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Doc Wars III

Let’s get started by looking at the material that makes up the bulk of the book.
 

The Games

Nunn includes 46 of his games, all with detailed comments and analysis.  Additionally, each page contains two diagrams, and is nicely laid out (the book itself is oversized, and thus has a nice hefty feel to it.)  The majority of the games are Sicilians, with the Ruy Lopez coming in second, and the French, Kings Indian Defence, and surprisingly, the Trompowsky (!) all tied for third.

Some of Nunn’s victims in this book include: Adams, Chandler, Conquest, Hodgson, Kindermann, Krasenkow, Lalic, Lobron, Piket, Sadler, Stohl, Ward, Wells, and Xie Jun.

Speaking of the former women’s world champion, look what Nunn does to her in Game 18 (J.Nunn-Xie Jun, San Francisco 1995):

White to move and win

Here Nunn uncorked 28.Rxh6!  And after 28…gxh6 29.Qg6+ Kh8 30.Qxh6+ Kg8 31.Qe6+ 1-0  (Says Nunn: "Black resigned because allowing White to take on e7 gives White three pawns and an immense attack for the exchange.  It follows that 31…Kf8 is forced, but then 32.Bh6+ Ke8 33.Rd1! leaves Black with no defence to the threats of 34.Qg6# and 34.Qg8+.")

But this book is much more than flashy tactics.  You also get to learn opening theory from the man who literally wrote the book on it!  (Nunn’s Chess Openings.)  For example, check out the opening of this game which features the venerable Caro-Kann.  (All notes are by Nunn.)

Game 3
J. Nunn-I. Stohl
Pardubice 1993

Caro-Kann Defence, Advance Variation

1.e4 c6 2.d4 d5 3.e5

Originally, this was played with the idea of meeting …Bf5 with an aggressive plan involving g4 at some point.  In the 1980s, some players, led by Nigel Short, introduced a more positional follow-up based on simple development.  In this game White adopts the latter plan.

3…Bf5

3…c5 is also quite a good reply.  Black loses a tempo over the French, but has the advantage that his light-squared bishop may still be developed to f5 or g4.

4.Nf3 e6 5.Be2 c5 6.0-0

At the time this game was played, White normally preferred to support his centre with c3.  Later on an alternative plan of playing Be3 rather than c3 became popular.  This keeps open the option of playing c4 in one move and is currently thought more dangerous for Black.

6…Nc6

White to move

Here Nunn played 7.c3, followed by the following honest assessment which I found refreshing:

I no longer believe that this naïve system promises White anything.  In contrast to the French, the active position of his light-squared bishop relieves Black of many long-term positional worries.  His only problem is how to develop his kingside pieces; if that is solved, he can look forward to instant equality.

While we are going to move on and look at other material from the book, note that I have just given a small excerpt from the opening of one game.  Each game in the book contains, on average, five pages of notes!  The improving player will no doubt be richly rewarded by making a careful study of these games, as Nunn gives you his current assessment of the opening and if he still considers it viable.
 

Nunn's Studies

Following the massive games section are a chapter of 25 of Nunn’s Studies, as well as another containing 18 of his Problems (there are also two articles at the end of the book, which we will get to in a moment).  What’s the difference between a Study and a Problem you ask?  Good question!  To be honest, I didn’t know either.  However, after looking it up on About.com, it turns out that a Study is a composed position that could occur in a real game, whereas a Problem is a composed position that is unlikely to occur in a real game.  (For the sake of completeness, I also looked up what the definition of a Puzzle is: a position taken from a real game, i.e., not composed.)  Whew!  Now that we’ve got the definitions out of the way, let’s look at one of Nunn’s studies:

White to move and win

(Solution at end of review)
 

Nunn Problems

Also included in the book, as mentioned above, are 18 chess problems composed by Nunn.  He begins by giving you his thoughts on the subject.  Here is a snippet (pg. 261):

