Imagine my excitement when I was wandering through Amazon.com and discovered Chess Openings: New Theory, by James Alan Riechel. I was ready to send off for a review copy in an instant!

I mean, who would not be thrilled by [the author’s description]:

Ten -- count them: ten! -- chapters of brand-spanking new opening theory in the game of chess, including -- believe it or not! -- three brand-new openings in chess never seen before in the long history of the game! (That's hundreds of years, folks!) Also, major contributions -- and all brand-spanking new theory, by the way – are made in the Benko Gambit, Queen's Gambit Accepted, Center-Counter, Danish Gambit, Scotch Opening, French Defense, and Bird Opening. Major, major, major -- three times over! -- contributions are made in the French Defense. Two difficult lines for Black are repaired, and I offer the world the French Gambit! Each chapter has a one-page introduction, and each chapter has at least one section of brand-spanking new opening theory!

Whoa...!

Of course, one eyebrow went up when I checked out the author's USCF rating (class B, like me) and read his Amazon bio:

The author lives in Pasadena, California, and is employed as a math instructor at Mathnasium in South Pasadena, California. He hopes to complete a PhD in computer science at Caltech, with a dissertation in linear-time partial sorting algorithms, and algorithms for searching partially sorted data. On the weekends, he gets to visit his cat, Mr. T-Rex, a purebred Cornish Rex, at his family’s house in Glendale, California. In his spare time, the author works on research, and writes chess books!

The other eyebrow climbed a bit when I learned that the book has all of 30 pages. You do not need a PhD in computer science to figure out that that is, on the average, 3 pages per chapter, with one of those pages being, as advertised, an introduction.

Still, it's tempting, isn't it?

Or is it??

Of course, A fool and his money are soon parted, and I am nothing if not a fool when it comes to pursuing unorthodox chess openings, especially those presented by little (or un- ) known authors via independent book publishing: self-, print-on-demand or small press.

In short, I did not even request a review copy. I went ahead and bought the book.

If this review were a television commercial, it would immediately begin flashing the warning “Review provided by a trained professional. Do not attempt at home.”

Readers who jump like I did are likely to be very disappointed. Let me share part of a review that appeared on Amazon.com:

This writer's U.S.C.F rating is class B, but after looking at his opening "theoretical novelties", I would estimate his playing strength at about ELO 1000 or less.

Two striking points: The openings are new and untried, and all the suggestions are just plain bad. All lines given lead to a range of inferior positions ranging from marginally worse for a few lines, and totally lost for the majority.

The lines are only even playable for a few moves when Reichels [sic] supplies opposing moves that are quite inane.

He mentions analysis by Fritz in the book, so he must have a chess engine. Too bad he didn't leave it on. For fun, I ran these lines past Houdini, who scored Reichel's [sic] lines from - 0.35 for his "best" line, and around - 3.00 (Yes, the equivalent of being down a piece) for the rest.

Ouch! That reviewer sounds “very disappointed,” does he not?

My own thoughts?

The good news is, there is a lot of creativity in those 30 pages.

Well, there actually are only 25 pages of “Introductions” and analysis, as the author starts numbering at the title page, so not everything is “brand-spanking new opening theory.”

And most of the 10 chapter “Introductions” are a half-page of print and a half-page of white space.

Did I mention that there is adequate white space in the book’s layout?

Yet, let me persist.

First off is the “York Opening,” 1.c4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.Nd5!?

Riechel give no indication as to where the name comes from – player, location, literary allusion – and for a few pages I thought that he might have been recalling the English children's nursery rhyme, since White's advance Knight soon gets booted:

Oh, The grand old Duke of York,
He had ten thousand men;
He marched them up to the top of the hill,
And he marched them down again.

And when they were up, they were up,
And when they were down, they were down,
And when they were only half-way up,
They were neither up nor down.

But, no. There are chapters on the “York Benko” and the “York-Sandnes MacCutcheon” variation in the French Defense. Since the last chapter, on the “American Opening,” 1.Nc3 c5 2.Nd5!? contains the “Riechel Variation,” perhaps the nomenclature is person-based after all. (I have not checked my complete run of Randspringer, Myers Openings Bulletin, and Kaissiber magazines, so perhaps the truth is somewhere in there.)

A few general comments.

Using a very-accessible online games database, ChessLab, I tested the "newness" of all of the lines, including the named "theoretical novelties". The "Ts" were usually "N", but most of the openings generally had been trod before (although not by masters, and not necessarily the complete lines the author gives).

The "Danish Gambit" line, as the author calls it (others might think: “Center Game”), 1.e4 e5 2.d4 Nf6!? is given the name the “Alekhine Variation” ("Black attacks e4 in the style of Alekhine").

I think the line actually dates back to Greco (who used it giving odds).

Brashly, if not preposterously, 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 c5!?

("An unrecognized move in an old, well-established line") is given the name "The French Gambit" by the author. At least a few people (i.e. those who bought The Marshall Gambit in the French and Sicilian Defenses, by Kennedy and Sheffield) attribute the line to Frank Marshall.

And so it goes, although I am reminded of the restaurant review: the food was poor and the portions, small.

As a reviewer, I find myself in a peculiar dilemma: if I quote as much analysis as I usually did in past reviews at Chessville, I will wind up quoting whole chapters of Chess Openings: New Theory. Where does "fair use" cross over into "copyright infringement"?

The whole book would have made a decent contribution to an issue of Gary Gifford's Unorthodox Opening Newsletter.

You have been warned.

In the end, it probably will not matter. If you are a great fan of junk openings, regardless of their “soundness” (or, like my Dad used to say, someone with more money than common sense), you will probably want the book, anyway, even if it mostly sits on your shelf after one reading.

If you are not a fan of such egregious ephemera, you probably have not gotten this far in the review, anyhow.
 

[An earlier version of this review appeared on my Jerome Gambit blog.]

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