John Healy’s harrowing autobiographical book, The Grass Arena, is the story of a man whose drinking steadily tears apart his life.  Work cannot stop the destruction, nor can the promise of a boxing career, nor can a stint in the army.  Jail time, treatment programs, hospitalizations – all were unsuccessful in halting Healy’s plunge into a decade and a half of alcoholic vagrancy.

The rest of the book is a selection of about 95 positions and occasional games from Healy’s career.  Sometimes they are presented with the names of the players, the location where the game was played, and the year.  Sometimes they are presented without identification, as “Exercises.” The “Exercises” come four-to-a-page, with the solutions at the back of the book; while the identified positions are given with the moves that followed, along with some background, for example:

The white player had won the Elstree Minor tournament a few months earlier, and was written up in the local paper as “dangerman Sagar”, but it was he who was in danger.

While the names of Healy’s opponents might not always ring a bell, I noted games against IM Robert Wade and GM Jonathan Speelman, as well as simultaneous exhibition games against GMs Bent Larsen and Rafael Vaganian.

Coffeehouse Chess Tactics is generally well laid-out for readability, although the non-“Exercise” positions come one-to-a-page, often leaving a good bit of white space at the bottom.  Positions on page 108 and 109 seem to be missing a title (as do those on pages 73 and 93), but perhaps, as they follow a position titled “Compulsory Redundancy,” they are to be included under that.  (The irony.)

Although it is a small part of the book, and not likely attributable to Healy, I am a bit disappointed by the unnecessarily super-heated text on the back cover:

With refreshing simplicity, Coffeehouse Chess Tactics shows how to turn bad, even seemingly hopeless positions to our advantage.  How to distinguish the essential from the trivial.  How to adapt according to the situation on the board.

This description suggest that the reader will find within something along the lines of Valeri Beim’s How to Calculate Chess Tactics, or at least David LeMoir’s How to be Lucky In Chess – but that is not so.  Coffeehouse Chess Tactics shows in the same way that a videotape of Ted Williams batting would “show” a viewer how to hit .400.  “Show” in this sense means “watch and learn,” without explanation (which might be where the “simplicity” in the back cover text comes in).

On top of this, while Healy’s positions and “Exercises” occasionally show the author at disadvantage, or allow him to share some esoteric knowledge (e.g. endgames with RP + “wrong” Bishop are drawn) for the most part they are like those in many other tactical collections: one player has an advantage, and because of that advantage he or she is able to pull off a tactical closer.

Despite the contention that “Each game sparkles with some unusual tactical or defensive motif” the positions are, for the most part, not out of the ordinary.  (Want “extra-ordinary”?  Try David Zimbeck's Chess Puzzles or Parallel Strategy: 156 Chess Compositions by Peter Wong.  Wear a neck brace to avoid a spinning head.)

Finally,

Fascinating and compelling, Coffeehouse Chess Tactics takes the reader on an astonishing trip into the world of competitive chess.

If the back cover text is referring to the “Blood Sport” essay, then it is spot on, and that’s that.  However, if it is referring to the games and positions, this is more needless hype, as there is little “astonishing” about them.  (If New In Chess really wants to expose readers to coffeehouse chess style, let them translate and reprint Freidl’s 1985 Das Gedult Buch.  David Gedult und seine Partien, or even Dany Sénéchaud’s much more recent EJ Diemer, missionnaire des échecs acrobatiques.)

Readers who are familiar with The Grass Arena and who wonder “what happened next?”, those who enjoyed Healy’s prose, or those who are chess players and who are interested in checking out new (to them) tactical positions (many, with tales attached) can settle down with Coffeehouse ChessTactics and expect hours of enjoyment.
 

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