These are samples of reviews by Natcor's resident reviewer, Alan Sutton. Alan's reviews are a regular feature of Natcor's monthly magazine, 'En Passant'.

Winning Quickly at Chess
by John Nunn
(Gambit, softback, 255 pages, £15.99)

  In 1999 John Nunn wrote 101 Chess Miniatures which was a collection of 101 short (25 moves or less) games.  The format of the original book was too rigid for his liking (one page per game, if my memory serves me correctly) so he has now taken the opportunity to rewrite the original book with expanded notes, and in addition he has included an extra 24 games played since the appearance of the original.  These are not games played between two players of widely disparate strengths.  Most of the players on the receiving end are grandmasters. 

  So why does a strong grandmaster lose a game in less than 25 moves?  The reasons are many and varied.   There are seven major causes which Nunn explores in his introductory chapter, and often a combination of more than one of these factors is the underlying cause of a swift demise.  But do not expect a cornucopia of swashbuckling tactical masterpieces.  Often the line between success and failure is very narrow, and in many of the examples the losing side made only one slight error of judgement which was expertly and ruthlessly exploited by his opponent.  Teaching the reader how to recognise such errors of judgement is a further aim of the book.

  We have all suffered a quick humiliation at some time in our careers and it is somewhat reassuring to learn that our chess role models can fall into the same bad habits that we so often succumb to.  Even more reassuring is the fact that from time to time they too can suffer the same humiliation that we feel, but even more so.  The bigger they are, the harder they fall!  So the book is both entertaining and instructional, though the former aspect by far outweighs the latter.  We can take delight in seeing others brought down to earth so abruptly, and we can hopefully learn from their mistakes and avoid repeating them in our own games.  Oh, if only!!

Boris Spassky Master of the Initiative
by Alexander Raetsky and Maxim Chetverik)
(Everyman, softback, 160 pages, £12.99)

  The title may lead you to believe that this book is a biography of Spassky, with particular emphasis on his use of the initiative, but the reality is very different.  True, there is a biography of sorts (about ten pages of text) but the rest of the book is a glorified “find the continuation” type of book, with all the positions taken from Spassky’s games.

  In all there are 150 positions to solve.  They are more complex than the typical “White/Black to play and win” type of position and I have to confess that my success rate was about 25%, which gives an indication of the difficulty level of many of them.  The positions are grouped thematically into chapters, with a “tips” section appended to each chapter, though at times I found the tips more enigmatic and less helpful than the Delphic oracles!  The solutions section was rather terse, a list of moves played with very little explanation of what was actually happening.  On the other hand, since most of the solutions present the moves of the whole game, we do in the end have a collection of 100+ Spassky games, albeit with very light annotations.

  To sum up, the book is a bit of a curate’s egg, but viewed as a collection of puzzles to be solved rather than a biography of Spassky it stands up well in comparison with other books of the genre.

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