| Gambit Publications gears its books towards players who want to improve. The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book (Gambit 2000, 240 pages, figurine algebraic, paperback, $24.95) by the English GM John Emms, is one such work. Think of the Fred Reinfeld books on checkmates and combinations, bulk them up with steroids and you�ve got Emms new work. There are many books on combinations, but this is one of the best for several reasons. First, the examples are fresh (how many books on tactics trot out the same old examples?), the solutions are to the point and, very importantly, the material is very well laid out with easy to read diagrams. I don�t know of any short cut to improving one�s tactical ability ,except by paying one�s dues and trying to solve lots of tactical exercises. Emms� book is well suited for this. I take it on the BART (the Bay Area subway system) and solve positions for thirty minutes, twice a day. It�s a painless way to incorporate some necessary chess training. Emms arranges his book into eleven chapters including such well known categories as Checkmates and Endgame Puzzles, but also offers more novel categories like Finding the Wrong Move! There is also one chapter devoted only to puzzles from Soviet Championships from 1947-67. A short explanations of tactical ideas and a score chart to measure your performance round out the book. The puzzles contained in the book vary widely in difficulty. Out of the thousand offered, I would say that at least 200 should be solvable for Club players down to 1600. The vast majority should be challenging for players up to IM strength and some are very difficult! If you have a bunch of books on combinations lying around your house that you haven�t gone through, use them first. If you don�t, get this book. The last book by Gambit in this set of reviews is a subject near and dear to my heart. The Slav (Gambit 2001, 256 pages, figurine algebraic, paperback, $22.95) by Graham Burgess is a first rate book on an increasingly popular opening at all levels of play. This book deals with the position after 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6. It does not cover lines with �c6 and �e6 (Meran and Botvinnik Systems) which were covered by Steffen Pedersen in two earlier works for Gambit. The Slav is very popular in GM praxis today and this book reflects that with lots of recent material. The bibliography lists Informant 79 and TWIC up to 337, making this book current through the end of April 2001. Burgess covers all lines of the Slav from the Exchange Variation to the main lines of 5�Bf5 6.Ne5 where Black sacrifices a Bishop on e4. That said, the Slav is a big opening and to limit his book to 254 pages, Burgess has given extra weight to the lines which are the most popular in current play. The Slav with 4�dxc4 5.a4 Na6 and 5�Bg4 receive approximately twenty pages of coverage while 5�Bf5 is given 76 pages. This is the first book I know of that takes a detailed look at the 4�a6 Slav. Burgess has done a very conscientious job. He gives you a very good survey of what has happened up to now and in openings where he has personal involvement, like 5.e4 Gambit, he offers a great deal of personal insight. Sometimes, of course, it�s not possible for an author to be an expert on all lines in the subject he is writing about. For example, in the line 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 dxc4 5.a4 Bf5 6.e3 e6 7.bxc4 Bb4 8.0-0 0-0 9.Qe2 Nbd7 10.e4 Bg6 11.Bd3 Bh5 12.e5 Nd5 13.Ne4, now Burgess gives 13�Be7 which is easy to understand as almost all practical experience has seen this move. The reality, though, is that 13�c5 14.Bg5 Qc7 15.Rfc1 h6, as seen in Wojtkiewicz-Timman, Reykjavik, 2000, is a very simple and concrete solution to Black�s problems in this line. Burgess gives this game in his book, but the reader might not grasp immediately that Timman�s play has removed 13.Ne4 from the ranks of a promising try for an advantage. This book is chock full of information and I�m sure that if Burgess was not limited to 254 pages, he would probably have offered a little more explanatory prose to describe some of the special characteristics of the Slav. I�m thinking of some of the common motifs of the Dutch Variation where Black thematically answers Bxg6 with �fxg6 and often plays �Nd7-b8-c6. Of course, by playing over many of the examples in the book, the reader can pick up these ideas himself , but it wouldn�t hurt to describe this for newcomers to the opening. The Slav is a first rate opening book and can be recommended for players from 2000 on up. Those rated below 2000, or who are new to this opening, could use this book profitably with Matthew Sadler�s The Slav (a popular opening title!), published by The Chess Press in 1997. Sadler�s book devotes a lot of space to describing the typical plans and ideas behind this opening. John Nunn, Murray Chandler and Graham Burgess deserve a vote of thanks from the chess world for founding Gambit Publishing. In the past four years they have produced close to forty books, several of them classics and almost all of them worthy of a place in every chess players library. Batsford revolutionized chess book publishing thirty years ago when it first started producing detailed opening monographs. Gambit has gone well beyond this. Their books are well produced, with attractive covers, high quality paper and a clear layout. More importantly, they are well researched and accurate, utilizing computers to help authors make books which are as free of error as possible. Last, and not least, their books are very reasonably priced for the material offered. For more information go to http://www.gambitbooks.com or e-mail [email protected] |