1000 TN!! - The Best Theoretical Novelties is the slightly odd title of a new compilation work from the Chess Informant people in Serbia. The Informant has been coming out since 1966 and is up to issue 112, and since their 12th issue back in 1971 they have had a jury determine the best novelty of the previous issue (in the original case, for Informant 11). When they have these votes they show not only the game that won (which is reproduced in full) but list all the games that received votes and how many points they were awarded. (10 points for a first place vote, 9 for second, etc.) That's handy, as it lets readers go back to the previous volume and see which novelties were the most important in the minds of the voting grandmasters.
Time passes and Informants accumulate, and their staff decided after 100 such contests to offer a compilation. The (hefty, 638 page) book under review includes 1000 games, recapping the votes for the top 10 novelties from each of Informants 11-110, followed by a presentation of each game with the (sort of [see below]) original (languageless) analysis. This work thus functions on three levels: nostalgia, as a collection of annotated games, and as a sort of theoretical manual. I'll say something about each of these levels in turn.
First, nostalgia. The younger the reader, the less this will apply, but for those of us who have been in chess for a few decades it's entertaining to step into the time machine for a while. It's not just that one sees the players of the past once again - and in fact, that's less a factor than one might suspect, as a pretty fair number of them are still around (Beliavsky, Timman and Korchnoi) and many more of them have only recently left the scene - but that one also sees the openings battles of days gone by. Consider the following line:
1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 b6 4.Nc3 Bb4 5.Bg5 Bb7 6.e3 h6 7.Bh4 g5 8.Bg3 Ne4 9.Qc2 d6 10.Bd3 Bxc3+ 11.bxc3 f5
It isn't quite dead, perhaps - it occurred in a Nakamura-Anand game from Wijk aan Zee in 2011, for instance - but it isn't exactly "hot", either. White players rarely play this way anymore, and Black's results have been very good. In the mid-1980s, however, this variation was all the rage. Kasparov was the main advocate for the white side, and the variation reached its apotheosis in the game Miles-Beliavsky, Tilburg 1986, which continued
12.d5 Nc5 13.h4 g4 14.Nd4 Qf6 15.0-0 Nxd3 16.Qxd3 e5 17.Nxf5 Bc8
Up to here the players were following some earlier high-level games like Kasparov-Timman, Hilversum (m) 1985 and a Miles-Timman game from a TV competition in 1986. In the first game Kasparov played 18.Nd4 and won a complicated battle, while Miles tried 18.e4 and eventually lost. In our game, however, Miles played 18.f4!! and crushed Beliavsky, and that was the end of the variation for Black. (After this 15...Nba6 took over, and now 12...Na6 - as in the aforementioned Nakamura-Anand game - rules the roost) That was a very big deal, too: this line was so trendy and important and Miles' novelty so impressive that 18.f4 won with a clean sweep: all nine judges (or eight, if you want to discount Miles' own vote) put it in first place. To date, this is the only unanimous winner in the history of the competition.
Second: with 1000 annotated games, almost all of them not only of theoretical significance but played between elite, if not super-elite, grandmasters, this would seem to make for a fine game collection in its own right. It's not quite so simple, though. For one thing, the games are annotated with language-less symbols alone (the standard Informant-style presentation); for another, the notes (after the opening) have been abridged. It still makes for a valuable game collection; it's just that it's not as good in that department as it could be, especially for mid-to-lower level club players. And a real plus is that the opening notes have been updated, so although it doesn't turn the book into an openings encyclopedia readers will have some idea about what has happened since the given game.
Finally, the book serves as a theoretical guide of sorts. A wide array of variations are canvassed, and attentive readers will enjoy both synchronic and diachronic information about the openings. For recent Informants, the material is likely to be relevant and sometimes even up to date. This will sometimes be true of older material as well, in that a given novelty may put a given variation out of business in a way that still applies today. (Some examples: Karpov-van der Wiel, Brussels 1986 [the end of the 8...d5 gambit used by Kasparov in the classic 16th game of his 1985 match with Karpov]; the Miles-Beliavsky game mentioned above; McCambridge-Hjartarson, Grindavik 1984 [the end of 13...Bh8 in that Gruenfeld line]; Kasparov-Anand from game 10 of their 1995 match [the end of 11...dxc3 in that Open Ruy line]; etc.)
But the diachronic approach is at least as interesting. Based on the relative frequency of variations over time, one gets a sense of what was popular and when, and sometimes see the birth of one new idea and the death of another. It's interesting on several levels: as an historical survey, as a way of following the evolution of grandmaster thought about a given position, as a way of unearthing possible ideas for one's own tournament play, and so on.
All in all, it's an interesting volume, and at least for me it works as an unusual openings tome, as a game collection, as a fascinating look at relatively recent chess history and also a work of chess aesthetics. Many of the opening ideas (not to mention the games taken whole) are brilliant and beautiful (even when they don't prove to be conclusive), so the book is also a feast for chess lovers.
Recommended to strong club players and up, and to those with an interest in (recent) chess history.
Ordering information is available on the Informant site and on the ChessCafe site.
Friday, March 9, 2012 at 1:35PM