I support the idea of popularizing both problems and studies amongst over-the-board players.  I think many players are willing to take an interest in chess composition, but the material has to be presented in a way which appeals to them.  Problemists often profess to a desire to popularize their genre, but unfortunately they are sometimes their own worst enemy, since many problemists are unable to discuss problem matters without lapsing into obscure terminology.  The curious thing is that although problemists use a lot of jargon, they sometimes can’t agree on its precise meaning themselves and argue about whether a problem shows a particular theme or not.  Players like light and natural positions, few variations, attractive mates, sacrifices, geometrical effects and paradox; they don’t like ugly positions, too many variations and problems which depend on purely formal relationships between moves.  They absolutely abhor jargon.  At the moment there is a boom in chess problem solving competitions and I hope that these together with other initiatives, will help chess composition become more popular amongst the wider chess fraternity.

While the majority of the problems are of the “help-mate” variety (not my cup of tea), here is one problem of the “normal” type that I have had fun showing my friends:

White to move and mate in 3

(Solution at end of review)
 

The Two Articles

In the back of the book are two interesting articles written especially for the book.  The first, The State of the Chess World, is Nunn’s take on how professional chess has evolved over the past 40 years.  The picture he paints is not pretty.  He blames the moment Kasparov and Short broke away from FIDE in 1993 to conduct their own world champion match as the beginning of the downslide and I have to agree with him (even Kasparov now admits it was one of the worst mistakes of his career.)

At the time, I too was sick of the way FIDE was jerking the players around and was happy that Kasparov and Short stood up to them.  However, in hindsight, it so damaged the traditional road to the world championship, which even 13 years later has yet to be repaired, that it’s now obvious that this move was a blunder.

Of course, we’re talking about FIDE here, one of the worst run organizations in the history of mankind.  Their continued series of outrageous rules and proposals, often given with little or no explanation, would be seen as comical if they weren’t so damaging.  For example, Nunn severely takes them to task for instituting drug testing, since there are no known drugs to give someone an advantage in chess - and, as he astutely points out - if there are any drugs that can boost our mental powers, then shouldn’t we be taking them all the time!?

I will give you just a snippet from the article where Nunn goes off on FIDE for one of its many “brilliant” ideas, that of making the world chess championship into a lottery by using a “knockout” format.  Says Nunn (pg. 273):

Unfortunately, FIDE decided to run their world championship on a knock-out basis, with many of the matches involved being of only two games.  The result has been to seriously devalue the FIDE world championship.  With two-game matches, a single mistake can see a player eliminated from the event and so a large random element is introduced.  The top players have by and large avoided the FIDE events, since they can see that their chances of victory are rather small, while the possible risk of an early trip home damaging their reputations is rather high.  In the 2004 FIDE championship held in Tripoli, Topalov and Adams were the only players from the world top ten to take part.

 

The second problem with this system is that many of the matches end in a tie, necessitating a play-off.  In the FIDE system, play-offs consist of a series of rapid games.  If the ties continue, the games are played at a faster time-limit until a decisive result is achieved.  In some rounds, more than 50% of the matches have ended up in a tie-break, so that the event looks more like a rapid world championship than one played at a normal time-limit.  Some players, believing themselves to be strong rapid players, have deliberately aimed to draw the normal time-limit games and take the match into the rapid games.  This is not a recipe for thrilling chess, but one can hardly blame the players for taking advantage of a system which rewards this strategy.  The effect of all this has been to produce ‘world champions’ such as Khalifman, Ponomariov and Kasimdzhanov, strong grandmasters all but hardly worthy successors to the likes of Lasker, Capablanca and Alekhine.

How refreshing it is to hear a top GM speak out honestly on such an important topic.  Unfortunately too many GMs say nothing, with the result being that little gets changed.

On a personal note, I attended the 1999 FIDE World Championship in Las Vegas and was shocked to see that FIDE had done virtually zero advertising.  Aside from a small sign on a tri-pod pointing you up the escalator, there was practically no other indication that the chess world championship was even taking place!  The embarrassingly low number of spectators that showed up (about 20-30 people each day, for the three days I was there) further emphasized just what a poor job they did promoting the event.  When you compare this with the way golf, tennis, or more recently poker promotes their events, well, there is no comparison!

