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Winning with the Trompowsky Reviewed by Jens Madsen
All of this makes it even more embarrassing that the present review has been almost half a year in the making! Yes, the patience of my poor publisher has been thoroughly tested to the point where I suppose he almost gave up on me (although he is much too nice to admit that). What made this process go awry? The cynics among our readership may suppose that this is a sign that this book is a real stinker, but in fact this could not be farther from the truth. This is a great book, a book you want to own if you have any interest in the Trompowsky from either side of the board. Fact is that I spend the intervening months enmeshed in a careful evaluation of Wells’ recommendations, for the most part via lots of online games.
There is a certain irony in Batsford’s recent publication of a 240-page opening book on the supposedly non-theoretical Trompowsky (1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5). After all the ‘Tromp’, as it is affectionately known, has been a refuge for free thinkers trying to avoid the realms of theory that exist for the various Indian defenses. The ironic part is by no means lost on author Peter Wells, who once more lives up to his deserved reputation as one of the best chess authors around. Apart from an updated theoretical treatment, Wells delivers lots of vivid and text-rich strategic introductions to basic ideas. Gone are the days when the Trompowsky was considered nothing but an obscure system without any other merit than the surprise value. A group of English players have been instrumental in bringing about this change, most prominently GM Julian Hodgson who time and again has displayed true masterhood in deriving full points from the inherently unbalanced Tromp positions. Actually, Joe Gallagher, who wrote the previous major English-language title on the Trompowsky (1998), went as far as to suggest renaming the entire opening into the Hodgson-Trompowsky system. I would personally have no problem backing this suggestion, after all not many people remember who Trompowsky was anyway. You may grab ten points and a ‘good job’ sticker if you knew that Octavio Trompowsky was an early-20th century Brazilian champion, who played this system on a regular basis. While we are at it, let me mention that anyway Señor Trompowsky was not the first to play 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5. Among the earliest games preserved with these opening moves, we find some from the hands of greater spirits such as Efim Bogoljubow and Friedrich Saemisch. Also, David Janowsky, always true to his gambling nature, played it with mixed results in four games at the strong Semmering tournament in 1926. With all due respect for these chess icons, it is my feeling from playing over some of these early games that part of the reason the Trompowsky did not catch on back then, was that the understanding of chess strategy was not yet sufficiently evolved. Many key variations of the Tromp are intrinsically modern, in the sense that imbalances between static and dynamic positional features form a core theme. Already with his second move (2.Bg5) White initiates an interesting dialogue, asking Black whether he is prepared to accept the doubling of pawns in the f-file in exchange for retaining the bishop pair. In some lines White even gives up the bishop pair without inflicting any structural damage, expecting compensation to exist in the form of space and development, an example being 2…e6 3.e4 h6 4.Bxf6 Qxf6.
Winning with the Trompowsky does a wonderful job of explaining the finer points of White’s strategic ideas. It is always a good selling point, when an opening book claims to focus on basic understanding rather than brute memorization, but too often such noble intentions remain just that – intentions. The problem may well be authors with lack of instructive will or skill, but most likely strict page constraints also hamper many efforts. Not so with this title! Wells’ prose is delightful and witty, and the Batsford editors deserve praise for providing him with the necessary space. The book is constructed around a framework of illustrative games, but it is much more than just a collection of annotated games. There are long verbose sections throughout, and furthermore Wells resorts to ‘theoretical articles’ on three occasions (for some reason two of these are inconsistently called ‘analytical articles’). These articles, 4-5 pages each, present in-depth coverage of some critical lines with lots of original analysis. The only opening book from recent years that bears some resemblance is Jonathan Rowson’s Understanding the Grunfeld, which happens to be another excellent book. Playing the Tromp, you will find plenty of examples where both opponents seem to break all the rules of sound opening play. A good example is the fascinating line that arises after 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5 Ne4 3.Bf4 c5 4.f3 Qa5+ 5.c3 Nf6 6.d5 Qb6 7.Bc1!?, which Winning with the Trompowsky deals with in great detail.
