When I first started reviewing issues of the Informant a few years ago, this once great publication was a dying dinosaur. For those unfamiliar with the informant concept, it is most fundamentally a periodical, presenting hundreds of annotated games from a recent time period. Generally the period in question was many months ago by the time of publication, and while that was fine in 1966 when it first came out on through its heyday in the 1980s, it wasn't much good when people would watch the game live, see quick notes that night or the next day and detailed annotations in New in Chess Magazine or ChessBase Magazine a month or two later. What the Informant still had over those competitors was quantity: it would have hundreds and hundreds of games, often annotated by all the best players in the world. But by the mid-to-late 2000s, that was over too. Almost no really strong players bothered with the Informant, so elite games would be handled by staffers, offering nothing that wasn't available through other, speedier e-publications.
Happily, the Informant team started making changes - small, incremental ones at first, and now bigger ones - and the publication has returned to relevance. Among the small changes were the inclusion of sections on "Excellent Moves" (like combinations, but without starting with a sacrifice), endgame studies and problems.
They've also developed some special materials on openings. The format varied for a while, and in its current incarnation there are ten theoretical articles - all by grandmasters. Further, there is prose not only in the introduction to each article, but in the analysis itself - another innovation. This issue has articles on the English by Delchev (the Keres Variation) and Halkias (the Hedgehog), an article by Markus on the Benko Gambit, one by Perunovic on the Kan Sicilian, Pap on a gambit line in the Advance French, Erdos on the Rio de Janiero Variation of the Berlin, Sundararajan on the Berlin endgame, Cheparinov(!) on the Exchange Variation of the Queen's Gambit, Sanikidze on the Vienna variation of the Queen's Gambit and Ivanisevic on the Classical King's Indian.
The Rising Stars mini-section continues from the previous Informant; this time featuring 19-year-old Greek IM and national champion Antonis Pavlidis, who annotates a couple of his own games.
Also in this issue - as in all the issues for a long time - are a recap of the Best Game and Best Novelty from the previous issue, a collection of annotated games from the relevant period (the last quarter of 2011), sections on combinations and endgames, a summary of results from all the significant FIDE-rated events from the relevant period, and a mini-Informant decided to a leading player (Morozevich this time around).
Now let's turn to what's new.
The featured attraction, which even gets mentioned on the cover, is "Garry's Choice". By Garry Kasparov, the column is subtitled "The 13th World Champion Dissects Top Games of Modern Chess". Ironically, the game presented in the inaugural column features a comparatively low-rated GM taking on an IM. The reason for the game's inclusion is aesthetic: Black had (but alas, missed) the chance for chess immortality when he missed a tactical blow that to Kasparov's recollection would have been unique in chess history.
After that comes another fine new section: "Top Five: Notable Achievements by Top Players". Five very strong players (four of whom are [well] over 2700, while the fifth is just under) deeply analyze their games - again, to continue the Informant's new trend, in English, not just symbols. The five this time around around Alexander Morozevich, Alexander Moiseenko, Evgeny Tomashevsky, Nikita Vitiugov and Ernesto Inarkiev.
All in all, it's an attractive issue, and I can happily recommend the Informant to strong club players and up.
You can find ordering info on the Informant site or, in the U.S., in the Chess Cafe shop.