When I was younger, I sharpened my tactical skills with the 2 Ks.

No, I don’t mean Karpov and Kasparov.  I mean Reinfeld and, well, Reinfeld again: I studied his 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate (1955) and his 1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations (1955).

Players today can still do so – although there are some drawbacks.  Those books are in the antiquated English descriptive notation, not algebraic notation.  (For many young players, that’s almost a foreign language.)  They also have some annoying errors in the solutions.

A particular gripe some chess players have with the 1001s is that they group problems by the type of tactic employed in the solution (e.g. Queening Combinations, The Vulnerable First (Back) Rank, Queen Sacrifice, X-Ray Attack, etc.) – which is a bit unrealistic when compared to actual chess play.

Many times I would have appreciated it if, during one of my tournament games, a graphic had appeared over the board signaling that it was time for me to pay attention to “the Overworked Piece” or “Removing the Guard.”

Igor Sukhin’s Chess Gems is different.

For starters, the front cover has a great picture of a midieval knight, in armor, mounted and charging into a jousting match – superimposed over a chessboard.  Nice.  The Reinfeld covers always seemed to scream “geek” to me, promising something a bit less exciting then, say, Taber’s Cyclopedic Medical Dictionary…

But there’s a whole lot more to Chess Gems than just its cover, that’s for sure.  Moving past it you find Contents (of course), a two-page Bibliography (I love chess books that have bibliographies, I think they’re an important clue to the author’s research – so, sue me) and a Preface by Super-GM Vladimir Kramnik, who writes “It is much harder to win a game without taking risks; one cannot just slowly grind down an opponent,” which, coming from him, is a serious admission.  (“A lot of recent wins at high-level tournaments are achieved through enormous complications and tactics,” he continues.)

In his Introduction,  Sukhin lays out how his collection of combinations is different from its predecessors, including his choice to present the material in chronological order and to right a particular wrong: “The enormous legacy of the great masters of the nineteenth century has been underestimated” in those other books.

The book has 14 chapters with a consistent structure.  First, we show several outstanding combinations of the period, followed by the section, “How would you play?” in which readers are challenged to solve several instructive positions with the best moves.  The solutions to the problems are at the end of each chapter. In some cases we indicate alternative combinations.

So Chess Gems starts with a thousand year old position from the predecessor of chess, shatranj:

Although some of the shatranj pieces move differently than modern pieces, the king, rook, knight and pawn move the same, so this problem resonates even today.

White’s escape is near-miraculous: 1.Nh5+ Rxh5 2.Rxg6+ Kxg6 3.Re6#

Moving through the works of Lucena, Damiano, Polerio, Salvio and Greco, we see wild middle games and subtle endgames.  As the author asks, “How Would You Play?” in the following diagram from the book of Salvio, 1604:

To avoid the draw White must play 1.Ra1, when after 1…Kxa1 2.Kc2 play unfolds in an uneven race: 2…g5 3.hxg5 h4 4.g6 h3 5.g7 h2 6.g8/Q h1/Q 7.Qg7#

And so we march through chess history, with a gems from Petroff (Hoffman – Petroff, Warsaw, 1844):

Solution below

Harrwitz and Staunton (among many others) through Anderssen, Morphy, Zukertort, Chigorin, Blackburne…

Solution below

And we still have the eras covered in the chapters “Lasker and Pillsbury (1891-1900)”, “Matches of the Second World Champion (1901-1920)”, Capablanca, Alekhine, Euwe (1921-1940)”, Botvinnik, Smyslov, Tal (1941-1960)”, “Petrosian, Spassky, Fischer (1961-1980)” and “The Great Opposition: Karpov – Kasparov (1981-2000)”.

There are “oldies” that you will recognize, but there is plenty of scintillating play that will provide new challenges.

Chess Gems has brief historical information in its chapters to put the various games and positions in context.  When corrections are needed to the up-until-now-believed solutions, they are provided, righting the record.  All this adds to the value of the book, and makes it more than “just” a problem collection.

Mongoose Press has done a great job in laying out the book as well – good use of fonts, bolding, italics, diagrams and spacing.  They fit in their 1,000 combinations and much more without provoking eye strain in the reader.  I particularly liked their choice to put the solutions in the same chapter as the positions themselves – less page flipping back-and-forth.

The back of the Chess Gems promises:

See how chess combinations have evolved over the last 1,000 years Learn to recognize tactical patterns from real-life examples Improve your chances of finishing off your opponent with a tactical blow.  Find combinations missed by Grandmasters.

All, right on the mark, as is the promise “Chess Gems is certain to sharpen your knowledge of both tactics and chess history” – justifying its sub-title, after all: 1,000 Combinations You Should Know.

A very fine book, for self-study or as a gift to a promising player.
 

Solutions:

1…O-O!! 2.Nxd8 Bf2+ 3.Kh3 d6+ 4.e6 Nf4+ 5.Kg4 Nx e6! 6.Nxe6? Bxe6 7.Kg5 Rf5+ 8.Kg4 h5+ 9.Kh3 Rf3#

NN – Blackburne, London, 1880: 1…Ng4 2.h3 (or 2.Rd1 Qxf2+ 3.Kh1 Qg1+! 4.Rxg1 Nf2#) 2…Bxf2+ 3.Kh1 (or 3.Rxf2 Qxf2+ with mate next move) 3…Bf5! 4.Qxa8 Qxh3+! 5.gxh3 Bxe4#
 

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