Chess Informant: a negative trend

It goes without saying that most serious chess players are regular readers of Chess Informant. The long-running Yugoslav publication founded by GM Aleksandr Matanovic (and known in Serbo-Croat as Sahovski Informator) will soon celebrate its 100th issue.

Chess Informant has been around for so long and has become so pervasive that it is now rather difficult to gauge its true impact on the chess world. Perhaps Garry Kasparov was closest to the mark when he characterised the players of his generation as “the Children of Informator.”

Against this backdrop it is not surprising that whenever Chess Informant is mentioned by chess book reviewers, it is uniformly praised. Here are some examples:

Chess Informant has a tremendous amount of interesting material to offer, whether for opening studies, or for general training purposes. I for one would not want to be without it. -- Carsten Hansen

The main games are still the heart of Informants; they are brilliant and/or essential to following the latest developments in hundreds of openings. It is indicative of their quality that Chess Informants are used by every titled player that I’ve met over the years, and by most other serious players. -- John Watson

I have to agree that Chess Informant is a great publication and, when used properly, has a positive influence on one's playing strength. But in this article I want to draw attention to a surprising negative trend that until recently has only nagged at the periphery of my awareness. When I sat down and did some serious background work, it practically jumped out at me.

Chess Informant is shrinking. Getting smaller. Publishing fewer games. And charging the same price for it all. Meanwhile, chess activity around the world is increasing, year by year.

What exactly is happening? The numbers tell the story. Here are the total number of pages and games for each year between 2001 and 2006. For comparison I have included the total number of games for each year published by The Week in Chess.

Year: 2001. Total pages: 1144. Total games: 1599. TWIC games: 63,296
Year: 2002. Total pages: 1088. Total games: 1516. TWIC games: 63,227
Year: 2003. Total pages: 1128. Total games: 1474. TWIC games: 74,649
Year: 2004. Total pages: 1176. Total games: 1518. TWIC games: 75,255
Year: 2005. Total pages: 1094. Total games: 1334. TWIC games: 80,827
Year: 2006. Total pages: 1022. Total games: 1287. TWIC games: 91,044

In other words, between 2001 and 2006 there was a 44% increase in the number of games reported in The Week in Chess. In the same period there was a 20% decrease in the number of games published in Chess Informant. If that isn't a negative trend, I don't know what is.

Back in the 1980s Chess Informant used to publish around 1400 games per year in two volumes. Starting in 1991, Informant began to publish three volumes per year. Here we are in the 21st century and Informant is now publishing fewer games in three volumes than it used to publish in two volumes!

I don't accept the argument that there has been an offsetting increase in the number of game fragments cited within the main games. These fragments are no more than a species of annotation. They don't alter the fact that Chess Informant is getting smaller.

It is up to Chess Informant's customers to decide how important this trend is to them. I have a complete set of Informants and do not intend to stop buying them. But I do wish the publishers would take note and respond to this trend in a positive way.

Jekyll and Hyde 2

Here we go again with a pair books by the same author -- Ukrainian GM Valeri Beim -- with cover art of two quite contrasting standards.

The cover of the first book reminds me of a few experiences from my teenage years. It seems my mother did not share my passion for chess because she wasn't always diligent about putting my board and pieces away before using the kitchen table for other purposes. Needless to say, I soon learned to take better care of my things!

By contrast the cover of the second book is a model of effective design. Paul Morphy's pieces are of a modern Staunton pattern, while those of his opponent Louis Paulsen are of a nineteenth-century pre-Staunton pattern. What better way to graphically depict the "modern perspective" on Morphy?

Recommended reading: Ogilvy on Advertising, by David Ogilvy (Random House 1985).

Jekyll and Hyde

When it comes to chess book sales, cover art probably has little or no influence on the buying decisions of serious players.

Otherwise, how can the same talented writer -- IM Jeremy Silman -- be associated with two books whose design standards are so far apart?

According to Amazon.com, the cluttered and confusing How to Reassess Your Chess has a sales ranking of #81, 403; while the sleek and stylish The Amateur's Mind is far behind at #162, 111.

But then, successful chess players know that to understand the game properly one must look below the surface.

Buried treasures

Every year hundreds of chess books are published around the world, but no more than five percent go on to become classics. Fischer's My 60 Memorable Games, Keres's Grandmaster of Chess, Larsen's Selected Games of Chess, Kasparov's The Test of Time... every serious player knows these books and has read them cover to cover.

Among the remaining 95% of chess books there is wide variability in both quality and content. Here are several books that to me stand out in some way, but which for various reasons are not well-known to modern players. If you can find one of these in your local used bookstore, snap it up immediately!

