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Secrets of Chess Defence Reviewed by Jens Madsen
I keep on fighting as long as my opponent can make a
mistake.
Secrets of Chess Defence is the first book penned by Romanian Grandmaster Mihail Marin. The book is a catalogue of ideas that will help toughen your abilities to defend difficult positions. Admittedly, there is something unglamorous over this particular area of chess study, where pragmatism often takes precedence over aesthetics, and likely this explains why so relatively few books have been entirely dedicated to this subject. In comparison, lots of authors have laid out the sound principles of chess strategy – principles that should supposedly spare you from inferior positions in the first place. Of course, the muddled realities of over-the-board chess rarely cooperate fully with such text book principles, and so the road to chess wisdom is beset with bad positions! One of the most telling qualities that separate first-rate players from most mediocre ones is an ability to pull the emergency break in dubious positions. Such resilience is telling because the defending side in a chess game typically has a relatively slim margin left to slip up without immediately loosing. What does it take to become a stern defender? Well, first of all there is unquestionably a good portion of sports psychology involved. Without the proper mindset, it is tempting to enter a self-destructive mode where the unfavorable momentum of emotional shifts accelerates a loss. This point about trends in a game was made very eloquently by Alexander Yermolinsky in his neo-classic book The Road to Chess Improvement. Secrets of Chess Defence goes a long way towards demonstrating that other aspects, besides the purely psychological ones, contribute to good defensive play. The book is a catalogue of different defensive resources, all of which are worthwhile keeping in mind the next time you are in a mess (on the chess board that is – the book will not help those being held at gunpoint in a dark alley, unless they can somehow use it to smack the offender.) Working on the psychological side of things can be complicated, so it is nice to have a well presented description of concrete defensive resources, such as perpetuals, fortresses, and various sacrifices. With these tricks on the radar, the uphill task of playing bad positions may not seem quite as hopeless. In contrast to Marin’s book, most of what has been written in the past on defending difficult positions has a very practical scope. Typical advice offered in many of these books is to keep fighting, create complications, and continue looking for chances to grab the initiative (even at the cost of material). As you see, this by and large approaches the defense of worse positions from a psychological perspective. Some examples of titles that fall in this category are John Nunn’s little book Secrets of Practical Chess and Improve Your Chess Now by Jon Tisdall. My personal favorite text on this subject, which I often revisit, is the chapter on “How to Defend Difficulty Positions” that Keres wrote a half-century ago for the fine little book called The Art of The Middlegame, which he co-authored with Kotov in the heyday of the Soviet Chess School. Now, let me provide some highlight from Secrets of Chess Defence. In the first chapter, Marin pays homage to World Champion Wilhelm Steinitz, who is credited with developing the first coherent set of thoughts on chess strategy. Like his contemporaries, Steinitz was raised in the coffee house chess tradition, which meant gambits galore and axe-wielding attacks. However, he soon developed a new prophylactic style that proved very efficient at beating up the romantics. More than anything this chapter shows how Marin is firmly grounded in chess culture, something which he has further exploited in his second book that is already out (Learn from the Legends from the new publisher Quality Chess Books). One of the biggest eye-openers for me was the third chapter (“How Real is the Threat?”) which illustrates how ignoring an apparent threat can sometimes be a good idea. I never considered this an independent defensive resource. Let us look at an example from the book:
In this position, Torre has just played 12…a5 against Portisch at the 1974 Manila International tournament. Now the further pawn advance a5-a4-a3 looks unpleasant. Rather than reacting directly to this threat, Portisch cool-mindedly continues his development with 13.Bf4! Here Marin mentions the game Smejkal-Tal that continued 13.Rd1 Qb4 (13...a4? looses a pawn after 14.Rd4) 14.Rb1 Nbd7 15.Be3 Qxd6 16.Rxd6 a4 17.Nc5 a3 with sufficient Black counter-play. It is only all too human that Torre could not resist carrying out the planned pawn thrust 13…a4? Now I will give the floor to Marin: Black must have thought that his strong opponent had just blundered something. Besides the concrete line of the game, the merits of Portisch’s move are also underlined by the fact that 13…Qb4 is less strong than in Tal’s game: White has the natural retreat 14.Qd2 at his disposal, creating the threat of Bd6 and maintaining his advantage in development. 14.Rfc1!! A very cunning move. It suddenly appears that 14…axb3 is not a threat at all, because of 15.axb, winning material for White. Black’s other threat, the less obvious …a3, is also parried by defending the c3-knight. The f1-square is cleared for a possible Bf1, driving the queen away from its active position and placing the bishop on a potentially more influential diagonal.
