Good Chess, Bad Writing by Taylor Kingston The Most Instructive Games of the Young Grandmasters, by Paul Motwani, 1999 Everyman Chess, Softcover, Figurine Algebraic Notation, 176pp., $19.95. This book marks a long-overdue though incomplete change for its author. It forces some badly needed discipline on Scottish GM Motwani, whose earlier work (see for example Chess Under the Microscope in the archives) has been noteworthy mainly for its self-indulgent silliness and unfocused meandering. This time a rigid format causes Motwani to stick more (but unfortunately not completely) to business. Each chapter focuses on one of 13 top young GMs (Ivanchuk, Anand, Adams, Shirov, van Wely, Sadler, Kamsky, Topalov, Kramnik, Svidler, J. Polgar, Shaked, and Leko). Each has a brief biographical sketch, two annotated games and six tactical exercises. The annotations are lengthy and frequent, almost at the one-per-move rate of Chernev's Logical Chess, though they are a bit more sophisticated. They are aimed at younger, less-experienced players, in the rating range of, say, 1200-1600. A good many worthwhile instructive points are made, such as here (see diagram) where Motwani notes "... in effect, White is already a pawn up because he has an extra unit on the queenside, whereas Black's doubled f-pawns are firmly blockaded by the f5-knight. Furthermore, if Black captures that piece with 16...Nxf5, then after 17 exf5 White will soon plant his remaining steed on the outpost at e4, and the winning plan consists, quite simply, of creating a passed pawn on the queenside." A valid strategic point, clearly made. If the entire book were similarly focused and well written, we would have little cause to criticize. Unfortunately, it appears Motwani cannot suppress his inner child for long, and the discipline exerted by the book's format is not absolute. Though this time we are mercifully spared a full glut of his usual assortment of contrived acronyms, pointless anagrams, babbling digressions, kitschy-koo characters, and just plain bad writing, there are still enough instances of anguished English and other gaffes to make any lover of good chess literature alternately laugh, wince, or groan. A few examples: Motwani ascribes the quote "Chess is ninety-nine percent tactics" to Tartakower, when in fact it is traditionally attributed to Teichmann. Ivanchuk is said to get Anand in a "vice-like grip." While "vice" is an alternate spelling for "vise," meaning a mechanical clamp, it is very seldom used in that sense. Its more usual connotation is "an immoral or evil habit or practice," which prompts one to wonder just what Vasily was holding in that grip. On page 75 Motwani says "This begs the question 'What was Black's best option ... at move five?'." He apparently does not know that "begging the question" does not mean "prompting one to ask," but rather describes a logical fallacy in which one assumes the truth of a point in dispute. Page 61 has this gem: "The big black queen firmly fixes White's e- pawn like a giant towering over it and saying 'You are not going anywhere, and I intend to eat you when I feel the time is right'!". Motwani is perhaps the only GM to take Jack and the Beanstalk and Little Red Riding Hood as literary models, and to pattern his punctuation after Marvel Comics. And he still churns out run-on sentences, irrelevant asides, and misplaced exclamation points as if FIDE awarded titles for them, e.g. "The above words of Veselin Topalov are reminiscent of Julius Caesar's 'Veni, vidi, vici' (Latin for 'I came, I saw, I conquered'), but 15 March was not so great for Caesar because that was the date on which he died violently in the year 44 BC!". This shows Motwani's ongoing obsession with contrived, pointless date correspondences (i.e. Caesar's assassination date is also Topalov's birthday). Another instance: "... one eminently suitable phrase to describe Ivanchuk is 'Playing to Win'. Incidentally, a book carrying that title was written some years ago by GM Jim Plaskett, who also happens to share the same birthday of 18 March!". The mind boggles, does it not? A particularly egregious example is this: "[Kamsky's] results seemed to improve at a meteoric rate after moving to the USA in 1989, and I am reminded of a US five-times Olympic swimming gold medal winner, Johnny Weismuller (1904-84), who also had a 2 June birthday but was better known for his acting role as Tarzan!". In addition to the run-on sentence, the phony excitement ("Tarzan!"), and the total irrelevance of Weismuller, we have also the dubious metaphor of Kamsky improving like a falling rock, and improbable reports of moving results and swimming medals. And while he has cut back, Motwani still has not shaken his addiction to pointless anagrams: "... one might like to verify that the 20 letters in gymnastic weapons hour can be rearranged to give youngest war champions ...". Then again, one might not. One might with equal relevance also note that sweetened nostril chainsaw can be rearranged into Now I see a startled wench sin, or San Diego Chargers into I grease God's ranch, or, with an extra "an" thrown in, Kirsan Ilyumzhinov into Krazy Hun oils mini-van. The possibilities are endless! To be fair, readers who can stomach Motwani's intermittent foolishness will find a fair amount of decent instruction here, and the good/silly ratio is higher here than in his earlier books, but why subject one's self to any of it? Equally good or better instruction without puerile nonsense is available from other authors, such as Chernev, Purdy, Silman, Kostyev, Seirawan, or Alburt, to name only a few. If Motwani is making any money off his books, it only validates H. L. Mencken's dictum that no one has ever gone broke by underestimating the intelligence of the American public. According to various reports, Motwani was forbidden by his publisher to write about any more chess-playing extra-terrestrials or other such twaddle, but obviously sterner measures are called for. Perhaps lessons in expository writing from James Kilpatrick, William Safire, or Edwin Newman? Solitary confinement with the collected works of Ernest Hemingway? Switch Motwani's soul for that of the late Jan Donner? We recommend avoiding this or any Motwani book until some such steps are taken, or he is forbidden to write about chess and is reassigned to something more befitting his style, like, say, Little Golden Books or "The Teletubbies".