®| ® |
|
|
|---|
Last update: Friday June 3, 2005 9:44
by Larry Christiansen
Gambit, 174 pages, £13.99
Experienced attacking player
Christiansen aims to inspire readers to attack more and to do so correctly in
their own games. He does this by covering topics such as "king-hunting", "ripping
apart the king position" and "seizing opportunities". Each chapter contains
a wide range of good examples, which are annotated in a lucid and enthusiastic
style. Readers may possibly find some of the variations rather challenging to
follow at first, but by persevering they will enjoy this work all the more,
whilst importantly extending their calculating ability at the same. Knowing
when to attack is very important and so it's good to see a chapter devoted to
'how not to attack', which should also prevent readers from misplaying promising
attacks.
Christiansen rightly includes many of his games as examples, whilst there is an enjoyable opening chapter on how he evolved as an attacking player. That this ends in 1981 is quite a disappointment, but by now readers' appetites will have been whetted and possibly there will be room for what would surely be an entertaining biography to follow later from Gambit. By the end of this work readers will not only have enjoyed many superb attacks but have accumulated a large degree of general ideas on how to attack. The closing chapter, in which Christiansen presents twelve superb attacking games of the Nineties, such as the legendary Kasparov-Topalov and Ivanchuk-Yusupov battles, is a pleasurable closing treat to another high quality Gambit work, which almost rivals Yermolinsky's The Road to Chess Improvement as the best book I've seen so far this year.
(Reviewed by Richard Palliser)