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Chessville
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Chess is a Struggle: My Selected Games by Neil Sullivan Unorthodox Chess by Some Loser Reviewed by Rick Kennedy
You’ve played chess for years, you’ve gotten pretty good at it and you’d like to think that you have something to say to others on the subject. What do you do? Nowadays, with word processing and chess software available to anyone, with print-on-demand publishing houses readily accessible, and with the Internet awaiting your marketing efforts – you write a chess book!
Sullivan fervently hopes that other chess players will be inspired by his efforts to annotate and publish their own games, adding with him to the onward march of chess knowledge. By contrast, you can almost hear the strains of Jefferson Airplane singing “start a revolution!” as you turn the pages of Loser’s book. Sullivan is modest, almost self-deprecating in style – he says he almost followed Wolfgang Heidenfeld and titled his effort Lacking the Master Touch. Loser’s Unorthodox Chess is so bombastic, it makes the tough guy chess hustler con talk of, say, Claude Bloodgood, look like the song book of a choir boy – sliced bread, to be sure, has absolutely nothing on the book at all. Neil Sullivan began playing chess in 1969, just before high school. He played in the Montreal High School League, at the Alekhine Chess Club, and later on, while in his 20s, he kicked around Europe playing chess in a half-dozen countries. As the ‘70s came to a close, so did the first part of his chess career. It was only in the 1990s that he returned to the Royal Game. His playing skill reached the Expert-to-Master range, so it is fitting that the range of his opposition in Chess is a Struggle is from Class A to International Master. The Contents are straightforward:
Absent is an Openings index, a minor failing, and perhaps intentional. As you will see in the game that follows, Sullivan likes explanations with words, not reams of analysis, and he focuses on middle game and (gasp!) endgame play, as well as psychological aspects.
GAME SIXTEEN
This game saw me face my toughest opponent of the event. It was watched with great interest by the other competitors, as it was the last to finish. As most seemed to be supporting White, their expressions went from ones of joy to disappointment as their opinions of my chances changed.
White: Beauchamp Montreal Team Championship 1977 Sicilian Defence B52
It is a good idea for players who want to improve to study the games of the greats. Unquestionably, collections of master games with notes by top players are also hard to beat. But there will also be a place in many a developing player’s study for games that look like the kind he plays (or soon will play!), by players who are not too far above where he is performing now, against opponents who are not too unlike his own foes. If the explanations that accompany these games are clear and insightful, not too shallow and not too overwhelming, such a collection – like Chess is a Struggle – will likewise be of value to those striving toward Expert (and beyond!), and can easily be recommended.
The book is available from the publisher, at www.lulu.com/akibapublishing. The cost is $15, which is reasonable; but I have heard some people yelp at the steep cost of shipping and handling, which threatened to push the purchase out of their wallet range. [Editor's note: Neil Sullivan reports that he's already sold 100 copies of "Chess is a Struggle."] Fortunately, there are several alternatives. Sullivan says that copies will be available from him, or at Chess and Math, http://strategygames.ca. Akiba Publishing also has the book available for download for $7.99 in PDF format, readable with the freely available Adobe Reader. (I reviewed the downloadable version.) A sample from the book can be viewed also.
Go ahead, check out the website (www.unorthodoxchess.com or www.trafford.com/robots/04-2764.html) while Your Humble Reviewer waits…
Back? Hmmm. We seem to have lost some of the Master-types and future Grandmasters already. Hold down the giggling, ok? At the risk of sounding like one of the crotchety Chess Authorities Mr. Loser rails about, I’m going to try to actually review this tome. Likely those same Chess Authorities, whoever they are, will be amused that I’m even making the effort. We’ll start with the Table of Contents:
We’ll start right in with Some Loser’s pride and joy, the Table of Opening Moves – an idea he got from checker champion Tom Wiswell (the author also plays checkers, and is currently working on a book on how to win at roulette). From top to bottom in the left hand column are the 20 first possible moves for White, arranged in descending order of preference from strongest to weakest. Following each first move, extending horizontally, is a list of Black’s possible replies, again in decreasing order of strength. So the relative strength of any possible first moves for either color is readily assessed at a glance by its relative position on the chart.
