This review has been printed in the March 2015 issue of Chess Life. A penultimate (and unedited) version of the review is reproduced here. My thanks to the good folks at Chess Life for allowing me to do so.
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Chernev, Irving. The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played. London: Batsford, 2014. PB 320pp. ISBN 978-1849941617. List $23.95, currently around $18 at Amazon.
Soltis, Andy. The Inner Game of Chess: How to Calculate and Win. Revised edition. Newton Highlands: Mongoose Press, 2014. PB 328pp. ISBN 978-1936277605. List $19.95, currently around $15 at Amazon.
Soltis, Andy. The New Art of Defence in Chess. London: Batsford, 2014. PB 232pp. ISBN 978-1849941600. List $23.95, currently around $18 at Amazon.
This month we look at three books that have recently returned to the marketplace. Two hew closely to their previous incarnations, while the third is an update and reworking of a classic. Each one would make a worthy addition to your collection.
Irving Chernev’s The Most Instructive Games of Chess Every Played was one of my first chess books. Chernev, a witty author and master-level player, originally published this book in 1965. It contains sixty-two well analyzed games, each one possessing both artistic and educational value. Now Batsford has republished Chernev’s book in algebraic format, retaining all the text and features of the original save nine photographs.
What John Collins wrote in his 1966 Chess Review survey – “[i]t is a great book and should be read over and over” – remains true today. Chernev’s annotations are pedagogically precise, eminently readable, and his choice of games is inspired. The errors in analysis, and the computer reveals a few, do not detract greatly from the reading experience.
Most chess teachers will recommend that their students study the great games of the past as part of their training. The Most Instructive Games of Chess Ever Played is ideal for those looking to study beautiful games with clear strategic lessons. If you haven’t already worn out your old, Descriptive copy, you should pick up this new edition.
Andy Soltis’ 1994 The Inner Game of Chess: How to Calculate and Win is also newly republished, this time by Mongoose Press. Here Soltis has included minor revisions of the text, updating / replacing some examples and references, but the basic structure of the book and most of the prose remains the same.
The Inner Game of Chess is a thorough treatment of a thorny topic. Very rarely do we examine the nature and structure of our thought processes. Soltis does not prescribe a specific method of calculation in this book; rather, he is content to break our calculative process into its constitutive parts so that we can see how it might work.
So we get chapters on candidate moves, Kotovian trees, force and forcing moves, and analytical monkey-wrenches (or why we miscalculate). The chapter on ‘counting out’ reckons with topics like compensation, move orders, bailouts and calculative ‘chunking.’ I, naturally, found Soltis’ discussion of typical causes of analytic oversight particularly pertinent.
There have been a few works on calculation since The Inner Game of Chess was first published. Tisdall treats the theme well in Improve Your Chess Now. Aagaard has two advanced books on the topic (Excelling at Chess Calculation and Grandmaster Preparation: Calculation), and Axel Smith’s discussion in Pump Up Your Rating is stellar. Soltis’ effort hangs in with the best of them, and is particularly good for the sub-2000 player.
Another Soltis title, also from Batsford, has returned to the shelves, but this one involves a dramatic revision of one of his first books. In the 1975 The Art of Defense in Chess Soltis described defense mainly in terms of stubborn resistance. Much has changed since then. The New Art of Defense in Chess aims to explain how these changes affect how we defend.
Some of the chapter structure and prose of the 1975 edition is retained here, and some of the analysis, translated into algebraic notation, makes its way over as well. On the whole, however, The New Art of Defense in Chess should be seen as a fundamentally new book. This is because Soltis recognizes the way in which dynamism and activity have become fundamental to modern defensive techniques.
Modern players are, as Soltis explains, less risk-aversive, more open to ‘ugly’ moves, and more reliant on counterplay and activity in defending. He claims that the “New Defenders” realized the limitations of passive defense when challenged by Mikhail Tal’s speculative attacks in the 60s and 70s.
While this might be true, I would argue (following Müller in The ChessCafe Puzzle Book #3 and Aagaard in Practical Chess Defense) that the decisive shift towards New Defense comes later. Top-level chess has become very pragmatic and concrete since the 90s, mostly due to the influence of the computer. I would have preferred to see more discussion of this influence in Soltis’ book, but this is a minor quibble.
Defending is one of the hardest skills in chess, and one of the least written about. The New Art of Defense in Chess is a lucid explanation of modern defensive practice, and players of most all strengths would learn something from it.
So many good chess books have been allowed to fall into obscurity over the years. Sometimes this is because the books have gone out of print, while in other cases, it is because today’s players cannot decipher the older descriptive notation. Kudos to publishers like Batsford and Mongoose for bringing some of them, like the three discussed in this review, back into the spotlight.
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