Alexander Delchev, The Modern Reti: An Anti-Slav Repertoire (Chess Stars, 2012). 212 pp. Reviewed by Dennis Monokroussos.
Chess Stars have put out reliable opening books for years, and Alexander Delchev's The Reliable Reti: An Anti-Slav Repertoire is no exception. Delchev examines 1.Nf3 d5 2.c4 in this 212 page book, and contrary to the title it's not just an anti-Slav repertoire (taking "Slav" to include Semi-Slav setups) but one that also handles Queen's Gambit Accepted, Queen's Gambit Declined and Reverse Benoni setups as well. (Oddly, while most publishers offer misleading titles and jacket prose to help push book sales, this title undersells the book.)
As usual with Chess Stars (CS) opening books (not counting the Khalifman series), the chapters (or "parts", in CS parlance) are each divided into three sections. (I'd say "parts", but the word is already occupied.) First there's a "Main Ideas" section (in earlier CS volumes this was usually labeled "Quick Repertoire"); it's essentially an overview of key strategic ideas and the fundamental variations. If you're new to the opening, you might just go chapter by chapter through all the Main Ideas sections, leaving the other sections for later.
Next comes the complete repertoire in the "Step by Step" section; here's where the details and hard work comes in. Or at least that's generally the case. In a few instances, Delchev pushes some of the specific details into the third section, "Complete Games". These tend to have two functions: one we've already mentioned, which is to fill out some final theoretical details; and the other is to present model games that illustrate what the sides are up to - especially the white side, for this book.
It's a very useful and reader-friendly format. But what about the content, and why play the Reti at all? Let's start with the second question. Delchev discusses this in the foreword, offering arguments that will be familiar to and resonate with most club players (and not just club players): one's opponents will be less prepared while you'll have an easier time preparing, particularly as it's not a memorization-heavy opening. Having a good understanding will go a long way here, and the book (and the experience one accrues once he's playing the Reti) will help.
On the other hand, the book doesn't cover all possible responses to 1.Nf3. If Black plays 1…c5, or goes for a King's Indian or Gruenfeld-style setup or a Dutch, for instance, you'll need to look elsewhere for opening advice. That's not a flaw in the book, of course, which isn't advertised as a complete repertoire. Rather, I'm pointing this out so that club players don't infer from the relative ease of preparation in this book that an entire 1.Nf3 repertoire will be relatively light work.
Let's turn to what is covered in this book, and that's enough to keep the reader occupied for a while.
Chapter 1 addresses the QGA-like 2…dxc4. White plays 3.e3, and after regaining the pawn will, depending on Black's choices, will either opt for a setup with d3 and e4 or go into a favorable line of a normal QGA with an eventual d4.
Chapter 2 examines the Reversed Benoni with 2…d4. Interestingly, Delchev admits that he tried for a long time to find a clear path to an advantage, but couldn't. He even asked some of his fellow Chess Stars authors for advice, but they too thought that Black should be okay. Nevertheless, Delchev has put in a lot of original analysis, and offers several reasonable tries for White. The most fascinating of his lines starts with 3.b4 f6 4.e3 e5 5.c5 a5 6.Bb5+ c6 7.Bc4, which he analyzes very deeply. Black can survive, but only after crossing multiple minefields.
Chapter 3 looks at Slav setups for Black that don't entail a Semi-Slav (Meran) structure. That includes Chebanenko-style setups with …a6, along with attempts to get the bishop outside the pawn chain on f5 or g4.
The next three chapters focus on Meran-like setups for Black. Indeed, if White plays an early d4 the game will transpose to the Meran, but here the d-pawn stays home, to the benefit of White's dark-squared bishop once it reaches b2. All three chapters begin with 2…c6 3.e3 Nf6 4.Nc3 e6 5.b3, and the next two chapters continue 5…Nbd7 6.Qc2 Bd6 7.Bb2 0-0. Here Delchev (as elsewhere) offers White two plans: going for the throat with 8.Rg1 and a quick g4 (chapter 5) and the more restrained 8.Be2 (chapter 6).
Finally, chapters 7 and 8 address the Queen's Gambit response 2…e6. This time Delchev recommends 3.g3, with the main line in chapter 8 starting 3…Nf6 4.Bg2 Be7 5.0-0 0-0 6.b3 (rather than 6.d4, transposing to a Catalan).
While verbal explanations are the order of the day in the "Main Ideas" sections of each chapter (or "part", in Chess Stars-ese), Delchev doesn't restrict himself to anything remotely like bare Informant-style analysis elsewhere. Here are a couple of nice excerpts from the Step-By-Step section of chapter 8.
The position in question comes after 1.Nf3 d5 2.c4 e6 3.g3 Nf6 4.Bg2 Be7 5.0-0 0-0 6.b3 c5 7.Bb2 Nc6 8.e3 d4 9.exd4 cxd4 10.Re1(!), which leads to a reversed Modern Benoni. Delchev says this:
It is pointless to count the tempos here. Bb2 may be considered a step in the wrong direction, but the hit on d4 prevents the thematic Benoni redeployment Nf6-d7-c5. It is more important that Black cannot achieve …e6-e5, which is the cornerstone of any active play for him.
That's a helpful comment for amateurs, as is the following. After 10…Ne8 11.Ne5(!) Nxe5 12.Rxe5 f6 13.Re1 e5 he suggests 14.Ba3(!) and writes the following:
I recommend this exchange in most branches of the reversed Modern Benoni. In my opinion, it is principally wrong to play with bad pieces in one's camp. Tarrasch's formula was: one bad piece equals a bad game.