I don’t want to give away Some Loser’s trade secrets, other than to point out that he’s placed 1.e4 at the top left of his Table (“best by test,” as Bobby once said) and 1.h4 g5 at the bottom right. The player who wants (or needs) to know which move order is better, for example 1.f3 Nh6 vs 1.a3 a6, will now be able to tell in a glance. (Ok, you mathematicians, get off my back! I know that printed text has different scales for its x-axis and y-axis, and that in such cases you can’t simply measure the linear distance from the position of “1.e4” to Black’s move on the Table, and use it as a measure of strength or weakness. Not to mention that several moves could be equidistant from “1.e4” and thus, what – euqideviant? equipowerful? equifeeble? It’s just a concept! Man, these Authorities are a grumpy lot…)
On the back cover the author describes his book as “fish friendly,” and that seems to apply here: other than for curiosity’s sake (like rubbernecking as you pass a roadside accident) I’m not sure who else would find the Table of actual practical help.
It does serve, however, as foreshadowing of some of the ideas presented in the Introduction, which presents The Right Approach. Basically, Some Loser suggests we should play chess for fun, and enjoy the process, not live only for wins and die with each loss. Be a good sport. Experiment. Don’t feel compelled to play the recommended opening moves. Use psychological ploys to embolden your enemy to fall into extreme overconfidence followed by error. All this makes sense for the common pawnpusher, but I’d be more convinced if he didn’t balance a back cover claim “…my book offers the most expedient means of achieving real competence at chess…” with things in the Introduction like:
Doesn’t sound like any fish I know of! Since all of the games in the book are by the author (all wins for him), doesn’t that also mean that he sees himself as fitting the above requirements, too? By the way, I think I’ve uncovered Some Loser’s identity, as well as some of his tournament games, although I have no intention of “outing” him. His peak rating seems to have been in the 2000 – 2200 range. You decide.
Most of Unorthodox Chess consists of the presentation of games, so it should be noted that none of them have the players identified. Presumably the author had the white pieces when the chapter focuses on lines of play for White and the black pieces when the focus is on Black’s play; and his comments support this. However, no location is given for any of the games, as well as no date, and none of the conditions under which each game was played are provided. Matching some of the book’s games with those the author is believed to have played outside of his Some Loser persona, it is clear that a selection were played over-the-board at rated tournaments (although some endings have been, er, improved). Many of the games in the book, however, have the feel of Internet blitz about them, and you can almost imagine Some Loser borrowing Emil Joseph Diemer’s exuberant “that is precisely the blunder I’ve been expecting!” as he once again snatches (or catches, as the game is tossed to him) victory from the jaws of defeat. Either that, or he hums serenely “I get by with a little help from my friends...”
Rather than memorize a gazillion lines from opening encyclopedias, the author suggests the new and developing chess player will do better to play over whole games using different openings, and learn from them. This is hardly a revolutionary idea – Tartakower and DuMont’s 500 Master Games has been recommended for half a century with that in mind – but it does give added weight to the thousands of games Some Loser provides.
So Chapter One, Conventional Opening Strategy – which, oddly, takes up 2/3 of Unorthodox Chess’ pages – is a selection of Some Loser’s innovations in main line openings, illustrated in games. Play runs from 1.e4 e5 to 1.h4 h5, which seems to stretch “conventional” quite a bit, but it’s all good clean fun and you can almost smell the cigar smoke and coffee aroma wafting around the house. (Devotés of the Myers Openings Bulletin and Randspringer will experience heart palpitations.)
The author’s pet line 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 h6!? gets trotted out, for example, along with his ideas in the Cochrane Gambit in the Petroff (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.Nxe5 d6 4.Nxf7!?) and Damiano’s Defense (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 f6!?) – and many, many others. He even had a Jerome Gambit game (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+ Kxf7 5.Nxe5+) which brought a broad smile to my face – an “old favorite” opening of his, alas, he could not provide me with any further game examples (private communication).
Chapter Two, Passive Aggression, lays out some of Some Loser’s unorthodox ideas. He parts ways with the emphasis chess opening theory puts on certain things (rapid development of pieces and occupying the center with pawns, for example), and again seems to slide away from his avowed icthyphilia by noting: “Beginners may get in trouble by neglecting these principles, but seasoned veteran unorthodox players can flout them with impunity.” So: move a few pawns one step, develop your pieces behind the pawns, strengthen your position, await your opponents’ missteps and put your trust in counter-attack. Some Loser cottons to hippopotamus- and hedgehog-style openings of trench warfare, for both Black and White. (The principles overlap, but the set-ups differ from those given in The Beginner’s Game, by Pafu, also available from Trafford.)