Wells points out that this sequence of moves needs to be interpreted as a battle of tempi. If you do the math, White has moved his bishop thrice, only to see it returned to its initial square. However, Black has apparently wasted even more time by moving the same knight three times plus the queen twice! Wells comments: One of the most prevalent reactions to the Trompowsky these days seems to be a good deal of general sympathy, combined with an unease that these lines commencing after 6…Qb6 are just a bit too strange – tempi apparently squandered, pawns grabbed or sacrificed with a worrying lack of stylistic consistency and an apparently perverse attitude to development and king safety, and so on. It is interesting to compare Wells’ book with Joe Gallagher’s earlier effort on the same subject. Gallagher covered many of the same lines, but his book was not a repertoire book, and so included sections on White alternatives that Wells has discarded. For instance, Wells does not consider 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5 Ne4 3.h4!?, an idea with some merit, nor the pseudo-Tromp arising after 1.d4 d5 2.Bg5. Another line left out of Winning with the Trompowsky is the old main line 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5 Ne4 3.Bh4?! c5 4.f3 g5 5.fxe4 gxh4, which scared yours truly away from the Trompowsky many years ago.
This omission is fully justifiable, since the 3.Bh4 lines are under such a dark cloud today that they are hardly ever played, and most likely this will not change (ever!). It may seem strange that while Wells is leaving out certain White options, he is spending twice as many pages as Gallagher, who only had 144 pages at his disposition. One of the reasons is that Winning with the Trompowsky in fact presents two repertoires in one book. Wells refer to these repertoires as solid and attacking respectively, although this division is not always very clear-cut. Here is the list of contents, which you will see contains the two parallel tracks from chapters two through seven: Chapter 1:
2…Ne4 Introduction and Minor Lines If you are considering rebirth as a Tromp practitioner, you should know that you probably will be facing 2...Ne4 and 2…e6 most often. It has been my observation playing against mixed (mostly intermediate) opposition that Black only opts for other continuations, such as 2…d5, 2…c5, and 2…g6, in less than 10-20% of games. Wells has an explanation for this on page 120, where he muses: I am convinced at least that the popularity of 2…Ne4 and 2…e6 is no coincidence. These are the only two moves which avoid the possibility of White inflicting the dreaded doubled f-pawns, and, whatever the specific verdict of theory in a given case, I think many players are just not comfortable handling these. From my personal vantage point, I would say that the material has been appropriately weighted, with the notable exception of the 2…Ne4 3.Bf4 d5 lines that are allotted two full chapters (45 pages). However natural this line may seem, I have only encountered it once in about fifty Tromp games, and so found these chapters to be somewhat extravagant. Of course, theoretical currents have been known to shift suddenly, so that interest in these lines may revive. Among the things missing, Wells’ book would have benefited by rounding out the repertoire with a chapter on Tromp-like systems with 2.Bg5 versus 1.d4 d5 and the Dutch 1.d4 f5. It has been argued that many 1.e4-players are being attracted to the Trompowsky as a second weapon. The abovementioned suggestion of including a chapter on what to do when Black circumvents 1…Nf6 could be seen as accommodating migrating e4-players, who may not want to sail the shark infested waters of the Slav. There is no doubt Wells has penned the best introduction to the Trompowsky seen so far, and it will help further advance its popularity. This means that the surprise value of 2.Bg5 continues to fade, and people will start looking at the soundness of critical lines. Does White achieve the desired plus out of the opening in all sub-variations, or is it merely enough to equalize with best counter-play from Black? Wells certainly seems very optimistic on behalf of the Tromp, and only the test of time will reveal whether his optimism is exaggerated or not. Winning with the
Trompowsky was written with club players in mind, and on the back cover
the Tromp is even proclaimed an ideal weapon for this audience. Whether this
is true or not is an open question, but the very manageable amount of theory
(despite this 240-page tome) does fit the bill. Moreover, statistics shows
that Trompowsky practitioners will have it their way in around 60% of their
games with White, namely whenever Black responds 1…Nf6. On the other hand,
the correct assessment of the typical Tromp-imbalances, such as tempi for
structure, provides a tremendous challenge for all club players. After all,
we are in a sense comparing apples with oranges, so that the development of
an intuitive feel is necessary to understand when a short-term (dynamic)
feature offers sufficient compensation to drive home the win in spite of the
potentially lost endgame looming on the horizon, etc. Hence, I will
recommend this book for players rated over 1600 only.
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