Informant 126: Focus on the World Cup

Another three months have gone by, so it's time for another issue of the Chess Informant. The current issue, #126, hot off the press, covers events from September-November of 2015, and the text portions rightly place a heavy emphasis on the World Cup (won by Sergei Karjakin in a dramatic final over Peter Svidler, in case anyone has forgotten; both players thereby qualified for next year's Candidates' tournament). As usual, I'll offer an overview of the issue.

We'll begin with a review of the standard, old-school features: a big chunk of games (201, the seemingly official quantity nowadays) which are presented in the Informant's traditional way, with symbols and without natural language. (That said, that number is slightly misleading, in that quite a few of the games are repetitions/"translations" of games given in the text-based sections. There's a good news/bad news aspect to that. The good news (if you've purchased a digital version of the Informant) is that those games can be easily incorporated into your database programs, which is very convenient. The bad news, obviously enough, is that there's some duplication in what you've paid for. There are also the standard sections on combinations, endgames and studies (with nine of each), plus a re-presentation of the best game and the best novelty from the previous issue.

Now to the text-based material, which comprises more than half of the volume - 180 pages out of 348. Once upon a time it seemed like a gimmicky change to the Informant, but now it's a major strength of the volume. As noted above, the current issue focuses on the World Cup, but not everything relates to that event.

First, there's Alexander Morozevich's "Midnight in Moscow" column, which takes a look at the ...a6 vs. a4 pawn advances in Benoni structures and asks who benefits from their insertion. Morozevich shows one of his many creative ideas with the black pieces, and shows how it has developed over the past several years.

Next, Pentala Harikrishna ("The New Romantics") looks at four games (one from the World Cup) in which imaginative calculation was the necessary ingredient in a player's winning a won game.

Ernesto Inarkiev asks the question, "How many games should a chess professional play in a period of one year?", and after briefly surveying old thoughts and recent data concludes that there is no one sensible conclusion to be drawn. He recently played in four back-to-back events (five if you distinguish the World Rapid and the World Blitz championships) in a 29 day period, starting with - you guessed it - the World Cup. Despite the fatiguing schedule, Inarkiev's results did his rating no harm, and overall he even seemed to benefit from the daily grind which kept him in form.

Next is Mihail Marin's very well-received column, "Old Wine in New Bottles". There may be no "wine" that's older in chess than the weakness of f7 (or f2), and it can be found in vintages as recent as the World Cup final between Svidler and Karjakin. Marin shows three games where tactics involving f7 and/or f2 come into play, and shows some classic examples as well, plus another game from 2015 that could have become a classic.

Swedish GM Emanuel Berg ("Mirroring") continues his thematic columns in which he looks at an opening variation from both perspectives, showing first a white success in the line followed by one for Black. (At least from a theoretical standpoint; the results need not be 1-0 and 0-1.) The variation in question this time is the increasingly popular Ruy variation 6.d3, starring a pair of games from the World Cup.

Karsten Mueller ("Endgame Strategy") looks at 12 endings (from the World Cup and the World Rapid Championship) with various material distributions; it's more a survey than a thematic column.

From here on out it's all about the World Cup. Radoslaw Wojtaszek, Liviu-Dieter Nisipeanu, Alexander Ipatov, Bassem Amin, Rafael Leitao, S.P. Sethuraman, Sam Shankland, and Sandro Mareco all look at their highlights (and sometimes their lowlights) from the event; and Leitao also looked at games from other matches that caught his eye. Michael Roiz looks at several especially tactical games from others' matches, and Sarunas Sulskis also looked at some very complicated battles featuring some of the top players.

In sum, another winning issue - highly recommended.

(Ordering information here.)

Informant's "Paramount" Chess Database

In part because of the market dominance of their database program, ChessBase also has the best-known database as well. The next edition of their MegaDatabase will have approximately 68,500 annotated games. That's a good deal, obviously, especially if one thinks about how many books one would need to buy to get the same number of annotated games. (And never mind trying to replay all those games on a board - your hands will probably fall off by the time you reach the halfway point.)

So it's a good deal, but an even better deal, at least or especially if you also own a generic large database to go with it, is the new "Paramount Chess Database" from the Chess Informant. It includes all the games from the main section of the Chess Informant from the very first issue all the way through Informant 123, which came out earlier this year. In all, there are almost 114,000 games and game fragments (about 70,000 of the former and 44,000 of the latter; the game fragments start from move 1 and generally cut off once the theoretical significance is finished).

