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Even More Practical 9 Years Later

Back in 1998, GM John Nunn came out with a slim 176 page book called Secrets of Practical Chess. It was well received and covered a potpourri of topics such as:

• Defending difficult positions

• How to study the openings

• How to make decisions

• Avoiding common mistakes

• When to calculate

• Coping with pressure

• Avoiding time-trouble

Because of the range of topics Nunn covers, I would classify this book as one designed to improve your overall chess abilities (as opposed to say, an openings book which focuses on just one aspect of your game).  Therefore, it can be argued that studying this book will pay bigger dividends than studying just about any other kind of chess books (tactics, positional play, endgames, etc.) because Secrets of Practical Chess will help elevate your entire overall game.

I think the reason why this book was so well received can be summed up in one word: Quality.  Nunn’s writing is never trivial.  His ideas and suggestions come from years of experience and over-the-board practice at grandmaster level.  While, for example, Dvoretsky’s material is almost always on the “heavy” side and some other GMs, such as Plaskett tend to write in a somewhat trivial manner, it seems to me that Nunn strikes just the right balance of depth and “readability.”

This new “enlarged” edition of Secrets of Practical Chess contains 80 new pages.  While the first edition came in at a svelte 176 pages, this one is a solid 256.  Here are the contents:

1  At the Board
2  The Opening
3  The Middlegame
4  The Endgame
5  Using a Computer
6  Chess Literature

You should know that the first four chapters in both books are identical.  The added material is in a greatly expanded chapter five on Using a Computer and a new chapter six on Chess Literature.

For those of you who own the first edition, the question then becomes should you pick up this new one?  Before I answer this I want to first take a look at one section from Chapter 1 (which appears in both books).

While Nunn talks about several important concepts in this first chapter, the one that really made an impact on me is called “Implicit Commitments.”  It’s the idea that your choice of opening obligates you to follow through with a certain plan.  And that if you fail to play in accordance with the opening set-up you’ve adopted, an astute opponent will capitalize on this.

While the following excerpt from pages 31-32 is longer than I usually like to give in my reviews, Nunn’s explanations and examples are so good that I feel it is worth including:

Implicit Commitments

Almost every move in chess involves some sort of commitment.  A pawn move cannot be reversed and with each advance the pawn permanently loses the ability to control certain squares.  Even a piece move is a commitment; if the piece turns out to be badly placed on its new square, it may have to go into reverse, with consequent loss of time.  However, the degree of commitment is important.  A piece sacrifice involves a greater degree of commitment than a natural developing move.  However, there is a more subtle type of commitment, which we call implicit commitment.  Very often, a certain type of commitment is bound up in a player’s choice of opening.

 

A player as White adopting the Velimirović Attack in the Sicilian (one of the main lines of which runs 1e4 c5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 Nf6 5 Nc3 d6 6 Bc4 e6 7 Be3 Be7 8 Qe2 a6 9 0-0-0 Qc7 10 Bb3 0-0 11 g4) is committing himself to an all-out kingside attack, which may involve sacrifices, and if he is hesitant about giving up material then he has simply chosen the wrong opening.  Of course, this is an extreme example—there are few opening variations as one-sided as the Velimirović Attack, but the same general principle applies in many openings.  For example, it is not unusual for a player to seize a long-term strategic advantage in return for piece activity or a lead in development.  In this case the player with the better development has taken on an implicit commitment to undertake rapid action.  Advantages such as a lead in development are inherently temporary, because when the opponent has brought out all his pieces the advantage disappears.  A common mistake is to take on such a position, but not to appreciate that the long-term chances lie with the opponent.  The result is a fatal lack of urgency.  Here is an example.

 

Nunn, John DM (2605) - Mellado Trivino, Juan (2430)
Leon (9), 13.06.1997

1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.e5 c5 4.c3 Qb6 5.Nf3 Bd7 6.Be2 Bb5 7.c4 Bxc4 8.Bxc4 dxc4 9.d5 Ne7 10.d6 Nec6 11.0–0

 

This is a typical case of implicit commitment.  The extra pawn is not relevant, as White will win back the c4-pawn in a few moves.  The key factor is that Black has allowed a wedge into the middle of his position.  The protected passed pawn is not going to promote in the near future—there are simply too many pieces on the board for that—but it is an asset both in the middlegame and in the endgame.  In the middlegame it stifles the activity of Black’s pieces and cuts communication between the queenside and kingside.  This could help White to mount a kingside attack, for Black’s queenside pieces would have trouble feeding across to the other side of the board.  In the endgame the pawn is more likely to promote, as there are fewer pieces available to keep it under control.  Black would probably have to assign one piece to keep a watchful eye on the pawn, leaving him a man short elsewhere.  The only caveat here is that White should not exchange too many pieces in an endgame, since then Black could use his king as the blockading piece.

 

In return for White’s long-term asset, Black’s minor pieces can converge to attack the e5-pawn and for some time White will be tied down to its defence.  Moreover, Black’s development is quite good, especially as White will have to invest some time in regaining the pawn on c4.  However, these compensating factors are all temporary, and given time White will complete his development and reorganize his forces to defend e5 efficiently.  Black has therefore taken on a heavy implicit commitment either to keep White off-balance or to convert his temporary advantages into something more permanent before White puts his house in order.  If Black has not achieved something concrete within the next half-dozen moves, then we can safely predict that he will be in trouble.

