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Chess College 1: Strategy Reviewed by S. Evan Kreider, September 2006
I had originally planned to review all three volumes at once (less work for me . . . ) but there are so many different topics covered, I felt it necessary to review each volume separately. Let’s start with volume one. Taking a look at the table of contents, we see:
Symbols
4 The first thing to notice is that it’s a short book – about 101 pages after accounting for indexes and the like. To be fair, Gambit does use a double-column format with compact text in a fairly small font, so it still probably has almost as much information as books by some other publishers, but still, you might wonder if the $20 price tag isn’t a tad high. The next thing to notice is the wide variety of topics for such a short book. There seem to be three major categories: attacking, sacrifices (of the non-combinational variety), and strategic elements such as files, outposts, etc. All of these three things could be a topic for their own whole books – in fact, they are! Vukovic’s Art of Attack in Chess comes to mind, as do Spielmann’s and Dunnington’s books on sacrifice. Trying to cram all of this into a single (and did I mention “short”?) book seems unwise. That’s not to say the material isn’t of high quality – it is. There’s just far too little of it per topic. Having said that, let’s take a look at some of the individual sections. The first few sections don’t contain a lot of substance. The introduction is just a page of “why you should study the middlegame.” Nothing new here, and a bit unnecessary – presumably the reader already knows why, having shelled out $20 for the book. The “Getting to Know Ourselves” section is two pages consisting mostly of example charts for the player to fill out in order to track opening, middlegame, and endgame performance. An interesting idea to be sure, but the charts are not particularly detailed, and require that the player evaluate his or her performance, something I’m not sure most of us have the ability and objectivity to do without a trainer. Speaking of trainers, the next section is just over a page on that very subject. Grivas classifies trainers into four categories, based on the trainers’ abilities and the topics on which their training focuses, but he doesn’t give much guidance on how to choose a trainer. As far as these first few sections go, they are certainly thought-provoking, but not particularly substantive.
After that, we get about twelve pages on the exchange sacrifice. This was easily my favorite section in the book. Amateur players are hesitant to sacrifice material unless they think it will lead to a mating attack, but sometimes one has to give up a bit of material for other reasons. The exchange sacrifice – sacrificing a rook for a minor piece and sometimes a pawn – is sometimes used as a precursor to an attack, but other times it is simply used to secure important positional advantages. Grivas gives detailed analysis of seven games showing how to do just that. Consider the following example:
Grivas annotates this position: “Black now stands better thanks to his healthier pawn-structure, safer king, and more active pieces. The h6-bishop can in no way be considered inferior to a white rook, as it has a greater sphere of action and several targets. Even if things don’t work out well for Black and he as to acquiesce to several exchanges (queens, one pair of rooks and the queenside pawns) the resulting ending will be a draw. In view of all this White should have avoided this position, where there is danger lurking and his winning chances are almost non-existent, not to mention his severe time-trouble.” I found this and the other examples in this section very illuminating. The next section covers positional sacrifices – that is, sacrifices of a pawn or a minor piece for positional compensation. This section is also good, but far too brief. There are just far too many ways in which one might be compensated for a pawn (or more) to learn about in eight pages. This section might whet one’s appetite for a larger treatise on positional sacrifices (such as Dunnington’s excellent Understanding the Sacrifice), but no more. The book finishes up with several sections covering standard strategic elements such as outposts, open files, and the like. This part of the book is good, but no better than most other works. The exception lies in the “Forepost” section. I remember looking at the table of contents and asking myself, “What the heck is a ‘forepost’? I’ve never heard of that before?” Not surprising, as the author claims to be coining the term for the very first time! By his definition, a forepost is an outpost on an open file – thus, it’s simply a combination of two other concepts. However, this combination is almost contradictory – by placing a knight (or some other piece) on the outpost, the open file is blocked! The point of this, however, is to close the file temporarily so that one’s opponent cannot control it, thus giving one time to control it oneself, typically by lining up one’s rooks on it. If I may be so bold, I’d like to offer an example from one of my own games, played before I had even read this section of the book!
White establishes a forepost, closing the open file, thus preventing Black from taking control of it, or forcing massive exchanges down it, and giving himself time to double his rooks on the open file. At some later point, if and when it is possible and desirable to do so, White can remove the knight and seize control of the open file. All in all, this is a quality piece of work, but as I’ve suggested, it just tries to do too much. I’d recommend it, but only to advanced players who have already read a variety of other more thorough works on similar subjects. Keep in mind, however, that this is just the first of three volumes. Next time, I’ll be reviewing volume two, about which I have much more positive things to say. See you then! P.S.: Please don’t
send me analyses of my game. Yes, I made some errors. I have Fritz too.
Thanks. Copyright 2006 S. Evan Kreider. Used with permission.
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next three sections cover attacking the enemy king. Altogether, these three
sections take up less than 40 pages. Compared to Vukovic’s Art of Attack
in Chess and its 330+ pages (not counting indexes, etc.) that’s not
much. Given that, one might think of this as simply an introduction to the
topic. However, I’m not sure that the material is suitable as an
introduction, if by introduction one means a clear and concise explanation
aimed for players new to the topic. Each section starts with a page (give
or take) summarizing the important elements of the attack, but after that,
the chapters simply consist of a handful of annotated games. Furthermore,
the analysis is rather dense in variations, though it is supplemented with a
fair amount of explanatory text. So perhaps it’s best to think of this as a
refresher course for more advanced players, who have presumably already read
other texts such as Vukovic’s.