It isn't just the total number of annotated games that counts, however. In Mega there are 59 games annotated by Garry Kasparov; in Paramount, 630. Mega has 268 games annotated by Viswanathan Anand, while Paramount has 507. Vladimir Kramnik? 64 vs, 442. There are only ten games annotated by Bobby Fischer in the Paramount database, but guess what? That's ten more than you'll find in Mega. In fairness to Mega, they win the Magnus Carlsen sweepstakes 24-0, as in recent years fewer top players annotate their games for the Informant. That's not to say that current games aren't well annotated - they are - but more of it is being done by staff grandmasters, while they have elite players writing articles for them instead. There aren't any articles in the Paramount database, but as an historical record of the best chess since 1965 it's almost certainly the best resource you'll find.

Continuing the count, how about 372 games annotated by Mikhail Tal (none in Mega), 17 games by Boris Spassky (two in Mega), 510 by Tigran Petrosian (the world champion, not his living grandmaster namesake; there are three in Mega), 29 to 0 for Mikhail Botvinnik, 55 to 5 for Veselin Topalov, etc.

It's a fine resource, but do remember that the annotations are given with the Informant's languageless symbols. It is a rich "language" in its own right, but lower-rated and less experienced players might find it a little forbidding at first. The Informant has generally been aimed at strong club players and up, so while I think players under 1800 can find this product useful as well, it is to players at and above that rating that I would offer my (hearty) recommendation.

The price is $199; a fair chunk of change, but very reasonable for what you're getting. (Think of how many books you'd need to buy to get your paws on 114,000 games.) To my mind it's a very good deal for serious players, fans of chess history and for correspondence players, so if you're in those categories you have my recommendation.

More info at the link above (reiterated here), including a nice video that gives you a tour of the product.

Informant 125: Another Winner

I've been pretty enthused about the Chess Informant series for some time now, so while I'm obviously going to be at least slightly biased in favor of the current edition, my track record of praise for the publication offers some reason to trust me on another positive review. (Note, however, that my earliest reviews weren't very positive; they were more like laments. But the good people at CI have righted the ship, modernizing the publication while keeping the heart of its original mission intact.)

The current issue, covering May through August of this year, has the usual standbys. There are a couple of hundred games deeply annotated with their well-known languageless symbols (an example is my game with Ipatov, shown here a couple of days ago), there's the best game and the best novelty from the previous volume, nine combinations, nine endgames and nine studies to test the reader, plus tournament tables from the major FIDE events from the relevant three-month period. That is the old-style material, all languagelessly presented.

The new Informants all contain a huge percentage of annotated material, consisting of more than half of the book's 352 pages. So here's a rundown of the "readable" material, which is still very dense with analysis.

Alexander Morozevich has a look at the Rubinstein French, and does his best to bury it by means of some exceptionally sharp lines. Anyone who believes that 3...dxe4 4.Nxe4 Bd7 in the French ought to be punished will enjoy this material, and if you play this with Black you had better get to work figuring out what to do about it!

After that there is a lot of material on the Sinquefield Cup. After Aleksandar Colovic offers a brief write-up of the event itself, focusing on its winner, Levon Aronian, there are four deep, chess-related articles on the tournament. Sarunas Sulskis' column looks at three games by Hikaru Nakamura, who tied for second with Magnus Carlsen. He examines his poor loss to Aronian, his gritty draw with Carlsen and his long, grinding victory against Alexander Grischuk.

Michael Roiz focuses on the "wild complications" that arose from some of the ostensibly solid openings chosen in the event. He features the games Topalov-Nakamura, So-Aronian, So-Nakamura and Carlsen-So.

Pentala Harikrishna also focuses on the openings, in particular those taking a more romantic, swashbuckling turn - or at least a turn towards the avant-garde. The spotlight shines on Carlsen-Topalov, and then at last the focus leaves the Sinquefield Cup for a moment to examine three games played in other events.

Mihail Marin's "Old Wine in New Bottles" column also starts with a look at a game from St. Louis before turning to other games, both contemporary (including a second game from St. Louis) and from the past. The theme of his column every month is that chess ideas seen in today's games can be seen in the past, too - the players of yesteryear were not always babes in the woods compared with today's geniuses.

For variety (of a sort), Marcelo Flores Rios turns away from the Sinquefield Cup and turns his attention instead to the Norway Chess tournament in Stavanger, which featured 9 of the 10 players from St. Louis. Carlsen had a poor tournament there, starting with just half a point out of his first four games (you may remember that the trouble started when he lost on time to Veselin Topalov in a winning position), made a bit of a comeback, going +2 over the next four rounds before losing to the bottom seed, his countryman Jon Ludwig Hammer. Flores Rios deeply analyzes all nine(!) of Carlsen's games from that event!

The next column is Ivan Sokolov's, and he presents four "Chinese Dragons" - referring not to the line of the Dragon with ...Rb8 but to four of China's top players: Li Chao, Wei Yi, Ding Liren and Yu Yangyi (in order of his presentation), presenting multiple games by each.

Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant's column is "David Against Goliath", and as you'd expect she investigates a number of significant upsets from the past several months, all showing the player rated at least 230 points lower than his opponent pulling out the win. (I note with a "Rats!" that my game could have been among them, had I played a bit more accurately at a couple of moments. Of course, there were also some moments when the game could have turned into a standard dog-bites-man item.)

Emanuel Berg takes a look at a couple of Makagonov (5.h3) King's Indians, the first won by White, the second by Black.

Endgame guru Karsten Mueller takes a look at rook vs. bishop endings, beginning with pawnless cases and gradually increasing the number of pawns on both sides.

In the previous issue of the Informant the late Walter Browne had a couple of his games published in the main body of the publication, with the languageless symbolic annotations. As a tribute to Browne, they have republished those games with Browne's original, text-based commentary.

Finally, noted theoretician Vassilios Kotronias's monster series on the Alapin Sicilian (i.e. 2.c3, but sometimes it's 3.c3 via a transposition) is up to part 7 and chapter 20, and offers 16 dense pages on the line 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.c3 Nf6 4.e5 Nd5 5.d4 cxd4 6.Bc4. The whole series has been written from Black's perspective, but I can't imagine that a serious Alapin player wouldn't benefit greatly from Kotronias' work as well.

So that's the summary, and all that's left is the recommendation: if you're over 2000 you might want it, if you're over 2200 and still a serious tournament competitor it's likely that you'll want it. Others should only consider (on practical grounds) it if they're ambitious (and not too far below 2000) or if they are serious correspondence players. Anyway, to any of you who might be interested in it and fall under the categories just listed, I highly recommend Informant 125.

Slipping Past the Guards at the Chess Informant

Yes, folks, it's come to this. In the latest edition of the Chess Informant, to be published any day now, the game Magnus Carlsen-Levon Aronian from the Norway Chess tournament is followed by an even more interesting game, albeit one featuring a significantly lower-rated player, who also served as the annotator:

Informant 124: Another Fine Issue

The good folks in Serbia have produced another excellent issue of the Chess Informant, and perhaps the best news is that it seems to be a consistent product as well: one pretty much knows what to expect again when buying and receiving the latest issue.

Informant 124, which covers the goings on in the chess world from February through May of this year, is labeled the "Veni Vidi Vici" issue, and while I get the historic allusion to Julius Caesar I have no idea what this hast to do with the book's contents. For that matter, I don't understand what any of these code names are supposed to signify. Informant 123 was the "Hawaiian" edition, 122 was "Mechanics", 121 "Midnight Sun" and on it goes for a few more issues into the past. I don't see an explanation for this anywhere, but as this is pretty much the only complaint I have - and it's more a curiosity than anything else - it's good news for those of you thinking of getting a copy.

As I've reviewed every Informant since 111 on this blog, regular readers already know the basics of this periodical even if they haven't purchased one for themselves. The historic core of this periodical is a big helping of games deeply annotated with languageless symbols but without any text, and that is the case here as well. As is standard nowadays, there are 200 such games (with an index of players but, alas, not annotators; most of the work is done by [very competent] staffers), plus nine combinations, nine endgame puzzles, nine endgame studies (plus the study of the year for 2013, with a short accompanying text), summaries of the tournaments, the presentation of the best game of the previous volume (Caruana-Carlsen from Wijk aan Zee this year) and the best novelty of the preceding volume (Ivanchuk's 15.a4 from his game with Vachier-Lagrave, also from Wijk aan Zee). The latter is followed by an updated ECO style page of the relevant theory.

