Improve Your Chess

Improve Your Chess in 7 Days by Gary Lane

 

It's written bye Gary Lane, I just coppy. I m

sorry  for making any mistake.

IM Gary Lane's Beating the French was one of my first chess books. I won it as a scholastic book prize at a local tournament, and while the book's detailed opening analysis was lost on me, I did enjoy Lane's writing. Now, ten years later, I'm reviewing Gary Lane's most recent offering, Improve Your Chess in 7 Days, and I'm wishing it had been the book I'd received so many years previous. It would have taken me more than 7 days to read, but I would've had a lot of fun, and certainly improved my chess.

Lane has divided his book into 7 chapters, which the title suggests should be read during the course of a week. A stronger player will only need a few days, while a weaker player will need more than a week, but the book is a quick read either way. On Day 1, "So you want to improve your chess?", Lane covers a variety of topics like choosing a move, the relationship between strategy and tactics, and the basics of creating an attack. These subjects are covered more in-depth later, and I'd accuse the chapter of being unfocused if it didn't spoil me with fresh and surprising examples from recent tournament games. Lane introduces the importance of tactical motifs by comparing two recent tournament games:

Vallejo Pons - Perelshteyn, 1999

Pintor- Leite, 2002

Vallejo Pons won with the surprising 33.Rb3 when the black queen is lost after 33...Qxb3 34.Qb8+. Three years later, Pintor won with the same idea (see if you can spot it).

Examples like this are peppered throughout the book, and I appreciate that Lane has found games with instructive and easy-to-follow positional and tactical ideas. They are perfect for the developing player.

The remainder of the book is filled with even more entertaining (and fresh) illustrations of Lane's ideas. My favorite section is "Mastering the Endgame." It's an excellent primer on beginning endgame play. Lane's discussion of rook and pawn endings is especially instructive as he explores key positions of increasing complexity before revealing how they can inform one's practical endgame play. In so doing, Lane bridges the gulf between theoretical and practical beautifully. He even includes an enlightening analysis of a relatively complex endgame: queen and king vs. rook and king. Here Lane deftly balances concern for the beginner's understanding with the goal of providing quality analysis for stronger players.

My only qualm about the book is that its discussion of positional play is a little sparse. In fact, tactical fireworks frequently overshadow Lane's discussion of positional chess. The complexities of positional play, however, are probably outside the scope of the book. Furthermore, the section is very entertaining, and my complaint is only that I would've appreciated a little more on the subject.

Attacking Chess

Does this title sound somewhat familiar to you? Yes, I think so too, as soon as possible it recalls that classic work of Vukovic, The main Art of Attack in Chess. It's hard to believe the author and/or publisher were unaware of the similarity in title between the two works and the cynic might suspect that there is a deliberate attempt to capitalize on the well-deserved success of the earlier work. But reading the current volume, I was strainged to note that there was no mention of the Vukovic work nor is it listed in the fair-sized bibliography though The Second Piatigorsky Cup is included (from 1968, three years after the publication of the Art of Attack in Chess) so it's obviously not an issue of chronology or ignorance of the earlier era. There should be no confusion between the two books however- they are entirely different animals. Vukovic's work was a virtually encyclopedic collection of tactical middlegame positions from which general attacking motifs and patterns were dissected along with a number of "rules" and guidelines for dealing with attacking various structures i.e the castled king, the fianchettoed king etc. Although complete games were cited, the focus in the older volume was on positions that were, in the main, ripe for tactical exploitation and the successful prosecution of the attack. This current work is considerably less informationally dense, though there is quite a lot of information between its covers, focussing primarily on complete annotated games. The games are arranged in themed chapters such as "The Horwitz Bishops", "Exploiting Temporary Advantages" etc. The annotations, happily,do not feature overwhelming labyrinths of variations and subvariations, nor are they disappointingly lightweight either but strike a good balance for players below master level (such as myself) in the amount of detail covered, with sufficient diagrams (usually two or three per page) to make it possible to read the book without a chessboard.

Though I note the lack of similarity between the two books, I do not mean to suggest at all that Franco's book is without merit. On the contrary, this work, with its focus on how attacking positions can arise from the opening and manifest themselves through positional considerations, astute timing and carefully prepared buildups fills something of a gap left by Vukovic. The older work was less concerned with how attacking positions evolve organically from the preceding play than Franco's book is, though that aspect was certainly not completely ignored by Vukovic.The games themselves, featuring many recent efforts from Carlsen, Topalov, Short, Polgar and their ilk, are uniformly excellent as are their annotations. Since I am below master strength, it would be foolhardy for me to judge the quality of the assessments given by Franco but he is apparently a respected GM and I see nothing to indicate that there is anything amiss. On the contrary, (and based on my limited experience), Franco's instructive annotations seemed quite sensible and did a good job of illuminating the relationship between the positional and tactical aspects of preparing an attack. One nice feature of the book is the inclusion of several supplementary games to the primary 33 games that form the meat of the book. These games are also well-annotated and follow the same openings as the stem games. This allows the reader to see how the principles of attack change (or are reinforced) in similar but differing positions. Another plus is the inclusion of several exercises, a feature that would have been welcome addition to Vukovic's book, allowing the reader to think for his or herself and apply the lessons from the games. Although translated from Spanish (I assume), the prose flows nicely and there is nothing to suggest that this book was penned by a non-English speaker. All in all, I found this to be a worthwhile book especially for intermediate players, though perhaps stronger players can learn something too. If I had to pick between the two books I've compared here to accompany me to the proverbial desert island, I would definitely choose Vukovic's masterpiece, but if it was a roomy enough boat, I would certainly try to squeeze in Franco's book too. Recommended.

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Carlsen and Anand will play in the final of the 13. GrenkeLeasing Rapid Chess World Championship -- the very encounter many chess fans were waiting for. Qualifying, however, was not that easy. In the second half of the preliminary it took Anand three exciting tactical games to qualify while Carlsen was lucky to survive against Morozevich, exactly that, all chess players are satisfied. they are both king of the Chess

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