The game continued 14…Nh5 15.Bf1! Qe6 16.Nc5 Qxd6 17.Bxd6 a3 18.bxa3 Rd8 19.Bc7 Re8 20.g4 Rxa3? 21.Nb3! and White went on to win. Another chapter that impressed me was the one on fortresses. Traditionally this is a concept that belongs in the endgame, but here we see two truly stunning examples where Anand sets up impenetrable fortresses and so escapes from seemingly lost positions. As you will see, there is an amusing similarity between these two games, which were played ten years apart.
In 1986 the young Anand (he was 16 at the time) tricked the author of Secrets of Chess Defence into this frustrating position. Despite a material advantage, there is no way White can make progress because of the perfect Black setup. The game ended in a draw to Marin’s disappointment. Fast-forwarding a decade, we find Anand in trouble once more, this time after introducing a dubious novelty against Topalov in the Open Ruy Lopez. It is very instructive to see how he solves his problems, especially with the previous example as backdrop:
After 18.Bg5! the material loss is inevitable, for example a lost exchange after 18…Qe8 19.Rxa8 Qxa8 20.Be7. Anand comes up with a truly artistic solution to his problems. 18…Rxa1 19.Bxd8 Rxf1+ 20.Kxf1 Rxd8 21.g3 Ne6 22.Qb7 g6 23.Qxb5 c5
Topalov only carried on for seven more moves before conceding the draw. It is clear that Anand must have been inspired by what had occurred ten years before. While the two fortress positions are very similar, the latter is not quite as unambiguously drawn as the Marin-Anand game, as White has a few possible pawn breaks that could possibly disrupt Black’s ideal defensive setup. Marin spends 2½ pages analyzing improvements to Topalov’s play, but ends up concluding that even with best play a draw was the correct outcome. If you want to have some fun, at the expense of your computer, try feeding it these examples. Chess engines have a notoriously poor grasp of fortresses. All they will see is the immediate material deficit, whereas realizing that no real progress can be made falls way beyond their calculation horizon. A few comments on the writing style of Marin are in place. I cannot recall another book that uses frequent biblical references. This is more a peculiarity than an annoyance, and I think the editors have made a wise decision in retaining some of Marin’s idiosyncrasies. After all, they also lead to poetic moments such as in the second chapter, where Karpov’s brilliant and seemingly effortless technical style is compared to that of a ballet dancer: “When watching a ballet dancer we are often tempted to forget of gravity; trying to imitate his actions would most probably cause a painful accident.” Marin also has a habit of drawing many parallels between the development of chess strategy and human society. While this may makes sense in some cases, it also leads to awkward analogies like comparing the concept of stalemate with a discontinuity in mathematics. It is easy to forgive Marin
his little quirks, actually some of them are quite charming. The
illustrative examples in this book are well-chosen and were mostly unknown
to me, in particular there are many excellent excerpts from Marin’s own
games that I were unaware of. In these days of increasingly shorter time
controls, the pragmatism often reflected in the defense of bad positions
becomes ever more essential and Secrets of Chess Defence is very
timely seen in this perspective. Intermediate to strong players will
get the most bang for their buck from Secrets of Chess Defence, which
I am happy to recommend. From the Publisher's website:
Download a pdf file with a sample from the book.
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