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British Chess Federation

Book Review

The Petroff

by Lasha Janjgava
Gambit, 240 pages, £14.99

Review by Richard Palliser

The Petroff has long been regularly contested at the highest level and has been recently employed by no lesser players than Kramnik, Adams, Anand and Shirov. The opening is, however, fairly popular at all levels and so it is most welcome to see coverage being brought fully up to date. Janjgava has opted to present his coverage in encyclopaedic format, resulting in this work being a very thorough survey of the Petroff. He does, however, still mention some key structures and plans in his introductions to each variation, but this is mainly a theoretical work. Thus it is largely aimed at the stronger club player and above, although weaker players, already with a good understanding of the Petroff, may well also benefit. Janjgava does a good job of not only selecting and then classifying all of the relevant information, but he also reviews many important theoretical assessments.

Indeed there is a fair amount of the author's own improvements and analysis in this work, and readers will quickly realise that Janjgava knows his subject matter pretty well. However, he could have made his coverage a little easier to navigate by including brief introductions or summaries of his main variations, so as to draw readers' eyes to the theoretically more important lines. Janjgava shows that many of the most fashionable Petroff lines are rather sharp and often see Black sacrificing a pawn for activity, although White does of course have some very drawish alternatives. Overall those who play this opening with either colour should benefit from this thorough work which brings coverage of the Petroff fully up to date.