It is truly amazing how many ways the author abuses chess à la Reinfeld and Chernev in the games in this chapter and gets away with it. Of course, some of this remains the “big fish in the small pond” phenomenon – recall several years ago that an unknown someone was enormously successful playing outrageous openings in blitz on the Internet, stuff like 1.f3, 2.d3, 3.Kf2, 4.Ke3, 5.Kd2, 6.Qe1, 7.Kd1; and crushing so many people, some quite strong, that folks swore it was Bobby Fischer, returned (it wasn’t; it was someone using a computer chess program). There are four pages of game with the Old Indian System, “a sort of pseudo-unorthodox system,” in the Supplementary Subsection, two for Black and two for White.
Chapter Three, Subterfuge, gives you ideas on how to deal with the opponent who wants to play it safe, too, and needs further inducement to over-reach himself. Some Loser, as the games show, is not above developing a knight, then returning it to its home square – several times, if need be. He even unleashes his patented Trojan Gambit – 1.e4 Nf6 2.e5 d5!? – and some of the wins it has garnered for him. There are also some odds-and-ends games that could have gone in earlier chapters that are tossed in here, as well.
There is no Index, but since neither players nor opening names are attached to the games (except in some of the notes) there might be little need for something other than setting up a move-by-move index of games, kind of like a paginated and referenced Table of Moves. There is an About the Author page, but there is nothing in there about the author.
How to choose a sample game? I’ll settle on a “wordy” one, because it is, well, so Some Loser-ish.
What to make of Unorthodox Chess? I am reminded of Kasparov’s quote in Batsford Chess Openings: “Chess is not skittles.” For most of the chess-playing world, however – the untitled players, the ones belonging to no chess federation, the ones who have never played a rated game or joined a chess club (and don’t care ever to do any of these) – chess is demonstrably skittles. If this isn’t you, chances you’ve already stopped reading this review anyhow, but let me spell it out: this is probably not the book for you. (But you knew that.) If you’re playing any level of advanced competition, you may find yourself struggling to win in spite of what you’ve learned from Some Loser, not because of it. Some Loser contends that:
This is, of course, not so. The “indisputable test” of Unorthodox Chess is if the one hundred plus samoleons it is going to set you back, plus the time spent thoroughly studying it, might be better spent, say, on a similarly expensive shopping trip to, I don’t know, maybe the Chessville Bookstore? A c-note gets you a whole lot of Seirawan and Silman through Dvoretsky, not to mention a truckload of Reinfeld and Chernev. It might even buy you a few hours of IGM Maurice Ashley’s time…
Bottom line: despite
its zaniness – or because of it – at $20 or $25 this would be
a fun collection of games for off-the-road exploration by lovers of oddball
play, regardless of their level (or lack) of skill. (I am reminded of a chessfriend who plays chess games at a bar, and is fond of the Jerome
Gambit: it leads to an exciting game, he says, and either way it’s over
quickly.) Picking up a copy Unorthodox Chess might be an energetic
way to reward the initiative of a chess-playing self-publisher, too, (like
getting a copy of Sullivan’s Chess is a Struggle). But not at this
price. You’d have to have money to burn to add it to your book shelf, or be
like those my Dad used to bemoan, who “had more money than common sense.”
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Today’s review looks at the vastly different efforts of two Canadian chess
players, Neil Sullivan and the pseudonymous “Some Loser.” Sullivan, FIDE
2123, presents 50 of his best games in Chess is a Struggle, all
annotated with a tone and at a level to appeal to the improving club and
tournament player, in a way that brings to mind for me Alex Dunne’s How
to Become A Candidate Master. The book benefits greatly from the use of
diagrams and the efforts of someone skilled in book layout. Loser, in
contrast, presents literally thousands of games, purportedly his own,
largely unannotated, or with the occasional witty or biting comment (and
very occasional depth analysis). It is efficiently, if unspectacularly, laid
out, with diagrams only on the first page of each chapter.
When news
about the publication of Unorthodox Chess appeared at such sites as
rec.games.chess.misc, there were people who rushed to the author’s website
and quickly decided it was so over-the-top, it had to be a hoax.
How’s this for an introduction:
