To those of us who write opening books, GM John Nunn is a sort of semi-deity whose books represent a barely-attainable ideal. In some future opening book review, I'll discuss why that is, but suffice it to say that he combines originality, objectivity, and thoroughness. Many grandmasters fail to achieve even one of these qualities in their theoretical writings, much less all three! At any rate, Nunn makes it even harder for the rest of use hacks to measure up by putting out superb games collections and quality revisions of classic books as well. His recent book, Secrets of Practical Chess, is for the most part aimed at a less sophisticated audience than Nunn is wont to address. It is, as usual, well written, thoughtful, and original.

The book begins with a series of mini-essays on topics such as calculation, positional play, tactics, blunders, and time trouble. Nunn gives us practical advice about all these subjects, and then moves on to separate chapters on the opening, middlegame, endgame, and "using a computer." Every chapter is well done; but I personally feel that the endgame chapter is a little incongruous, being essentially a survey of frequently occurring endings. Not only do scads of other books cover this material, but the amount of practical advice (e.g., how to think about endings and how to approach the example at hand) is minimal in comparison with the rest of the book. This is not a very serious objection, however, as just about everyone could use a review of this material. The only other aspect of the book which is slightly disappointing is its length: the material is so good, we could use more of it!

For the rest of this review, at the risk of ignoring other interesting aspects of Nunn's work, I would like to draw the reader's attention to one superb piece of writing called "Books on Offbeat Openings." I suspect that I read more of such books than Nunn does, so I was delighted and impressed with his insights into them. He gets right to the essence of the matter, pointing out a number of dubious tendencies such books normally exhibit, for example: (a) they claim that "recent games" justify a previously-discredited opening (Nunn points out that the games are usually by unknown players and don't stand up to examination); (b) the authors of these books "display great ingenuity in finding resources for 'their' side, but often overlook even quite simple tactical defenses for the 'other' side" (how true!); (c) the author's analysis includes both "nothing moves" by the opponent and variations in which the opponent grabs all the offered material and cooperates in a glorious self-immolation (when in both cases, rational continuations were available). The great thing is that Nunn backs this criticism up by examining two such books by GMs: Tony Kosten's The Latvian Gambit and Andy Soltis' Winning with the Giuoco Piano and the Max Lange Attack. Tackling the former book first, he simply devastates Kosten's analysis of 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 f5 3.Nxe5 Nc6, and then does the same for Kosten's main line of 3...Qf6 4.Nc4 fxe4 5.Nc3 Qf7 6.Nc3 c6. In typical Nunn style, this takes four pages of what appears to me to be flawless analysis. He then turns his attention to Soltis' book and in a further four pages, simply refutes Soltis' superficial "analysis" of both of Black's main defenses in the most critical variations. After Nunn finishes, Black has two ways of getting an advantage versus a line with which White is supposed to be able to "win!" This exercise is vintage Nunn: devastating and path-breaking at the same time. I do have a small quibble with his characterization of the books involved, however. Unfortunately, he by implication equates Kosten's and Soltis' efforts, calling the former book "one of the better ones" of this genre, and the latter "a relatively high-quality product from a reliable GM author." The sad truth, as I know from pouring over Soltis' book with my students, is that it is a thoughtless work which obviously took little effort to write. There are other sections in it with problems similar to those Nunn points out, and Soltis is too strong a player to have actually analyzed or even looked at much of the material he presents. (Let me hasten to add that Andy has written some wonderful books, e.g., Confessions of a Grandmaster and The Art of Defense, among others, so he was certainly capable of better in this instance). On the other hand, Kosten offers much original and sometimes ingenious analysis, and clearly puts his heart into The Latvian Gambit. Although Nunn brilliantly demonstrates the flaws in two very important lines, Kosten has nevertheless added significantly to the theory of the Latvian Gambit, and his efforts in this rather hopeless endeavor still deserve our admiration. On the essential point, however, Nunn says what has long been needed to be said about such books. I can confirm from extensive experience that the type of errors he discovers are indeed rampant in typical books on offbeat openings, and in my opinion, they are at least as egregious in books written by grandmasters as in those by mere masters (who as a rule seem to work harder). It would be fun to discuss more of this excellent book, but I will stop here and just say that Secrets of Practical Chess is highly recommended, with players from 1500 to 2200 probably able to benefit the most from it.

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