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 Bcker - 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 Bcker 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 Bcker & 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 Bcker 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, Schssler, kesson and Andersson, the
international masters Hall, Ziegler and Wessman, and finally
Sandstrm, 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. Schssler 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: **** 