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Chessville
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The Perry PawnPusher Awards By Rick Kennedy
Reaching this milestone, I thought it would be fun to look back at some of the gems that I have reviewed. This is a very pleasant task, as almost everything placed in front of me has had merit – and many works have had a great deal of merit. The Perry PawnPusher Awards are named after the author of such untouchable tomes as The Terrible Two-Step and The Penultimate Perry, neither of which will ever be reviewed by me here at Chessville. I admit up-front a certain softness in my heart for new writers, unorthodox ideas and small press or self-published efforts. Please note that these Awards are not “official”, they do not cover all of the books reviewed at Chessville, they certainly are not “Chessville Awards” and they do not represent either the opinions of the Chessville editors or of other Chessville staff – only those of this reviewer. ”Hardest Working Opening Book Award: Black & White” I have always found that it takes a lot of work to learn a new opening, so it only seems fair to expect that the author who wants me to start a game his or her way should be working at least as hard. It helps if the author is excited about the topic, and enjoying writing about it, too. Fortunately, many well-written efforts have climbed upon my self in the last few years. An Attacking Repertoire for White by Sam Collins is one such effort deserving mention. The Fascinating Reti Gambit by Thomas Johansson is an exciting and personal favorite, as is Win with the London System by Sverre Johnsen and Vlatko Kovačević. On the defensive side is The Chigorin Defence According to Morozevich by GM Alexander Morozevich & IM Vladimir Barsky, Tango! A Dynamic Answer to 1.d4 by Richard Palliser and Latest Trends In the Semi-Slav: Anti-Meran by Konstantin Sakaev & Semko Semkov. None of these books were “phoned in.”
“Saved from the Dustbin of Time Award” As Jeremy Spinrad has noted, “If you do research in chess history, you find out early on that very few people want to listen to you…” Yet, how often have we relearned the lesson that “all is new that has been forgotten”? Over the years I’ve had the opportunity to review several e-books (all from ChessCentral) based on early primers – Chess Lessons for Beginners and Chess Openings for Beginners by E.E. Cunnington, for example, as well as Chess Endings by Freeborough. There is also the engaging The Discart – Bonetti Chess Match, 1863 by Alessandro Nizzola, highlighting the exciting advantage that “free castling” had over our modern, staid version. With some trepidation, however, the Perry PawnPusher Saved from the Dustbin of Time Award goes to Chess Openings Ancient and Modern by Freeborough and Rankin, as offered for sale in PDF scanned format, online, by Rick Adams. To be found behind all of the website hype such as Discover How Information Contained In Long Lost c1900 Manuscripts Reveal Amazing Chess Secrets For Today's Budding GrandMasters! and Master your chess strategy and amaze your opponents at the same time, without paying for years of professional coaching, was a treasure trove of opening ideas that have disappeared from modern opening encyclopedias. As I wrote, “if you’re playing the Royal Game at a much more pedestrian level, you are going to find things to surprise your opponent.” Bobby Fisher sure did. Unfortunately, the url mentioned in my review, www.smartchessmoves.com, no longer leads to Adams’ website. An apparently newer site (with a link to the above) http://smartchessmoves.blogspot.com/ appears not to have been updated in a couple years. Oh, well. You can probably get a printed copy of the book from Amazon for under $10.00, shipping included. “There Were Giants in the Land” I enjoy reading about chess players, it’s that simple. At one point in Paul Hoffman’s King’s Gambit, the author arranges to travel with International Master Pascal Charbonneau, and there is the fleeting worry: what if this guy is too boring to write about? I found this to extraordinarily funny – that any chess player, especially Charbonneau (who is a man of character, if not also a bit of a character), would be boring. (As an aside, I am glad to see that The Bobby Fischer I Knew, and other stories by Arnold Denker and Larry Parr, has been reprinted by Hardinge Simpole.) The chance to read about past chess players and their haunts, such as with Thomas Frère and the Brotherhood of Chess - A History of 19th Century Chess in New York City by Martin Frère Hillyer; modern swashbucklers such as in A Chess Explorer by Hugh E. Myers; or regular guys as in My 35 Most Memorable Games, Lessons of a Weekend Warrior by Andy Fletcher and Chess is a Struggle: My Selected Games by Neil Sullivan make my job as a reviewer endlessly fascinating. (There were other biographies out there, but my fellow reviewers got there first!)
