give practically no explanation, so
you have to navigate through lots of lines, which sometimes can
even be depressing!

As I said early, the games vary a lot in quality, although it is
obvious that the publishers did clean up the database - I did not see
really bad games. Yet, don't get excited there being 5,000+ games
on the disk - often a small database is better than a big one.
Besides, who can really play through 5,500 games? If somebody
can, then he or she may as well enjoy a 'bonus' which comes with
this CD - a database called Nimzo-Blitz. It contains 5,229 blitz
games, played with this opening on the Internet. Personally I feel
that life is way too short to look at such databases!

In conclusion, let me simply say that as a source of information,
this CD is quite useful, but you should not expect to learn as much
from it as from a good opening book. Games without annotations
are available in huge numbers from the Net with a corresponding
loss of quality. It is comments, explanations and recommendations
which make any opening manual worthy. So, if you are looking for
a new opening system with some surprise/psychological value and
need mainly 'rote' information, along with some basic introduction,
consider buying this CD - it might help you. But if you are used to
and require a level of explanation that is typical of a good opening
book, I would advise you to wait till such CDs become more
instructive. 

My assessment of this CD: **. 