CHESS INFORMANT 108
SAHOVSKI INFORMATOR (2010)
293 pages
$33.95
Reviewed by Jeremy Silman
Let me spend a moment talking about Jimmy Buff, a close friend of Fischer’s (and an old friend of mine) who taught Bobby how to play baseball in New York, and spent countless hours with the future World Champion on the baseball field and facing off on the chessboard. Jimmy was a blitz specialist, and this form of chess was perfect for his seek and destroy game – he had no positional skills, but a “cut the King’s head off” mentality and great tactical creativity made him a fearsome foe when a few minutes were all either side had to play a whole game.
Jimmy Buff recently died in San Francisco. Talking to him a couple months before he passed away, he was proud that he suffered from the same (ultimately fatal) affliction that Fischer did (kidney disease) – somehow, dying in the same manner his old New York buddy did seemed proper and right to him, and I didn’t have the heart to argue his odd point.
During our final meeting, he told me that he was working on a book of 80 Buff games, each ending in a two-Knight middlegame mate. I laughed at such a preposterous idea – two-Knight mates in the middlegame are very rare, so the idea that he had won (or was going to win) 80 games in this manner seemed impossible. Yet, when I voiced my doubts, he quickly began playing through one game after another and sure enough, he had dozens of the things!
Buff never had much of a chess library, but he did have a couple CHESS INFORMANTS, and he played through the INFORMANT games over and over, year after year – he loved those books!
We shared that love of INFORMANTS. In the days before databases and the internet, these books were must-own treasures, each book offering hundreds of games played just a few months before publication. Now, with chess information zipping into one’s home often seconds after it’s created, some might think that the day of the INFORMANT has come and gone, but I beg to differ! Modern INFORMANTS are rich with an amazing abundance of information. Here’s what you will find in INFORMANT 108:
* 301 fully annotated games and an additional 413 game fragments (all from January – April, 2010). All games are listed according to opening, so you can easily look up the latest battles in the systems that matter most to you.
* Annotators, to name just a few, are Anand, Judit Polgar, Dreev, Ivan Sokolov, Tiviakov, Beliavsky, Yusupov, Larry Christiansen, Timman, Benjamin, Walter Browne, etc.
* All the main events from that time period (January – April, 2010) are given a crosstable (Wijk aan Zee I which was won by Carlsen, Wijk aan Zee II which was won by Giri, Linares II which was won by Topalov, the Kaidanov vs. Judit Polgar match, the Melody Amber event where Grischuk won the blindfold and Ivanchuk & Carlsen tied for first in the rapid, the Judit Polgar vs. Navara match which was dominated by Judit 6 to 2, the Anand vs. Topalov World Championship Match, and many, many more).
* A special section giving the best CHESS INFORMANT moments of Teimour Radjabov, which includes his best games (all annotated), his most important theoretical novelties, his best moves and combinations, his best endings, and statistics.
* A list of the 10 best games from the previous volume (the judges were Beliavsky, Christiansen, M. Gurevich, Matanovic, Mikhalchishin, Ribli, and Speelman – they show how each judge voted on each game), with the best game (Judit Polgar – Gelfand, Khanty Mansiysk 2009) presented with annotations by the winner.
* A list of the 10 most important theoretical novelties from the previous volume (the judges are Beliavsky, Benjamin, Yusupov, Lutz, Matanovic, Mikhalchishin, and Timman). The game that featured the best novelty is annotated by the winner (Anand – Leko, Moscow 2009), and a full theoretical article follows showing how the novelty changed existing theory.
* A section on combinations from 2010 appears in the back of the book.
* A section on endgames (all from 2010) appears in the back of the book.
* A section on chess studies appears in the back of the book.
* Theoretical articles are presented on 1.c4 c5 2.Nf3 Nf6 3.g3 b6 4.Bg2 Bb7 5.0-0 g6 (12 pages), 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 a6 6.Bg5 e6 7.f4 Qb6 (4 pages), 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Bxc3+ 6.bxc3 Ne7 7.Qg4 (7 pages), 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Nf6 4.Nf3 c6 5.e3 Nbd7 6.Bd3 dxc4 7.Bxc4 (5 pages), 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.Nf3 0-0 5.g3 d6 6.Bg2 Nc6 (5 pages).
* INFORMANT 108 ends with articles in two deceased players: Zdenko Krnic (1947 – 2010) and Bent Larsen (1935 – 2010).
As you can clearly see, these books are packed with an enormous amount of fascinating chess information! Read one, and I think you’ll join the late Jimmy Buff and myself as fans of the INFORMANT.
Click to buy (or get more information about) CHESS INFORMANT 108
Also available is CHESS INFORMANT 107
I should also point out that chess informant 109 has just become available on chesscafe.com. You can find it here: http://shop.chesscafe.com/Chess_Informant_109.asp