 

White, on the other hand, can content himself with more modest play.  All he need do is consolidate his position and bring all his pieces into play and Black will ‘automatically’ be worse.  (White) has a very clear cut aim, while Black must try to generate counterplay ‘somehow’, i.e. he has to formulate a plan from scratch, whereas White’s plan is handed to him on a plate.  This is a typical situation in such ‘long-term advantage vs piece play’ situations.  The piece-play side has much more work to do, at least to begin with, to find the best plan.  If he succeeds, then the other side may also have to think carefully about how to contain his opponent’s counterplay, but if he does not succeed the game can be quite easy.

 

From all this we can learn an important lesson.  At the end of the opening, spend a few minutes deciding whether one player has the better long-term chances.  This may be obvious simply from the opening variation chosen (for example, in the Exchange Ruy Lopez it is obviously White who has the better long-term chances), but if it is at all unclear then it is worth spending time on this question.  The strategy for the two players may then be quite clear: one side must aim to consolidate and contain his opponent; the other must play to stir up trouble quickly.

(For completion's sake, here is the rest of the game: 11…Nd7 12.Re1 g6 13.Na3 Bg7 14.Nxc4 Qa6 15.Qe2 0–0 16.Bf4 Nb6 17.b3 Nd5 18.Bg3 h6 19.Qe4 Rac8 20.h4 b5 21.Ne3 Ncb4 22.a3 Nc3 23.axb4 Qxa1 24.Qc2 Qa3 25.Qxc3 cxb4 26.Qd3 Rc3 27.Qxb5 Rxb3 28.Nc4 Qa2 29.Na5 Rb2 30.Nd4 Rd2 31.Nab3 Rb2 32.Qxb4 Qa6 33.Qc3 Ra2 34.Nc5 Qc8 35.Rc1 Qa8 36.Qb3 Rd2 37.Qb4 Ra2 38.Qb7 Rd2 39.Qxa8 Rxa8 40.Ncb3 1–0)

Honestly, for those who want to know how a GM thinks, I don’t think it gets much better than this.  And this is less than two pages of material—imagine going through the entire book!

So, without a doubt the book is certainly worth getting if you don’t already have it.  The question is, should you buy the new “enlarged edition” if you already own the first edition?  My answer is that it depends on how interested you are in learning how to analyze chess games/openings with your computer and if you are interested in Nunn’s thoughts on the current state of chess books.

I say this because chapter 5 is called Using a Computer and chapter 6 is called Chess Literature.  Note that the first edition also had a chapter 5 called Using a Computer, however it was just 8 pages long, while the new edition clocks in at 52 pages.  No less important is the fact that the material in the new edition is obviously much more up-to-date (Nunn even talks about Rybka 2.1) than in the 1998 book.

Chapter 6 is brand new and contains, among other things, Nunn’s criticisms of Nathan Divinsky’s The Batsford Chess Encyclopedia, Michael de la Maza’s controversial book, Rapid Chess Improvement and Pal Benko’s problematic update of Fine’s classic Basic Chess Endings.  He even takes Kasparov to task for giving 17.Nc6 a question mark in the game Capablanca-Janowski 1911 saying:

Perhaps he had a power cut during his work (referring to Kasparov saying in the introduction of My Great Predecessors, Part 1 that the games in the book had been “studied under the microscope of the latest analytical computer programs.”), because not only does 17.Nc6 not lose material, it is almost certainly the strongest move and gives White the advantage.

To me, both chapters are interesting in their own way.  Since I love chess books (and own far too many), hearing what a strong GM (as well as a co-owner of a major chess publishing house, GAMBIT) thinks about the current state of chess literature certainly makes for a good read.

Chapter 5, on using your computer (and more specifically the programs ChessBase and Fritz as well as game databases/opening books) to analyze your games/openings is again very much of interest to me.  And while I don’t spend nearly as much time going through my opening repertoire with the Silicon beast as I should, I was interested to see how to do it properly.  Additionally, Nunn not only shows how computers are used to help find novelties, but also talks about its limitations and how you have to both guide it as well as give it enough time to ensure the best results.  One example he takes you through is the poisoned pawn variation in the Sicilian Najdorf.  Says Nunn:

Let us suppose we play or would like to play 6 Bg5 against the Najdorf, but lack a decent line against the Poisoned Pawn. This is quite a common problem. Both Fischer and Kasparov placed their faith in the Poisoned Pawn as Black, and even though their opponents were able to prepare for this line, no refutation was ever found. The Poisoned Pawn has been subjected to the most detailed analysis over the last half-century, but that doesn’t mean that it is impossible to find new ideas.

 

First of all, we have to be clear about our objectives. Given the amount of analysis devoted to the Poisoned Pawn, and the number of grandmasters who have tried to bust it and failed, it would be unreasonable to hope that we are simply going to demolish the Poisoned Pawn. But we are not looking for fame as a slayer of the Poisoned Pawn, we are looking for ways to win over-the-board games and that is much easier.

As you can see, the title of this book is quite appropriate as Nunn takes a very pragmatic approach to both his chess preparation as well as his over-the-board decision making process.

The Bottom Line

The original Secrets of Practical Chess, which came out in 1998, covered a lot of important ideas on how to improve in all areas of your game.  This new edition contains two more chapters of high quality material that will certainly be of interest to most chess players.  If you already have the first edition than it just depends on how interested you are in learning how to use a computer to analyze your games as well as how curious you are to hear what Nunn has to say about current chess literature.

This new edition is packed with quite a bit of material and will take most class players some time to work through properly.  However, this is one of those books where you will get out of it exactly as much as you put into it.  On a scale of 1-10, Secrets of Practical Chess (New Enlarged Edition) gets an 8.5.
 

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