The United States of America imports most of its grandmasters from around the world (or at least it seems to) and many of its products from Asia (cars, electronics, toys, etc.), so it's only fitting that its best magazine would be produced by the good folks from Serbia. The third issue of the American Chess Magazine has hit the metaphorical stands, and like its predecessors it's a good one, worthy of your money even if you're not from the U.S.A.
That said, the magazine, or at least this issue, is more U.S.-centric than the first two. The ACM is a young periodical finding its way in the world, and besides that it's natural that it would have a heavier weighting on American chess given that its centerpiece is the U.S. Championship. Make that Championships, plural: it is new U.S. Women's Champ Sabina Foisor who "wins" the cover; overall champion Wesley So has a much smaller, inset picture, probably because he was featured on the cover of the previous issue. Of the issue's 152 pages, 43 are dedicated to the Championships: 26 to the "men's" (Open) event, 17 to the women's. So deeply annotates one of his wins from the tournament, Ivan Sokolov deeply annotates three games from the tournament (including two of So's), Varuzhan Akobian (who was in contention for first up until the end) annotated two more, and then Jaan Ehlvest adds a report on some of the openings highlights from the tournament. As for the women's coverage, it focuses heavily, but not exclusively, on Foisor's result and games.
After that comes a series of a la carte articles which, with one exception, have no intrinsic connection to U.S. chess:
1. Vassily Ivanchuk takes a very close look at one of his games from the Gibraltar tournament this past January.
2. John Fedorowicz starts a new column, inspired by Samuel Reshevsky's old Chess Life and Review column "The Art of Positional Play", entitled "The New Art of Positional Play". The first topic is "The Benoni Knight". Which knight is this, you ask? That's an excellent question. There's a picture at the start of the article with Black's pieces all in their starting positions and a White knight on b5, so you might think that it's White's queen's knight. Oddly, he never explicitly identifies the Benoni Knight, but on the third of the article's four pages the cat comes out of the bag. When White plays 15.Nc4-e3, "Fed" comments, "The second important knight move. White refuses to trade the "Benoni knight" and is able to use it on the kingside." At last! The knight was traded off a little later and without annotational fanfare, so I'm a bit confused about the title. But leaving that aside, it was an instructive game with notes that will be helpful to readers of vastly different ratings.
3. Karsten Mueller offers a tribute to the late great trainer (and in the days of his playing career, strong practical player) Mark Dvoretsky. Dvoretsky was a big fan of the endgame, and Mueller shows a number of his achievements in that phase of the game, with a short supplement summarizing some of Dvoretsky's finds in the famous Karpov-Kasparov knight vs. bishop ending from their first, unfinished match.
4. Alex Fishbein also writes an endgame column, "Mind Tricks in the Endgame". I won't offer spoilers here, but it's noteworthy that all but one of his examples are all taken from Candidates and World Championship events. Even the world's best are susceptible to psychological pitfalls!
5. Now for something U.S.-centric, and semi-self-referential. The American Chess Magazine may be the latest American chess magazine, but what was the first? Chess historian John S. Hilbert takes a careful look at a priority dispute between two contenders, both of which started late in the year 1846: The Chess Palladium and Mathematical Sphinx and Charles H. Stanley's magazine, whose proper title is unclear. Hilbert's article is very entertaining and touches on much more than the issue of priority, but he does answer the question in the end. And the winner is...sorry, get the magazine.
6. A carry-over from the previous issue: part two of Ernesto Inarkiev's look at the best games from the Carlsen-Karjakin match. (Spoiler alert: Carlsen won.) He takes a close look at two games that "got away": game 3, which Carlsen should have won, and game 9, which Karjakin should have won.
7. FM Carsten Hansen has a column briefly discussing each of 10 noteworthy "books" - though this includes a two-DVD set, while at least one of the books doesn't seem particularly noteworthy based on his comments. But YMMV. I also note, with some amusement, that he praised a book that I also deemed worthy for general audiences, to the consternation of several critics. Watch out, Carsten!
After this come a pair of advertisements dressed up to look like articles. Jon Edwards gives the reader a four-page tour of the goodies on Chess24, and Danny Rensch offers some reflections on the benefits of chess on the internet while smuggling in lots of implicit plugs for Chess.com. To be sure, both Chess24 and Chess.com are fine sites and very much worth considering - I have no problem with either of them, and have regularly mentioned events and articles from both. But are these really articles, or a new sort of advertising? I'd like to hear what other readers think about this.
After the foregoing, the focus returns to the U.S.A. Joel Benjamin offers his opinionated musings, in this issue writing about "Things I Like, and Things I Don't Like", and much of his article addresses the youth movement in U.S. chess. Michael Rohde looks at a great win by Ray Robson over Alexander Shabalov from the U.S. Championship. Alex Fishbein reports on the Charlotte (North Carolina) GM/IM Invitational. Mackenzie Molner looks at the Philly Open, Daniel Parmet recaps the Clark Street Capital Invitational in Chicago (with annotations by three GMs and an up-and-coming FM)...and on it goes for another 25 pages. Finally, a five questions interview with GM and FIDE Senior Trainer Adrian Mikhalchishin rounds out the magazine.
There's plenty of prose to go along with the all high-level games and annotations, lots of glossy pictures, reader comments, a tactics page and more besides. For any U.S. players who are even semi-serious about the game and have any curiosity about what's happening in U.S. chess, please subscribe! The periodical should be of interest outside the U.S. as well, but it would be a pity for those of us in the U.S. if the ACM were to go the way of the Sphinx or Stanley's chess magazine.
Ordering info here.