Now time for the "new" style material, all in English and comprising 185 pages, well more than half the volume. This is what makes distinguishes the contemporary Informant from your parents' version, and makes it a worthwhile buy for serious players.

First, Alexander Morozevich takes a very close look at the Taimanov line recently sported by Dutch superstar Anish Giri. After 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nc6 5.Nc3 Qc7 6.Be3 a6 7.Qf3!? Giri has been playing the provocative 7...Ne5 8.Qg3 h5!?, with decent results. Morozevich discusses the logic of the move and its pros and cons before launching into a deep exploration of 9.Nf5 and 9.0-0-0. His coverage of this is more thorough than anything I've seen from several other sources, including some specially dedicated to the Taimanov and to giving "special", inside information. This blows them all away.

Second, Pentala Harikrishna's "The New Romantics" looks at some games by the openings mavericks Richard Rapport, Baadur Jobava, Vadim Zvjaginsev and David Navara. The first game, between Rapport and Ahmed Adly, is romanticism on steroids at the beginning: 1.b3 a5 2.e4 a4 3.b4 e6 4.Bb2 d5 5.a3 dxe4 6.Nc3 Nf6 7.g4 c5 8.b5 h6 9.Bg2 Ra5 and so on. Crazy chess!

Next, three different authors, Sarunas Sulskis, Rafael Leitao (both veterans of the "new" Informant) and Michael Roiz (a newcomer) dig into the action from the Grand Prix finale in Khanty-Mansiysk. Sulskis looks at "strategic highlights", Leitao examines the best opening ideas and Roiz looks at sacrifices from the event.

After this, it's Mihail Marin's column, "Old Wine in New Bottles". This goes back to the start of the "new" Informant, and its continuation is deserved. This time he takes a look at some new tries in the old-fashioned, direct approach in the Giuoco Piano with 5.d4. In particular, he examines Nakamura-Giri, where the American met 5...exd4 6.cxd4 Bb4+ with 7.Nbd2 (rather than the boring 7.Bd2 or the fun but probably just bad 7.Nc3), and also has a look at Jobava's pet line starting with 6.e5. But there's much more besides, including some interesting material with 5.d3.

Next, Mauricio Flores Rios (author of a terrific recent book on pawn structures) has a column called "Patterns", but contrary to what the title might suggest the subject of his column is Hikaru Nakamura and the run of great play that has pushed him over 2800. He looks at five of his games plus one ending, the latter supplemented by a similar and similarly instructive ending between Carlsen and Caruana (won by the latter).

Next, Ivan Sokolov looks at some highlights from the Gashimov Memorial in Shamkir with a heavy emphasis on the games of the winner, one Magnus Carlsen.

Emanuel Berg has a look at a pair of Dragon Sicilians, one won by White and the second by Black; both feature the Yugoslav Attack.

Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant takes a look back at the Women's World Championship, won by Mariya Muzychuk.

Dragan Solak takes a happy look back at his victory in the Dubai Open, which he calls his career-best win.

Then it's time for a familiar name, but a new one to the stable of Informant authors. Karsten Mueller, reknowned as an endgame specialist, has indeed scored an endgame column with this publication. His inaugural piece is called "The Two Faces of Opposite Coloured Bishops", and shows the drawish "face" when it is purely the bishops (in addition to the kings and pawns) that remain on the board and the anything but drawish "face" that can arise when there are further pieces on the board and the strong side has some sort of attack or initiative.

Finally, Vassilios Kotronias has part 300 six in his incredibly detailed series on the 2.c3 Sicilian from Black's standpoint; he has practically written a book on this over the past few issues of the Informant. This time around his attention is drawn to the line 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.c3 Nf6 4.e5 Nd5 5.d4 cxd4 6.cxd4.

And that's it! As I've said before, it's not a periodical for lower-rated club players, but anyone rated over 2000 with a bit of ambition or a willingness to put in some elbow grease will be well-served by this volume. If you're really ambitious, then maybe 1800 or 1900 is enough to make it worthwhile. (But I feel more comfortable saying 2000 and up.) If you're in the target audience, it's definitely worth your while.

More info from the publisher's website, here.

Informant 123: A Short, Positive Review

I've been reviewing the latest issues of Chess Informant for quite some time now, and the favorable trend continues with this look at Informant 123. If you don't want to skim through the details, here's the bottom line: the Informant is a very sensible purchase for serious tournament players rated 2000 and up, for ambitious young players rated at least 1800, and for correspondence players - who have probably already purchased it.

For those of you familiar with old-time Informants, some features remain: a couple of hundred games given with languageless annotations, a recap of the best game and the best novelty from the previous issue, a set of tactical puzzles and endgames for solving and a list of the main tournament results from the period covered in the issue. (In this case, from late 2014 through the end of January 2015, as far as I can tell.) But nowadays and for quite some time a huge chunk of the periodical consists of a series of articles written in the King's English, or something close enough to it. Here's a rundown of that material:

1. Alexander Morozevich takes a deep look at the sharp and newish exchange sac line in the QGA starting with 1.d4 d5 2.c4 dxc4 3.e4 b5 4.a4 c6 5.axb5 cxb5 6.Nc3 a6 7.Nxb5 axb5 8.Rxa8 Bb7 9.Ra1 e6. If you play either side of this variation at a serious level, you may want the issue for this article alone.

2. Ernesto Inarkiev takes a look at three of his games from the Moscow Open.

3. Ivan Sokolov looks at some highlights (and one lowlight) from Magnus Carlsen's play in Wijk aan Zee earlier this year, examining more than half of his games from the tournament.

4. Mihail Marin's "Old Wine in New Bottles" column delves into the Hedgehog, using the Wojtaszek-Jobava game from Wijk aan Zee as a jumping-off point on his way to an examination of some classics involving Miles, Gheorghiu and from his own practice as well.

5. Rafael Leitao looks at several games from the 2015 Brazilian Championship.

6. Julio Sadorra looks at some games played in the Philippines in late 2014.

7. Emanuel Berg, who has been establishing himself as an important theoretician of late, takes a look at the trendy Najdorf line 6.h3 e5 7.Nde2 h5 8.g3; alas, there is no mention of Nepomniachtchi's 8.Ng1.

8. Alexander Ipatov analyzes five games, all involving young, promising players.

9. Turning to the endgame, specialist Karsten Mueller looks at a series of single-rook endings, several of which seem simple at first sight. This apparent simplicity is deceptive, but by focusing on activating the rook, whether on offense or defense, we will generally improve our chances of a favorable result.

10. Back to the opening: Christian Bauer offers a survey of the Nimzowitsch/Pirc Defense line 1.e4 Nc6 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 Nf6 4.Nc3 g6.

11. Vasilios Kotronias continues his monster series on the 2.c3 Sicilian for Black; this installment includes chapters 17 and 18! This time around he examines 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.c3 Nf6 4.e5 Nd5 5.Na3 and 5.Bc4.

After that it's time for the traditional sections (games, combinations and endgames, all mentioned above) rounded off by nine endgame studies by Yochanan Afek.

Despite my recommendation, I have a criticism or at least a query. On the issue's webpage, it also claims that there is coverage of the Wijk B tournament by Sam Shankland and an article by Sulskis and Colovic on the Zurich Chess Challenge. I found neither in my e-copy, and checked both the PGN and the ChessBase databases therein. Perhaps it is present in the proprietary Informant version of the database, but as I cannot integrate that database with ChessBase (and I assume very few of my readers can, either) I haven't checked it.

Informant 122: Another Strong Issue

While the Informant used to be the most predictable publication in chess, the good folks in Serbia have been experimenting with its format over the past few years, and notwithstanding the occasional misstep the trend has been a favorable one. The heart of the publication, as always, is a big chunk of recent games annotated without words but with lots of symbols, and the traditional sections with combinations and endgames are there as well. There is also a section on endgame studies - this has been around for quite some time - and likewise the tradition of re-presenting the best game and the best theoretical novelty from the previous issue has continued as well.

All of that is more or less in the original languageless format of the publication, but for some time now a huge chunk of the issue comes with English language commentary in addition to moves and symbols. Here's what we have this time around:

1. A review of the Carlsen-Anand match by Ernesto Inarkiev. He examines, in whole or in part, games 1-4, 6, 9 and 11.

2. An article by Alexander Morozevich on the Old Indian line 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 d6 3.Nc3 e5, entitled "Avoiding the Saemisch by a less travelled road". I'm a big fan of his articles he has done so far, and while I liked Garry Kasparov's columns for the Informant I think that Morozevich's columns are a big improvement.

3. Next comes an article by Ivan Sokolov, "Topalov's Comeback", in which he takes a look at six games and game fragments from Topalov's recent praxis on his way back to membership in the 2800 club.

4. Mihail Marin's "Old Wine in New Bottles" column has been a staple of the Informant for some time now, and deservedly so. This time around he takes a look at the double bishop sacrifice, not only showing the old classics Lasker-Bauer from Amsterdam 1889 and Nimzowitsch-Tarrasch from Saint Petersburg 1914, but a slew of new examples as well.

5. Wesley So has another column, "Back to the Midnight Sun 1", wherein he has a look at some theoretically important games from the Tromso Olympics.

6. Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant's "Back to the Midnight Sun 2" also spotlights the Olympiad; in particular, the women's section.

7. Most of the remaining sections deal with opening theory, starting with an article by Sarunas Sulskis on 1.b3, looking mostly at 1...e5 with some examination of 1...d5.

8. Emanuel Berg has a new column, "Mirroring", in which he will first take a look at a variation as an advocate of one color, and then as the advocate for the other side. This time around he's first advocates White's cause in the Berlin ending before switching to Black's side.

9. A short break from openings: Karsten Mueller's "Endgame Strategy" column focuses on a (rightly) well-known idea, the principle of two weaknesses.

10. Back to theory. First up, Eduardas Rozentalis takes a close look at the Moscow Variation line 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.Bb5+ Nd7 4.0-0 a6 5.Bd3. It looks like he thinks that Black can equalize in one of the sidelines, but in his main line and in almost every alternative along the way he seems to believe more strongly in White's chances.

11. In the next theoretical survey Robert Markus advocates for Black in the Fianchetto King's Indian line 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nf3 Bg7 4.g3 0-0 5.Bg2 d6 6.0-0 Nbd7 7.Nc3 e5 8.e4 c6, looking at both 9.Be3 and 9.Rb1.

12. Finally, there's part 4 of Vassily Kotronias' very long and detailed repertoire for Black against the 2.c3 Sicilian.

My advice is that the Informant is a wise purchase for serious tournament players rated 2000 and up, for most correspondence players and for ambitious young players rated at least 1800. Product info here.

Tactics Time: Two Combinations by Moiseenko - Solutions (Updated)

Yesterday I offered a couple of positions from the recent praxis of the strong Ukranian grandmaster Alexander Moiseenko for your solving pleasure (the positions are here), and now it's time for the solutions. Both come from the combinations section of Informant 122, which I hope to review for you within a day or two.

The solutions are here, with some variations and comments added (prefaced with "DM") to the first position for clarity's sake.

[UPDATE: The solutions are now linked.]

Informant 119: Changes, Changes

The Chess Informant series looks the same on the outside, issue to issue, but the past few years the contents have changed dramatically and there seems to be no end in sight. I don't know what it means but I find it a bit dizzying, and with they would get some stability. For what it's worth, I'll offer my list of what I'd like to see in the Informant, and I invite those of my readers who regularly use the Informant to offer their wish list in the comments as well. The publishers read this blog (at least when we review their products), so perhaps we can exercise a little influence on them.

Games: In the good old days the issues had around 700 games; nowadays, many more games are played but only 200 or so (201 in this issue) get published. It would be nice to have more games, annotated when possible by one of the players rather than the editiorial staff.

Combinations, Endgames and Studies: Yes, please keep them. Maybe a few more combinations and endings would be nice, again as in the old days.

Best Game & Best Novelty of the Preceding Volume: Yes, please keep them too, but please restore the voting results. It was nice to know what other games and especially what novelties were valued in the preceding issue! (If the voting has been discontinued and it's now just a staff decision, that's okay: let us know what other games and novelties were under consideration.)

The foregoing, along with the indexes and tournament results (which I'm happy to keep around for old-time's sake, even though it really isn't necessary any more in the age of TWIC), represent the heart of the classic Informant. The foregoing material is well-annotated using chess symbols alone, but over the past few years a number of innovations have come (and gone) including verbally-based material in English. I'll offer some suggestions about that as well.

