SECRETS OF ATTACKING CHESS

Author: Mikhail Marin

Gambit (2005)

www.gambitbooks.com

192 pages

$28.95

Reviewed by John Donaldson

SECRETS OF ATTACKING CHESS is the latest effort by an author who has made quite a name for himself with his two previous titles: SECRETS OF CHESS DEFENCE and LEARN FROM THE LEGENDS - CHESS CHAMPIONS AT THEIR BEST. So much so that the hard to impress Scottish GM Jonathan Rowson, writing in the latest issue of New in Chess (#6, 2005), says “I think it’s safe to say that if a chess book is written by Marin, it is very likely to be very good indeed. One could add to Marin’s recent non-playing accomplishments that he produced an excellent CD on the Catalan for ChessBase and has been working as Judit Polgar’s second. He is definitely not a lazy guy!”

In his previous work for Gambit, SECRETS OF ATTACKING CHESS, Marin examined the task facing the defender. Now he considers the other side of the coin. In this wide-ranging treatise, he discusses many topics including: the balance between attack and defense; the premises for starting a successful attack; advantage in development; play on both wings, intuitive sacrifices; typical scenarios. The entire book is excellent, but I found the last three chapters particularly interesting. One is devoted to Tal, another to Morphy and the last to the pros and cons of using computers in positions in which there is a material imbalance – this is often the weak spot of silicon oracles.

Marin doesn’t take annotators on faith, no matter how big their reputation. Kasparov’s analysis of Petrosian-Gligoric, Rovinj/Zagreb 1970, from MY GREAT PREDECESSORS, VOLUME THREE (pages 44-48) is held up to the light and found wanting. Even more intriguing is the chapter on Paul Morphy. The prevailing consensus for at least one hundred years has been that the first great American player was also the first modern player. That he was head and shoulders above the other top players of his day because he understood positional play, a concept alien to most of his contemporaries. Marin disagrees with this conclusion! He feels that it was Morphy’s formidable combative talents and skill in developing quickly in open positions that explained his dominance. That he simply did what others did before him, but much more efficiently. To prove his point, Marin analyses three games between Anderssen and Morphy that were not wide open slugfests but semi-closed positional struggles. One of these, the 6th game of their match, gets over 12 large (9 1/2 by 6 1/2) pages of commentary!  

This new take on Morphy is certain to provoke some arguments. Curiously, almost 150 years after it was played, this game was also extensively analyzed by GM Valeri Beim in his new book PAUL MORPHY: A MODERN PERSPECTIVE (Russell Enterprises 205). Beim comes to some different conclusions about what was going on in the game and his appraisal of Morphy’s contributions to the game differs from Marin’s. Morphy fans will want to compare the annotations. It’s interesting that neither author looks at the famous blindfold game between Paulsen and Morphy, possibly because both players were playing others blindfold at the same time. In the game, played on October 10, 1857 in New York, Morphy, in a position somewhat analogous to those arising from some Hedgehog and Najdorf, plays ...Kh8, ...g5 and ...Rg8. Reinfeld and Soltis, in MORPHY CHESS MASTERPIECES cite this game as evidence that Morphy was a modern player and that this was inspiration for Garcia-Fischer, Havana (ol) 1966, often given as the first game to employ this plan. Fischer used it again with colors reversed against Ulf Andersson in an exhibition game in 1970 (which is not in Mega Database 2005 for some reason).

A quick glance at SECRETS OF ATTACKING CHESS might prove somewhat intimidating. While there is plenty of explanatory prose, Marin believes in backing up his conclusions with concrete analysis. A closer look reveals that Marin has a definite pedagogical bent and has taken pains to sprinkle instructive comments throughout the book that are destined to stay with the reader.

Highly Recommended

Click to buy (or get more information about) MY GREAT PREDECESSORS, VOLUME THREE

Click to buy (or get more information about) PAUL MORPHY: A MODERN PERSPECTIVE

Click to buy (or get more information about) LEARN FROM THE LEGENDS - CHESS CHAMPIONS AT THEIR BEST