How to Beat Bobby Fischer, by Edmar Mednis (1975)
The late Edmar Mednis parlayed a scrappy and perhaps fortuitous win over Bobby Fischer in the 1962/63 U.S. Championship into a career as a best-selling author. In this book he presents the 61 games that Fischer lost between 1958 and 1972, that is, between the Portoroz Interzonal and the famous match victory in Reykjavik. On the surface this is a novelty item that plays off Fischer's own selection of 60 games, but on a deeper level it is a master class in analysing one's own games, identifying and understanding the mistakes, and then correcting them. Of particular value is the treatment of the psychological factors behind specific errors, and of the periods of relatively poor performance that affect every player from beginner to master.

Chess Openings: Theory and Practice, by I.A. Horowitz (1964)
This thick, one-volume opening book appeared a year or so before the famous 10th edition of Modern Chess Openings that was edited by Larry Evans, and it fell immediately under the shadow of its successor. Al Horowitz, then editor of Chess Review, was not a leading grandmaster; on top of that he had already produced a whole forest of low-level books aimed at D-Class players. But for this effort he brought three key elements together and created a modern masterpiece. First, he began each section with explanatory prose and something he called Idea Variations. These were lines that showed one side or the other executing a key idea and either getting the advantage or forcing a level position. Then he moved on to Practical Variations, the main lines that result from the struggle of both sides to impose their will on the opponent. Finally, he rounded off each section with a number of complete illustrative games by leading players. The result is a book that is as fresh today as it was more than 40 years ago. This is probably more than one can say about MCO 10, although at the right price I wouldn't pass that one up either!

Confessions of a Grandmaster, by Andrew Soltis (1990)
Andrew Soltis is another author whose books can vary wildly in quality. This is his chess autobiography and games collection, published by Thinkers Press of Davenport, Iowa. It is refreshingly candid, and packed with personal stories and interesting anecdotes. It also analyses many encounters with contemporary rivals, usually leading Americans but including the Canadian players Duncan Suttles, Peter Biyiasas and Lawrence Day. A sub-plot running through the book is the author's quest to obtain the grandmaster title, something he achieved in 1980 after many years of effort through the ups and downs of tournament play. This book demonstrates by specific example that apart from their greater playing strength, grandmasters are just like the rest of us: they deceive themselves, get tired, experience doubts, and make silly mistakes. But they persevere, and that's nine-tenths of what gets them the title.

Modern Grandmaster Chess, by Andrew Karklins (1974)
In the early 1970s Andrew Karklins was a young, rated expert living in Chicago. For some reason he became fascinated with the games of the 1964 Soviet Zonal Tournament (a qualifier for the 1965 Candidates Matches.) The dramatic story of the tournament was future World Champion Boris Spassky overcoming a 0-2 start to win the event outright. Over a number of years Karklins analysed the games in great detail, with the aim of understanding every move and answering every one of his own questions. After completing this task he realised that his work should be published. Every game is thoroughly annotated, and no assumptions are made about the reader's playing strength. The result is a highly instructive textbook portraying the struggle behind modern chess, and incidentally delving into the mystique of the Soviet School.

1234 Modern End-Game Studies, by Harold Lommer (1968)
This is a Dover reprint of a book that originally appeared in 1938. As the title implies, it is a collection of composed end-game positions with solutions (at the back.) A study is a position that cannot be assessed or evaluated because there are unresolved complications leading to a surprising or paradoxical result. These are identified in the stipulation, that is, the statement of White's task, which is always to draw a position that looks lost, or to win a position that looks lost or drawn. Open it to a random page and begin solving; there is no better training in developing your analytical powers.

The Art of Sacrifice in Chess, by Rudolf Spielmann (1951)
The Austrian grandmaster Rudolf Spielmann was one of the three or four strongest players in the world in the 1920s. This book, also available in a Dover reprint, is many things at once: a collection of the author's best games, a classification of sacrifices according to their various characteristics, and a thorough treatise on attacking chess. The works of Vladimir Vukovic may be more familiar to the modern reader, but this book by Spielmann was the trailblazer. The only downside is the occasional "helpful" note by editor Fred Reinfeld, whose chess was to Spielmann's as mine is to Garry Kasparov's.

Positional Chess Handbook, by Israel Gelfer (1991)
This book by a modern Israeli grandmasters contains hundreds of well-chosen game examples illustrating all of the major positional ideas in chess, including strong squares, pieces good and bad, weak pawns, cramped positions, the two bishops, and much more. The emphasis is on recognising the key elements in each position and in finding a line of play that exploits them. There is a natural emphasis on the transition from the middlegame to the endgame. I would describe this as a spiritual successor to the works of C.J.S. Purdy or to Larry Evans's famous book New Ideas in Chess.

Bobby Fischer: a Study of His Approach to Chess, by Elie Agur (1992)
Perhaps this treasure is not buried as deeply as the others -- for example, I recently spotted a very favourable review on the web by IM Jeremy Silman. Elie Agur is a national master from the Netherlands, although his FIDE affiliation is currently with Israel. Despite his modest rating of 2285, he has written a highly perceptive book on the characteristics of Fischer's play that separated him so clearly from his contemporaries. I would rate this effort more highly than the Mednis book mentioned earlier, but of course both are very instructive.