First, I note that Kasparov's column is gone from this issue. Apparently Garry's Choice was to discontinue "Garry's Choice". Mihail Marin's "Old Wine in New Bottles" column has survived, and I hope it will continue to do so. After that there are articles that can be divided mostly into three headings:

Event Summaries: For this issue there are reports on the Zurich Chess Challenge, the Anand-Carlsen match and the Turkey-Russia match in the European Team Championship.

Regional/National/Player Profiles: The Turkey-Russia match fits here too; a piece by Yermolinsky on "Hidden Gems" in the U.S. in 2013, a two-part article on Asian chess, a report about a tournament in Iraq, and a profile of the young Serbian GM Aleksandar Indic.

Opening Surveys: There are moderately long articles on the 6.Be3 Ng4 Najdorf and the (Quasi-) Semi-Tarrasch line 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 Nf6 4.Nc3 c5 5.cxd5 cxd4, followed by a very long (26 page) piece on the 2.c3 Sicilian.

My recommendation? Keep the surveys (and maybe have more), keep Marin, and toss the rest. If I want information about chess and chess players in my country (the U.S.) I can read Chess Life; no doubt players in other countries have similar opportunities. As for learning about other players around the world, those that make it into the elite will become well known in due course, but even those who don't are sometimes featured in magazines like New in Chess or on major chess websites like ChessBase, ChessVibes, Chess.com and so on, not to mention Russian and other non-English-language pages.

Another complaint - and I say this as someone who likes the Informant very much and wants it to succeed - is that readers are cheated by many of the games being double-published. The vast majority of games in the columns were played in the last few months, and so they are given both in the columns with English commentary and in the main, languageless section of the book. Of the 201 games there, 37 are duplicates! (The figure might be slightly smaller, as some Anand-Carlsen games were broken up into parts and may have been covered in multiple sections. It's still at least 30 games that have been duplicated, however.)

It was also frustrating that upon receiving the current issue I almost immediately spotted three very different sorts of errors. First, a printing gaffe: pages 305-320 were stuck in upside down and backward. Second, while skimming the articles I read that Alex Yermolinsky's peak rating was 2596. Not so: in the mid-1990s his rating skied to at least 2660. (The mistake is somewhat understandable: they must have checked his FIDE page. The ratings there only go back to January 2000, and then his rating was 2596, a figure he hasn't topped in the intervening years. One would have to check his games in the databases to discover his peak.)

One might say that I'm looking for things to complain about, and that the foregoing has nothing to do with the chess content of the volume. Well, bad news there too: the very first bit of chess I looked at was also mistaken, and sadly it came from one of my favorite Informant authors, Mihail Marin. The topic of his column this month asks the rhetorical question "Are All Rook Endings Still Drawn?" After a look at the famous Capablanca-Tartakower ending from New York 1924 he presents the ending of game 12 of the 1889 Tarrasch-Eckart match.

I thought that this ending, won by Eckart, might make a good exercise for a strong student (over 2100) of mine, so I set up what Marin took to be the key moment and let him think. The student chose a plan very similar to Tarrasch's, which lost, and then we looked at Marin's proposed solution. When I reached the end I explained why it was drawn, but didn't quite understand why it was drawn if Eckart chose a particular continuation. After several minute of not understanding I flipped on the engine and discovered that there was a good reason why I didn't understand: the position wasn't drawn at all. In fact, Marin offers two drawing lines for White and neither of them works. (The analysis can be replayed here.)

So the issue was a bit disappointing, but I optimistically hope that the Informant staff will find a successful blend of their classic mission and a little flavoring from the new. Meanwhile, those interested in the current issue can find sample pages and ordering info here.

Informant 118: A Short Review

Chess Informant 118 (May-September 2013), reviewed by Dennis Monokroussos.

The Chess Informant franchise moves on, and the changes keep on coming. For many years the format was fixed: if you have one issue, you knew what the next 10 or 20 would be like. This has changed pretty radically over the past few years, and now the "incidentals" have taken over. The traditional heart of each issue was a collection of hundreds of games annotated in their distinctive language-less symbol set. For decades there were approximately 700 such games, frequently analyzed by one of the players (including many of the world's greatest players) and making up around 80-90% of the volume. In the present issue there are 202 games - most annotated by staffers rather than members of the world's elite, and they take up only 135 of the book's 335 pages.