“Was There Chess Before Fischer?” Ah, yes. A good portion of United States Chess Federation members these days was born before the Fischer – Spassky match. The second one. Most have access to computers, few know what the phrase “card catalog” refers to, and many suppose that “to research” is synonymous with “to Google.” Yet here I am, writing about books. They all might want to tackle Birth of the Chess Queen: A History by Marilyn Yalom at some point, though, while dodging The Official History of the British Correspondence Chess Association 1906-2006 by D. J. Rogers, which they’re probably “just not into.” It is my hope that they or their chess club or school or neighborhood libraries have snapped up the awesome The Immortal Game, A History of Chess, or How 32 Carved Pieces on a Board Illuminated Our Understanding of War, Art, Science and the Human Brain, by David Shenk.
“99% Solution” Now here’s a challenging topic. If chess is indeed “99% tactics,” then any good collection of games will provide a bushel-full of lessons. A good example is Tactics In the Chess Opening 2 - Open Games by A.C. van der Tak & Friso Nijboer. 1.e4! e5! There is also excellent instruction available from experienced chess teachers, as with Excelling at Chess Calculation: Capitalising on tactical chances by Jacob Aagaard, and How to Calculate Chess Tactics by Valeri Beim. If you’re climbing, these are excellent hand-holds. Not only the top players are attended to, as Yasser Seirawan’s Winning Chess Tactics (Revised) and Winning Chess Combinations cater to the average pawnpusher, as does Chess Puzzles for the Casual Player Volume 1 by Kevin Houston. Reading each title has helped boost my game – it could hardly be otherwise.
“Hardcore Software” I only have two packages to consider here (shameless hint to the folks at ChessBase, Convekta, etc.), and the first, Opening Instructor (CD) by ICCF-GM N. Kalinichenko, might have just as well competed in the Hardest Working Opening Book Award – if it were a book. It’s good stuff.
“Waiting for a Second Edition” How can I put it? I’m not talking about a “second volume,” like the completion of Calvin Olson’s The Chess Kings Volume One - History, Politics, and the Fine Art of Mythmaking in Chess, or a sequel, like what will follow Discipline by Paco Ahlgren one of these days. (Maybe a movie, too.) I’m talking about a second attempt at fixing something that didn’t quite make it the first time around. Let’s face it, I’m a reader, I’m a writer and I love chess and chess players. It takes a good bit of effort to find a chess book that turns me off or wrinkles my nose. If you’ve kept up with my reviews you know that I even found my share of smiles (and treasures) in (the unfortunately overpriced) Unorthodox Chess by Some Loser, a book preemptively dumped upon in certain chess newsgroups.
“Pleasant Surprise” The books that come to be reviewed by me do not arrive by accident. Most of the time publishers send them to my editors, and I get to choose which ones I want. (Thanks, David! Thanks, Jens!) Sometimes, though, I will contact a publisher about a book that has caught my eye, when Chessville hasn’t (yet) caught the eye of that publisher. (Such is the appreciation of Chessville.com and “The Chessville Weekly,” read in over 120 countries around the world, that I am rarely refused.) On one occasion, though, an author contacted me to let me know that, despite my efforts, I had overlooked his book. That piqued my interest. I checked the title out, and it proved to be “an enjoyable book – well laid-out, readable, entertaining, enlightening, and very practical.” It was a very pleasant read with its own je ne sais quoi. Just my luck! Of course, the notion of “luck” has to be put into proper perspective when talking about chess…
“Special Mention”
Can you imagine if Bobby Fischer had written a similar set of essays over the last few decades? It would have had to have been collected with tongs and printed on asbestos. “Can’t Touch This” What’s the number one book / ebook / software package of the 100 I’ve reviewed? What’s numero uno in my mind? Up until quite recently, one title held such a grasp on me that I was considering calling this Perry PawnPusher Award the “Pried From My Cold, Dead Fingers Award.” Nothing came seriously close. Then I reviewed the Chess Review & Chess Life Complete Collection 1933-1975 DVDs. My head was spinning. It still is spinning. Forty years of magazine coverage of the United States and world chess scene – forty years!
The Works of Rick Kennedy Index of All Reviews
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With
such a great field to choose from, I’ve decided to use the
which-book-helped-this-pawnpusher-the-most criterion. Not to
disrespect the experts, masters and grandmasters out there, but this means
that the self-published (Lulu) Perry PawnPusher 99% Solution Award goes to
