We can indirectly thank Mikhail Gorbachev for a number of fine chess books written by English Grandmaster John Nunn. Dr. Nunn was one of the top twenty players in the world in the late 1980s and finished sixth in the 1988-89 GMA World Cup series. The fall of the Soviet Union in 1991 led to a sharp increase in the number of former Soviets competing in Western European events. This, coupled with a decrease in the number of top-level events (particularly in chess crazy Yugoslavia), has led to a situation in which 2600 FIDE rated players can spend a lot of time on the sidelines if they don't like playing in big Swiss events with minimal conditions. This is the case with Nunn, who along with fellow GM Murray Chandler and FM Graham Burgess, are the Three Horseman of Gambit Publishing.

Nunn's latest work for Gambit, Understanding Chess Move by Move shows once again (see Secrets of Practical Chess published by Gambit in 1998) that he is the rare top player who can write for the non-master. The title of this book makes one think of Irving Chernev's classic work Logical Chess Move by Move which first appeared in 1957. Chernev's original work consisted of 33 games, with each move of each game annotated and instruction for the reader the guiding light. Nunn's appreciation for this work can be seen by the fact that it was Gambit that published the first algebraic edition of Logical Chess Move by Move a few years ago.

While Nunn and Chernev's books have a similar structure and desire to instruct the reader, they differ greatly in terms of the their annotations and the type of games they have selected. Modern chess is much more dynamic than play from 20 years ago much less 50. Like John Watson in his Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy (Gambit 1998), Nunn continually emphasizes how today's Grandmaster will flout the dogma of the past if he thinks that the position requires it. More than ever top players use a concrete approach.

Understanding Chess Move by Move offers the reader 30 heavily annotated games grouped around opening, middlegame and endgame themes. Each game is well annotated with a helpful mixture of prose and concrete variations (offered where necessary). An introduction to each game covers the theme to be examined and a summary at the end of it reinforces the key points to be learned. These are not perfect games (can any complex game played by humans hope to be?) and question marks are given to winners as well as losers, but all are interesting and full of fight. Nunn points out in his introduction that that strong chess engines like Fritz running on powerful machines show just how tough it is to play mistake free games. The pearls from the past do have warts.

This is a nicely produced book with the usual high production standards of Gambit. Like most of their books, it measures a large 10 by 7 1/2 inches which gives you some idea of how much material is offered in its 240 pages.

Dr. Nunn has another winner. Understanding Chess Move by Move will help players from 2000 to International Master greatly improve their understanding of the game.

Highly Recommended.

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