Is this a bad thing? Not necessarily, and in any case the old model was probably unsustainable. There were always some minor features - sections on combinations and endings, most notably - but for a few years now there has been an ever-expanding collection of sections and articles featuring genuine prose, in English. Here's a summary of what's in this issue, along with a word about whether it's new or not.

1. The Best Game of the Preceding Volume: This has been around for ages, but I'll reiterate my disappointment from my review of the previous issue) that only the winning game is given without the voting list for the other 19 games. The explanation is presumably that there isn't a list any longer; it is given as the "editor's pick". Fine: even in this case it would be nice to have a list of the other games they thought were in the running.

2. The Most Important Theoretical Novelty of the Preceding Volume: The same general points apply.

3. Garry's Choice: This is one of the relatively recent innovations made by the Informant people, and it's a good one. Generally Garry Kasparov discusses openings that are "near and dear" to his heart, but this time he examines what must be his least favorite openings in all of chess: the Berlin Defense. His focus is Caruana-Adams from Dortmund this year.

4. Mihail Marin's "Old Wines In New Bottles": Another one of the recent excellent Informant innovations. This installment, like Kasparov's, is a bit upside down, as his examination of positional queen sacrifices (Kramnik-Andreikin from the World Cup is his lead game) fails to find a real predecessor in the distant past.

5. Adrian Mikhalchishin, "Stand Up and Fight": This is his second appearance, and he examines two games in the line 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 d6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 Nc6 6.Bc4, which he is willing to attribute to Schlechter or Fischer, but not Sozin.

6. Alexander Moiseenko, "My Way": The "My Way" column already existed, but had a different author last time. Moiseenko won the European Championship, and presents three of his games from the first four rounds of the tournament.

7. Sarunas Sulskis, "Interception": Second installment. He offers round-by-round highlights from the World Cup, won by Vladimir Kramnik.

8. Rafael Leitao, "Bossa Nova": Second installment. The Brazilian GM looks at important opening ideas from the aforementioned World Cup.

9. Alexander Ipatov, "Have No Fear": Second installment. Ipatov writes about a tournament he won in Cape Town, South Africa, featuring games played by him and runner-up Sergei Tiviakov.

10. John Bartholomew, "Inspiring Moments": Also a repeat. Bartholomew writes about Wesley So's visit to Minneapolis, where he gave a simul and won a local tournament. A brief interview with So ensues.

11. Emanuel Berg, "En Route". New. Berg recounts a series of tournaments he played in over the summer.

12. Suat Atalik, "Uncensored". This new column, which fortunately doesn't seem to have had any need for censorship, takes an in-depth look at the European Women's Championship (with a brief article within an article by tournament winner Hoang Thanh Trang).

13. CI Labs. "CI Labs" is their label for their theory sections, and there are three articles. Viktor Erdos looks at the 3.f3 d5 Gruenfeld, Danilo Milanovic has a look at the suddenly trendy Gruenfeld with 4.Nf3 Bg7 5.h4, and then Ivan Ivanisevic and Milos Perunovic team up for a general theoretical report on the three Grand Prix tournaments this year, from Zug, Thessaloniki and Beijing.

After the games come the sections on combinations, endings, problems and studies - the latter two commemorating the passing of greats who passed in the way in the last year. (Problems: Milan Velimirovic, Oscar Bonivento, Sergei Shedei, Tony Lewis and Christopher Reeves; Studies: Mario Matous.) Finally, there's the listing of (significant) FIDE events occurring during the period covered by the issue - this too is a mainstay of the periodical going back to its earliest days.

The columns are generally good, though of the non-theoretical material I think only Kasparov's and Marin's contributions are nearly irreplaceable. It's not a bad deal for the money, either - and it's available on disc too, which would be my choice if I had to choose one way or the other.

The one thing that I don't really understand though is what the Informant is currently "about". In the past it was a sort of yearbook, focusing on the games of the biggest players, with a strong secondary emphasis on theory. But I don't understand what it's up to now. Berg and Ipatov are strong players, but there are 100-200 other players around their strength who could be included. Why them? Bartholomew is a very good player and a fine writer, but he is considerably less prominent in the chess world than Berg and Ipatov. Atalik wrote a very good article on the European Women's Championship, but there were many tournaments featuring stronger players. Why this event? I must confess to disliking this "postmodern" format, and hope that it can find a focus that is successful and sustainable soon.