While 14.Ba3 is his main suggestion, he notes an interesting tactical line starting with 14.f4 instead: 14.f4 exf4 15.Qf3 fxg3 16.Qd5+ Kh8 17.hxg3 Qxd5 18.Bxd5 Bd6 19.Bxd4 Nc7 20.Bf3 Bxg3 21.Bf2 Bxf2+ 22.Kxf2. I like his comment here as well:
This crazy endgame occurred in Kosten-Luther, Austria 2009. The only thing I can say is that it is totally unclear to me. Only a very deep computer analysis can shed some light on it, but I prefer to play chess and not to spend my time on memorising long variation [sic], where even a considerably weaker opponent might beat me thanks to better computer assistance.
So, dear readers, if avoiding lots of memorization sounds good, then you've found a friend in Alexander Delchev. His earlier Chess Stars book The Safest Sicilian and The Safest Gruenfeld were both very good, and I think this one is as well. Recommended to those interested in this repertoire, 1800 and up!
Modern Ideas in Chess: A New Edition
Richard Reti, Modern Ideas in Chess (New 21st Century Edition), Russell Enterprises 2009. 132 pages. $19.95.
"Modern", in the colloquial sense, connotes something that's new or relating to the present. From that perspective, Richard Reti's 1923 book Modern Ideas in Chess comes across ironically. Nothing like "cutting edge" ideas that are 90 years old! Much of what he says is very familiar to us today, but it's familiar in part because of his effectiveness as a propagandist.
The book tells an evolutionary tale of thinking in chess. After a brief mention of Adolf Anderssen (the apotheosis of combination-based chess) as the starting point, Reti discusses the big leap in positional understanding represented by Paul Morphy. Then it's on to Wilhelm Steinitz and the Steinitz School (including e.g. Tarrasch), chess technicians like Akiba Rubinstein and Jose Capablanca, and then on to Hyper-Moderns like Alekhine, Bogoljubow, Breyer and Tartakower.
The hypermoderns, a group to which Reti himself belonged, were the enemies of routine chess, but tried to take each position on its own merits and not according to some collection of "rules". This is a commonplace now, when chess writers often say that chess is a very "concrete" game, and the widespread use of computers has only strengthened this conviction.
Reti believes this sort of approach applies to life, too: "Just as in life no universal rules of conduct can obtain [DM: Should we infer from this that one ought to make it a universal rule of conduct not to live by universal rules of conduct?], and just as the man who invariably acts in accordance with the most approved principles will not perforce become great, so it is with chess principles" (p. 90). But despite this apparent skepticism about excessive generalization, Reti happily makes much of a distinction between a European way of playing chess and "Americanism". (Reti was a European, so guess which way he finds superior?)
Americanism, as Reti uses the term, indicates a sort of energetic pragmatism. We're simple thinkers, but we're full of energy and good at achieving what's possible. Capablanca is an example of this (as is to be expected, as he's from the Americas and went to college in the U.S.) - though Reti reassures his reader that "the Americanism of Capablanca's play shows itself in a milder, more attractive garb, probably (as was the case with Morphy) by reason of his Latin ancestry" (p. 131). (Kind of reminds me of Archie Bunker saying that while so-and-so was a black or a Jew, at least he was one of the good ones.) The European, of course, is an artist - God bless him - a DEEP THINKER whose occasional downfall comes when he starts to plod and misses what's right in front of him. A pity, really.
It's clear that Reti's strong preference is for the artist, elevating this bifurcation beyond chess into the broader world. Here's the last paragraph in the book:
At the last London Congress, (August 1922) with the time limit so unfavorable to the European type, they succumbed before Capablanca. Yet they go on investigating and building further. Who will come out of this struggle victorious? Nobody can prophesy the answer. But one thing is certain. If Americanism is victorious in chess, it will also be so in life. For in the idea of chess and the development of the chess mind we have a picture of the intellectual struggle of mankind. (p. 131)
IF there's something to this European/American distinction, one might conclude, based on Reti's example, that the European mind is beset with a navel-gazing pretentiousness that expresses itself in condescending, self-important prose. But better still is to reject this nonsense altogether, or at least to minimize it. There are and have been deep, plodding chess players and pretentious, condescending intellectuals from the Americas, and there are and have been plenty of superficial but pragmatic and energetic Europeans. Reti's distinction prefigures Soviet-era nonsense about the qualities of "Soviet man" and the "Soviet school of chess". Somehow Botvinnik, Tal and Petrosian were supposed to be part of the same "school"? Please.
Fortunately, there is more to the book than pontification about the clash of intellectual civilizations, and even that makes the book an interesting historical document. (Of course, it's not as if any contemporary author would continue in this genre of paralleling chess styles with broader intellectual trends, right? Well... [see about 3/4 of the way down.]) Reti also offers insightful comments about chess and chess players (even if, as noted above, many of them have become commonplaces), and the book presents about 35 (very attractive but generally lightly annotated) games, some of which are little-known.
Those of you with a good knowledge of the history of chess or whose interest in chess doesn't go beyond the latest opening volume or instructional work have little practical need to buy this book. If you have an interest in chess history and don't know a lot about the history of chess ideas, then this may be the book for you. Think about it this way: how many chess books can you think of that generate mainstream discussion almost 90 years after publication? No one cares about the scriptorrhea produced by the chess world's authors of opening books five years after publication, but books that expand our understanding of the game endure - especially when written by one of the greatest players of his time.