John Emms' The Most Amazing Moves of All Time (henceforth Amazing Moves) is a collection of "amazing moves" chosen from existing lists, consultation with strong players, and the author's own search. The positions are presented as quizzes, which is a nice feature. And sometimes embarrassing: I wasn't even close to correctly calculating the consequences of many of them. Emms' method was to take a list of 400 such moves (presumably narrowed down from more candidates), from which he chose 200, based upon a point system. That system accorded 10 points for "surprise value," and 5 points apiece for "soundness," "only move," "importance of game" (correlating to the amount of pressure on the players), and "aesthetic value." I guess I'd tend to factor in sheer ingenuity, brilliance, and originality, all of which can go beyond surprise or aesthetic value in contributing to "amazing-ness." Also, it seems to me that a move could rack up 15 points by being the only move, sound, and played in an important game without being remotely amazing. Then the move could be surprising (say, an unusual positional move) and moderately aesthetic, and end up with an awful lot of points.

Eligibility criteria aside, Amazing Moves certainly has absolutely astonishing and beautiful moves aplenty. But there are quite a few which are relatively mundane, and some other reasons I find this book disappointing. Probably none of these should influence your decision to get a copy of it, but as a reviewer I think I should bring them up. Anybody who has been reading my reviews knows what I think of John Emms' books (thumbs up on all of them), as well as his terrific work on NCO. But this book looks rushed and superficial, unlike his other recent books. This may be a result of writing too many books in a short time.

Now I don't normally object to titles--it's understood that most publishers will insist upon a dramatic title with a few buzzwords, and that's okay by me. But the subtitle on Amazing Moves refers to "the most astonishing and instructive moves in the history of chess," although instructive quality isn't even a consideration by the author! I don't think Emms made enough effort to explain what his real criteria were, clearly including, for one, the degree of fame of the player and of the particular example. In a book full of incredible moves requiring astonishing foresight and mind-boggling calculation, for example, what is Fischer's Rf6 move against Benko (position #5) doing there? This is a famous position (included in nearly every elementary tactics book), but it is essentially a two-mover, and some of my young students have solved it reasonably quickly without having previously seen it. Sure, it's not elementary, but would it be top-200 material without the White player's name? Or what about Capablanca's simple one-move deflection (...Qb2) against Bernstein (#70)? Famous, but not even competitive with the great bank-rank themes of chess history. Or Fischer's ...Nh5 opening move against Spassky (#105), a known idea at that time which, just to illustrate the point, I myself had played a year earlier. Without the slightest ingenuity, of course, since I had lifted the idea from a recent Russian publication, one that Fischer had surely read. At any rate, hardly a top-1000, much less a top-200 move, and the 5 given for pressure should have been cancelled out by a 0 for soundness. But famous? Absolutely. I should add that there are plenty of other examples of this type (#s 32, 117, 142, 143, 146, and 150 deserve at least a skeptical look in that regard), so I'm not trying to single out Fischer, who is deservedly represented by other brilliant moves.

And how can British players be so heavily represented? Were 3 moves played in Emms' own games (all losses, reflecting his customary modesty) really among the top 200 in chess history? Or 3 in Miles' games, 4 in Short's, and 5 in Hodgson's? (Thanks to Taylor Kingston for those counts--the book has no indices!). I also noticed games involving the contemporary British players Chandler, Speelman (2), Gallagher (2, I think), Sadler, Ward, W Watson, Nunn, Howell, Motwani, Levitt, McNab, Arkell, Lee(?) and Hollis(?). These may all be great moves, but that brings up a problem. My guess is that a perusal of Soviet magazines between, say, 1960 and 1980 would have yielded just as many examples, even if you included only players most of us have never heard of! The result might be similar if you did even a very narrow search of games by Americans, Hungarians, Czechoslovakians, or many other countries and areas of the world. Furthermore, Emms includes one correspondence game that I saw, but if those are allowed, can we truthfully say that at least 20 of such games wouldn't replace existing choices? In general, then, I would say that Emms hasn't put enough effort into his search. That's not so bad in and of itself, but he should have admitted to the limited and understandably skewed approach he took, and perhaps made a little fun of the book's title as well.

Note that none of this criticism involves quibbles about my favorite moves that "should" have been included, but rather, the philosophy and methods used. Of course, one can also view my comments as missing the point, i.e., this is just a fun book for enjoyment, hardly serious research. That's probably true. After all, I'm glad that I have a copy! So I can hardly discourage anyone from getting this book, but I still find it a misleading and even flawed effort by one of our finest writers.

ADDENDUM:

I want to mention two things pertinent to my review of John Emms' Amazing Moves book. I had pointed out how Fischer's ...Nh5 Benoni move versus Spassky in their World Ch match was had already been played. In a recent Chess Life article, Shamkovich calls it Boleslavsky's move. He also seems to indicate (obscurely) that it was supposed to be a part of Spassky's pre-match preparation, which according to him was undercut by Spassky's laziness. With regard to Fischer's much-cited Rf6 move against Benko, I want to bring to your attention a forthcoming book about Benko's life and games by Benko himself and Jeremy Silman. From what I've seen in a sneak preview, I suspect that it will be one of the best-selling chess biographies ever, and hope to review it at a later date. At any rate, speaking of the Rf6 game, Benko, a big fan and friend of Fischer's, says something along the lines of "Everyone says that it's a great game, but I don't know what's so great about it," which is very close to the point I was making. In the book, there follows some fascinating background to the game. Look for it at newsstands everywhere!

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