ROOK vs. TWO MINOR PIECES

Author: Esben Lund

Quality Chessbooks (2005)

www.qualitychessbooks.com

174 pages

$24.95

Reviewed by John Donaldson

ROOK vs. TWO MINOR PIECES by Danish FM Esben Lund examines a theme that is not well covered in the chess literature. The only other book I know of devoted entirely to this subject is the mostly language less Mastering Rook vs. Minor Pieces by Maximenko, Strokovsky and Braslawski which has good examples but little explanation. Fortunately this is not the case with Lund’s book.

ROOK vs. TWO MINOR PIECES deals with Rook (+ pawns) versus Bishop and Knight or Knight plus Knight – not the Bishop pair which is almost always superior. To present his findings, Lund arranges the material into three parts. First comes the theoretical foundation and fundamental endgames. The latter comes with plenty of bedrock examples featuring all pawns on one side of the board with Rook vs. one or two minor pieces. If you are going to play with Bishop and Knight you better know how to mate with them so the thorough Lund starts there and builds up.

The meat of the book is parts two and three. The second part looks at two modern openings where the battle between Rook versus Bishop and Knight develops right out of the opening. No, the openings are not the Open and Riga variations of the Ruy Lopez, but lines in the Catalan (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 d5 4.Bg2 dxc4 5.Nf3 Nc6 6.Qa4 Bb4+ 7.Bd2 Nd5 8.Bxb4 Ndxb4 9.a3 b5 10.Qxb5 Nc2+11.Kd2 Nxa1 12.Qxc6+ Bd7 13.Qxa4 and White soon captures the Knight on a1) and Scotch (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.d4 exd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nxc6 bxc6 6.e5 Qe7 7.Qe2 Nd5 8.c4 Ba6 9.b3 g6 12.Bb2 Bg7 13.g3 when there are various ways to arrive at the two pieces vs. Rook ending). Lund spends over 60 pages on these two openings in a sort of combination opening/ middlegame/ endgame theoretical. The last part of the book, titled Training, gives 31 exercises to solve (there are some more earlier in the book) followed by detailed solutions.

Who is this book for? If you play either of the lines covered in the Catalan or Scotch you will definitely want to have it. If you are ambitious and want to increase your understanding of the game in a way that learning a new opening won’t accomplish, this book is also for you. Few players below the IM level are able to play the sort of materially imbalanced positions that are the subject of Lund’s work. The many exercises help reinforce the material and aid the reader to engage themselves. ROOK vs. TWO MINOR PIECES is not a good book for those unwilling to put in some hard study.

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