Okay, let’s move on.  The second article by Nunn is titled Chess Publishing and the Batsford Story.  In it he gives us a short history of chess publishing (including his ups and downs with Batsford) as well as a behind-the-scenes peek into his Gambit publishing company.  It turns out that because chess books have such a limited market, a chess publisher must put out many books per year to be profitable.  In other words, they make their money by doing volume.  Even then the costs of publishing are so high, that their R.O.I (Editor: R.O.I. = Return On Investment) is not as much as one would think.  Says Nunn (pg. 284):

I am often asked, ‘Why are chess books so expensive?’  But are they?  I have explained earlier how most chess books offer only marginal profitability.  Occasionally there is a best-seller, which certainly helps, but I doubt if any chess publisher is making excessive profits.  As Pergamon and Batsford authors will testify, it doesn’t help anybody if a publisher goes bankrupt.  If chess books don’t offer a decent return on the capital invested, the publisher will either run into financial difficulties or simply stop producing chess books; either situation is very bad for the authors.  Chess is a specialized area and the sales of chess books don’t justify bargain-basement prices.

Maybe not what we want to hear, but at least we can now better understand why chess books cost what they do.  Keep in mind that this is just a brief excerpt, and the article goes into much more detail about the roller-coaster ride that is chess publishing.
 

The Bottom Line

GM John Nunn is at the pinnacle of chess writers and this book shows why.  His analysis is always first-rate, and he does a good job of using words, where practical, to explain what’s going on.  Besides giving you 46 of his most interesting games (complete with detailed notes) played during the last third of his career, he also throws in a slew of chess problems and studies, as well as two interesting articles.  I mean, what more do you want for $24.95??  The only caveat I would give is that this book has more analysis in it than Nunn’s previous effort, Understanding Chess Move by Move, and thus is really geared for those rated 1800 and above (or lower rateds that are willing to put in some work).

Finally, although Nunn had the nerve to include not one, but TWO games where he trounced my beloved Trompowsky (first against the opening’s guru, GM Julian Hodgson, and then against GM Peter Wells, who wrote a book on it!) I am still very happy to recommend this book.  On a scale of 1-10, Grandmaster Chess Move by Move gets a 9.
 

Solution to Study

White to move and win

1.Kd8!

White sidesteps the dangerous queen check on g4 and puts Black into zugzwang (indeed, this is an example of reciprocal zugzwang.)  Other moves:

1) 1.Kc7? (approaching the black king immediately fails to a stalemate defence) 1…Qg4 (or 1…Qe2) 2.Qb3+ Ka5 3. Nc4+ Qxc4+! 4.Qxc4 stalemate.

2) 1.Kd6? Qg1! (the only move) 2.Qb3+ Ka5 3. Nc4+ Ka6 4.Qa4+ Kb7 5.Na5+ Kb6!  And White cannot make progress.

3) 1.Qd4+? Kb5 (1…Ka3 also draws, based on the stalemate defence 2.Nc4+ Ka2! And there is no mate at b2 since White’s queen is pinned) 2. Qd5+ Kb4 draws.

1…Ka5

Black has few options.  Most queen moves fail to 2.Qb3+, 3.Nc4+ and 4.Qb6#, the exception being 1…Qg1, which runs into 2.Qb3+ Ka5 3.Nc4 Ka6 4.Qa4+ Kb7 5. Nd6+ followed by Qb5+ and mate.

2.Kc7!

Now that Black’s king is on an inferior square, White can approach with his own king.  It is unusual to see a kind of triangulation in a position with heavy pieces.

2…Qg4

Or 2…Ka4 3.Qd4+ Kb5 (3…Ka3 4.Nc4+ Ka2 5.Qb2#) 4.Qc4+ Ka5 5.Nb3+ and White wins the queen.

3.Nb3+! Kb4 4.Nd4+! Kc4 5.Qb3+! White wins Black’s queen.
 

Solution to Problem

White to move and mate in 3

1.Qc1 Kxd5 2.Qc8 Kd6 (or 2…Ke4 Qf5#) 3.Qd7#.
 

Index of all Reviews

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