CHESS ON THE EDGE, VOLUMES 1-3: The Collected Games of Canadian Grandmaster Duncan Suttles
Authors: Bruce Harper and Yasser Seirawan (with contributions by Gerard Welling)
Chess’n Math Association (2008)
[Hardcover with Dust Jacket]
Volume 1: 314 pages
Volume 2: 330 pages
Volume 3: 346 pages
Each is $37.95

Reviewed by John Donaldson

CHESS ON THE EDGE, VOLUMES 1-3 has been a long time coming. Vancouver lawyer Bruce Harper has spent the past thirty years working on this tribute to an icon of Canadian chess assisted by fellow Pacific Northwesterner Yasser Seirawan. Their joint effort has created a game collection of lasting value.
 
For those unfamiliar with the exploits of Duncan Suttles, who last played tournament chess more than twenty years ago, the thought of spending close to 1000 pages on a player who was never a Candidate much less World Champion, might seem a bit puzzling. This will not be the case for those who played in the late 1960s and early 1970s, particularly Canadians and residents of the states of Washington and Oregon. Suttles' creative and uncompromising play, which found him constantly challenging the established rules of chess strategy, won him many fans. For his admirers, the three volumes of CHESS ON THE EDGE, containing  all of Suttles available games, is a treasure trove of riches.

The three volumes are distinct. Volume 1 features 100 heavily annotated selected games grouped by theme. The aim is to introduce the reader to Suttle's unique style. Some of the themes such as Space and The Center are common to many chess books but later sections on Rook Pawns, King Walks and Weird Maneuvers start to get the point across -- Suttles was always stretching the fabric of the chess universe looking for ways to take his opponents out of their comfort zone.
 
The second and third volumes are arranged by ECO code with the second covering A00 to A43 (219 games) and the third B00-E99 (294 games). This enables the reader to examine certain systems that Suttles favored, like the Closed Sicilian, in great depth, watching how he developed his pet lines and refined them after tournament battles.

Almost all the games in CHESS ON THE EDGE are annotated unlike many other comprehensive game collections where only the player's best efforts are commented followed by pages and pages of raw game scores. Harper and Seirawan have not only annotated almost every game, they have done a very thorough job with extensive prose commentary and concrete variations where needed. There is also a fair amount of humor -- not a staple of chess books but appropriate to Suttles' games that often have a comedic element to them.

Since all of Suttles’ games are given you get to see the good, the bad, and the ugly. Lots of players before Suttles experimented but without nearly the amount of practical success he enjoyed, still things did not always go his way. The authors' make sure you get a balanced picture, even at the cost of showing some embarrassing losses. Several time Canadian Champion, an eight-time Olympiad team member, two-time Interzonalist and Correspondence GM, Suttles did not alter his play when facing the world's best. Games versus Fischer, Spassky, Botvinnik, Petrosian and Karpov can be found among the more than 600 in this trilogy.

CHESS ON THE EDGE lets Suttles games do the talking. There is a very short biography in Volume One that provides some historical information on him, supplemented by a foreword by Lawrence Day and preface by Yasser Seirawan, but many unanswered questions remain. The principle one is what caused Suttles to play the way he did. Day mentions that, "Duncan always played 1...g6". That's not actually true. Suttles chess career began in 1958 and until the start of 1965 he was still playing Open Sicilians as White and defending the Ruy Lopez. What caused the switch to the Closed Sicilian and 1...g6?

Suttles was studying mathematics at the University of Nevada at Reno in 1964-65 (I believe one or both parents were professors there) and he played in many Swiss tournaments in the US, particularly in California, doing well enough that he qualified for and participated in the 1965-66 U.S. Championship. In so doing he became one of only three players to play in both U.S. and Canadian Closed Championships. CHESS ON THE EDGE has some games from these years that were published in the California Chess Reporter, Washington Chess Letter/Northwest Chess Letter (later Northwest Chess), Chess Review, Chess Life and other publications, but just a sample -- regrettably Suttles was a poor record keeper. It would be very interesting to see exactly when the switch was made. By the U.S. Championship at the end of 1965 Suttles was almost transformed but did essay a King's Gambit against William Addison.
 
CHESS ON THE EDGE is a fitting tribute to a player who went his own way (for example the Suttles system -- g3, d3, Nc3, Bg2, Bd2 and Qc1) well before modern chess saw top players routinely putting Knights on the rim and advancing g4 early (incidentally Suttles toyed with 1.e4 c5 2.Nc3 Nc6 3.d3 g6 4.g4 in the mid 1960s). Going through the games in CHESS ON THE EDGE, one quickly discovers that Suttles not only had a novel style but he was a fine calculator, excellent tactician and good endgame player. While their openings had nothing in common, a similarity in spirit can be seen between Emanuel Lasker and Suttles. Both were great fighters who were willing to take risks to provoke their opponents.
 
The publisher, Chess’n Math Association, has done a first rate production job. All three volumes of CHESS ON THE EDGE are beautifully produced with a clean layout and crisp diagrams on good paper, sturdy hardback binding and handsome dust jackets. There are numerous indexes and a selection of sharp black and white photos of Suttles and contemporaries that are of good enough quality to frame.

Highly Recommended

Click to buy (or get more information about) all three CHESS ON THE EDGE books:

Sample pages of CHESS ON THE EDGE can be seen at www.suttlesbook.com.
 
CHESS ON THE EDGE, VOLUME 1

CHESS ON THE EDGE, VOLUME 2

CHESS ON THE EDGE, VOLUME 3