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The Petroff Defense (a.k.a. “the Russian Game”) is an excellent choice for someone looking for an alternative to the Black side of the Scotch, Italian, or Spanish. It is perfectly sound, solid yet active, and fairly easy to learn.
The table of contents shows the following coverage:
There is no complete index of variations, but as per the usual Everyman practice, there is an Index of Complete Games – though why, I’m never quite sure, as it’s not clear to me how useful this is, especially in lieu of an index of variations. The bibliography lists eight different books, including Janjgava’s 2001 Gambit publication The Petroff, the previously most recent book on the Petroff of which I am aware. It also lists two periodicals (Chess Informant and NIC) and Chess Assistant 7.1. Raetsky and Chetverik have obviously done their homework, and it shows in their frequent references throughout the text.
Their research gives rise to the greatest strength of the book, its academic-like rigor and scope. Make no mistake about it: this is a theoretical work through and through. Raetsky and Chetverik explore and evaluate every remotely reasonable move a Petroff player could possibly expect to encounter, from either White’s or Black’s perspective. They have left no stone unturned, drawing not only from over-the-board play but correspondence games as well, and cite the novelties and opinions of a wide variety of Petroff players, including Classical World Champion Vladimir Kramnik. Frankly, I doubt there is any other single book in print that rivals this one for up to date theoretical coverage.
However, this great strength is also the book’s greatest weakness. It’s not clear to me that anyone other than an IM or GM specializing in the Petroff would have much use for the book. First of all, it is decidedly not an instructional book. There is almost no discussion of typical plans, strategies, or tactics. The authors confine themselves almost entirely to lists of moves and terse evaluations (“equal,” “slight advantage,” “unclear,” and so forth). This is definitely not a book from which a club player could learn the Petroff.
Second of all, it’s not even a particularly useful reference tool for post-game analysis or correspondence play. The lack of a complete index of variations really hurts the book in this respect. This omission is only slightly mitigated by the inclusion of the partial indexes at the end of each chapter, especially since these indexes are narrow and shallow, failing to come anywhere close to indexing every line in the chapter. The illustrative games format further compounds this problem, since the best lines are often not the ones played in the games, but exist only deeply buried in the various notes to the games. A player would be much better off looking up moves in a database or a book that uses a tree of variations format and includes a complete index.
Given such flaws, I’m not sure even high level players would find this book very useful, unless they were willing to sit down and spend a couple of months studying each and every line, perhaps making their own index of variations, or entering all the moves and variations into a database. As for average club players (who keep the chess publishing companies in business), I suspect their time would be better spent with a more explicitly instructive book. Despite the high quality of analysis, this book simply can’t be recommended to anyone whose name isn’t Kramnik or Yusupov, or someone who plans to play against either of them in the near future.
Copyright 2006 S. Evan Kreider
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