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A Chess Explorer Reviewed by Rick Kennedy
I would guess that just about every pawnpusher, serious and otherwise, has thought at least once about leaving the hum drum world behind to run off to be a chess vagabond: traveling the world, playing in tournaments large and small, finding adventure & romance, achieving fame & infamy; perhaps even inventing an opening or two, writing some books, publishing a magazine… American chess player Hugh Myers has lived such a life, and A Chess Explorer is his tale. Proponents of unorthodox chess openings are likely familiar with Myers. From his 1968 New Strategy in the Chess Openings, to his books on the Nimzovich Defense (1.e4 Nc6), to his look at Reversed King Pawns, Mengarini’s Opening (1.e4 e5 2.Nc3 intending 3.a3), to his first collection of games – Exploring the Chess Openings – Myers has shared his investigations into arcane and unusual ways to get interesting play right from the start. His irregularly published Myers’ Openings Bulletin (MOB, 1979-1996) was always a potpourri of history, commentary, reviews, and above all else, explorations into the chess openings. A Chess Explorer is an expanded version of Exploring the Chess Openings, with 130 of Myers’ games (annotated) and a multitude of additional stories about his chess play from the 1940s to the new millennium. Performing at expert-to-master level, he criss-crossed the United States, he played in Europe, he even settled down in the Dominican Republic – where he led their Olympiad team into battle in 1968 at Lugano, and 1976 at Haifa! His behind-the-scenes efforts in Dubai during the election battle for president of FIDE (Lucena vs Campomanes), amongst many tales, makes very interesting reading. His opinions on matters large and small are rarely if ever boring. Almost inescapably, Myers has made friends and foes across the chess world. His heated and repeated exchanges with Joel Benjamin and Eric Schiller, ostensibly about the soundness of various lines, for example, are reminiscent of the bravura of the WWF. His supporters have been equally avid and persistent in his defense. I’ve sometimes shaken my head and come to the hyperbolic conclusion, For those who support him, no justification appears necessary; for those who assail him, no justification seems possible. So often, though, the play’s the thing – and Myers has gone where so many of us would like to have gone… Imagine you’re sitting first board at the Olympiad. (Don’t pinch yourself; reach out and shake hands.) You wish your opponent – the inimitable Grandmaster Svetozar Gligoric! – the best, he starts your clock, and you begin… Myers -
Gligoric
Or suppose you’ve advocated and analyzed an opening variation that is later named after you – and it garners comment from the World Champion himself! The line in the English Opening, 1.c4 g5!? has been called the Myers Defense – advocated in New Strategy in the Chess Openings and analyzed and updated in the Myers’ Openings Bulletins. In Batsford Chess Openings (1982) the creation drew this from Gary Kasparov: “Chess is not skittles.” Oh, well. Myers is not one of Kasparov’s fans – by a long shot – anyway. (However, anyone considering taking up 1.e4 Nc6 will find Myers’ Nimzovich Defense to 1.e4 to be breathtakingly helpful. There is also more to Mengarini’s early a3 for White in the double King pawn openings than just novelty or surprise.) But I am drifting away from A Chess Explorer… The book is self-published by Myers, something I always try to support. Nowadays anyone with some good ideas, a computer, and access to a print shop can put his ideas before the chess-playing public (and, with luck, at least recover the costs of producing the book). Chess remains an area where dedicated small presses or self-publishers can maintain at least a toe-hold in the market. One challenge here is that the author did not use a computer in preparing A Chess Explorer. (In fact, Myers does not own a computer and occasionally rails against them.) Although he has upgraded from the typewriter he used in early MOBs, Myers is now using a dedicated word processor. The text – plain, bold, italic - is clear and readable. However, apparently different publishers at different times did not follow through on offers to put A Chess Explorer into print, at least in part because it could not be supplied on disk in a computer file (e.g. Word) format. The diagrams must have been labors of love. The book, in large part completed in 1999, has three Appendixes that were added as time went on, until Myers took the plunge and did it himself in 2002. The absence of a computer also means no robot co-analyst when it comes to checking games or variations. I am not sure that Fritz, et. al., have a feel for unorthodox openings, but they probably could have been helpful to Myers here and there. Even a writer as capable as Grandmaster John Nunn uses the little beast to at least “blunder check” his books. (Fritz8 is skeptical of Gligoric’s claim, above, that he was likely busted; the program sees an even game.) I have not examined A Chess Explorer under a silicon magnifying glass – it seems a bit like subjecting the Mona Lisa to electrophoresis – but I’d feel a bit better about some of the analysis if I knew that the author had. The games are a delight. The openings presented will likely give a Slav Defense, Exchange Variation specialist some screaming nightmares; but for the rest of us who want a bit of fun in our chess fundamentals, they are a hoot. They are sound enough to be employed by the average club player, and they do not quite reach the fever dream realities of, say, Jack “Bozo” Young or Clyde “What’s He Smoking?” Nakamura. The stories of a wandering chess player sometimes become instead wandering stories of a chess player. Some amuse. Some illuminate. Some need to be nodded at while you wait for the next one to come along. Some make me wish I were adventuring with Myers; some make me glad that I need only take the trip vicariously. (Unlike the author, I’ve never been much for wine, women, and pawns, even in my younger days.) In summary, this book is for you if: - you’ve ever wondered if at least some of those stories are true about what happens when you’re out on the road in the Chess World; - you want to see creativity in chess openings from someone who not only talks and writes about them, but actually tests them against adversaries over the board and around the world; - your chess play at the club has grown tired and predictable, of late, and you’d like to find an elixir to give it a boost; - you know a bit about Hugh Myers, and would like to know more about him and the people he’s met. This book may not be for you if: - you see “unorthodox openings” as somewhat of an oxymoron; - you figure that the chess play and results of Salo Flohr and Tigran Petrosian were exciting enough for you, thank you very much;
- you plan to sit back and play solid chess and pick off all of the
foolish Explorers who play all that wacky stuff and then wander into your
classical clutches. (Even so, you might want to adopt a “know your
enemies” approach and snag a copy.) Available from the author for $25 Hugh E. Myers
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