| Understanding Your Chess (Gambit Publishing 2004, www.gambitbooks.com, 192 pages, paperback, figurine algebraic, $24.95) by James Rizzitano is a book that takes to heart Mikhail Botvinnik's dictum that to improve one must analyze one's games carefully. The name of the author may not ring a bell for young players, but those active in the 1980s will remember IM Rizzitano as one of the best players that New England ever produced, who surely would have become a Grandmaster had he not stopped playing. If this book is any indication he is planning a comeback in a big way. Rizzitano has structured his book around approximately 100 heavily analyzed games and game fragments which are placed in nine chapters (Battling Goliath, Tactical Skirmishes, Opening Hits, Opening Misses, Opening Wars, Power of the Initiative, Accumulating Small Advantages, Runaway Tactics and Endgame Adventures). The games are almost all his and the object of writing this book is clear. By going back to his old games Jim wanted to find out where his weaknesses are figuring this is where time could be best spent on future study. Readers will benefit from using this book, both as a template to analyze their own games and from the extensive instructive prose commentary. IM Rizzitano's Understanding Your Chess succeeds both as an instructional work and as a game collection. I particularly enjoyed the vignette about his battles with National Master John Curdo, the measuring stick for New England players for several decades. Highly Recommended. |
| The Nimzo-Indian Rubinstein (2003, 160 pages, paperback, figurine algebraic, Everyman Chess - www.everymanchess.com, $19.95) by Angus Dunnington brings back memories for me. I remember when I first took up the Nimzo-Indian in the 1970s and the pioneering work on this opening by IM Craig Pritchett. That book, maybe the first in English on the Nimzo, dealt with the Rubinstein system 4.e3 and Black's reply 4...b6, 4...c5 (Huebner) and 4...Nc6 with ...d5 (Ragozin) and made me a Nimzo player for life. Dunnington's new book, like Pritchett's, doesn't try to cover everything in the 4.e3 Nimzo, which was recently done by Carsten Hansen for Gambit and earlier by Leon Pliester for ICE. Both of those books were huge and couldn't offer a lot of explanatory prose. This new book in the Everyman series is able to address itself to a larger audience by restricting the number of variations it covers. Like Pritchett's book, 4....b6 and the Huebner system get extensive treatment. Most players could play either variation with the material provided here. There is also extensive coverage of 4.e3 followed by 5.Ne2 against 4...0-0 as well as 4...c5, enabling someone to use this book to combat the Nimzo with Rubinstein's original treatment. Dunnington also covers the more modern Bd3 and Nge2 setups. He has very modest coverage of the main lines after e3, Bd3 and Nf3, where Black plays ...0-0, ...c5 and ...d5, restricting himself to the most recent important games, almost certainly because he hit his limit of 160 pages right on the dot. IM Dunnington has done an excellent job in explaining many of the important ins and outs of the Rubinstein Nimzo-Indian. I think most players would benefit more from this type of book than a more encyclopedic work. My one caveat is that the variation 4.e3 b6 5.Ne2 c5 also reached by 4...c5 5.Ne2 b6 is not to be found at all in this book, which is a little surprising since it can arise from either of the two main variations considered in this book and is also a very dangerous system to meet for White if you don't know anything about it. Recommended. |