When I reviewed van Reek’s HYPERMODERN STRATEGY a few years ago, I ravaged the book and the writer. Van Reek has long been obsessed by Nimzovich’s ideas, which, of course, is quite an interesting thing to be obsessed about. Unfortunately, van Reek has repeatedly showed that he doesn’t have any idea what he is talking about. While strategic ignorance is no crime, writing about such things and insisting you are the second coming of Nimzovich should be a felony!

I had thought that van Reek was a thing of the past, but any hope of healing my ravaged mind (blown apart by his first book) was shot down when I received his latest abomination: GRAND STRATEGY.

Not being a vindictive man, I decided to give Reek’s new book a fair shake. First I looked over some reviews by various players (including grandmaster Matthew Sadler, who must have read GRAND STRATEGY in some unimaginable altered state of reality), and most spoke highly of it. Then I sheepishly cracked the cover and carefully began to read page after page.

This book uses Boris Spassky’s games to highlight the concepts of “struggle” and “prophylaxis” – quite a reasonable concept. Spassky’s sixteen pages of autobiographical prose (pages 144-160) are wonderful. Also intriguing are Spassky’s notes after move 44 in Spassky-Portisch, Geneva 1977. Finally, lest I forget, the photographs (the second batch being oddly placed at the end of the book) add a lot of personality to GRAND STRATEGY’S pages.

Alas, the rest of the material (i.e., everything not written by Spassky) is vintage van Reek:

“A captivation by chess leads to intuitive understanding. The pioneer is Chigorin. He gives his opponent a fighting chance in a real struggle. It seems that an intuitive player simply knows what to do. ‘Hand’ Smyslov is a great example, because he ‘only has to reach out and a good move is made.’ He is able to play hypermodern chess, although he cannot rationalize its principles.”

Note the embarrassing translation. Note the complete lack of passion in van Reek’s writing (it almost seems like some alien form of uneducated computer-generated-prose). Note how van Reek says, “…although he [Smyslov] cannot rationalize its principles.” In other words, van Reek is saying that while Smyslov doesn’t consciously understand Nimzovich (which, of course, is preposterous!), van Reek does!

Let’s enjoy a few more snippets from this book:

“Strategy typifies how the two opposing lines move forward.”

“Struggle is the credo of Lasker. Steinitz has the same inclination. An attack is prepared by forcing weaknesses and acquiring strengths.”

“General understanding of struggle and all-around knowledge of positional features are insufficient for a perfect application. It is impossible even for a computer to calculate and evaluate all possibilities. A player needs Russian intuition at the board and Dutch science during the analysis. We cannot judge the quality of this approach, but we have no serious alternative.”

No, ladies and gentleman, I’m not making any of this up! The book is filled with this kind of vacuous, confused, self-indulgent tripe. Speaking of self-indulgence, allow me to present one final quote:

“Theory about chess strategy made a leap forward in 1927, when Euwe wrote sagacious articles about pawns in the center and the attack on the King, and Nimzovich published his system of prophylaxis. Van Reek completed, clarified and combined these approaches into a general theory for human and computer chess in 1997.”

Painful stuff! Van Reek tries to discuss subjects he simply doesn’t understand, in stilted language that is agonizing to read.

Many of you might be thinking, “Who is van Reek?” Let’s answer that by quoting from his introduction: “Jan van Reek has been working with computers since 1966. He has written 150 publications about mortality, smoking behavior and heart diseases. In chess, he is known as a composer of endgame studies. His rating is 2325. Three times he has been Dutch champion is war games.”

Fearing that my view of this book might be off base due to my pervious bad experience with van Reek’s writing, I asked IM John Watson if he had read GRAND STRATEGY. I knew John would mercilessly kick me into the gutter if he thought I was unfair or simply wrong (I prize friends with the courage to do this!). His e-mailed answer is a fitting end to this review:

JOHN WATSON: “GRAND STRATEGY is one of the five worst chess books that I have ever seen…it would be so bad that it’s funny, except that it’s even worse than that and can’t even be made fun of. The book is an insult and disgrace to chess writers everywhere.”

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