Book Reviews

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Electronic Books

Now resident in Spain, it’s not so easy to obtain new English language books – of course I can still order online but delivery to a Spanish Post Box takes a good deal longer and also is a wee bit more expensive. So, this time I shall write about the increasing trend towards electronic books and other downloads and refer specifically to 2 publications, ChessBase magazine and Chess Informant.

Both are longstanding chess “publishers” although of course ChessBase is largely but not exclusively “electronic” whilst Chess Informant has only fairly recently offered an electronic option. I’m fairly sure that every serious correspondence player has heard of both (if you haven’t then where have you been?!)

Belgrade based Chess Informant started life in the late 60’s offering a largely language less bi-annual publication containing an 800 or so games selection with only a small proportion of these containing any annotations although with a fair number of diagrams. Other than this you got the usual sections of winning combinations, studies and end-games as well as several pages of cross-tables of recently concluded events. In the last few years however it has introduced some fairly substantial and welcome changes. Nowadays it is quarterly and has adopted a format more akin to a magazine in book format. Whilst there are now only about 200 or so games per issue, most are generously and well annotated. The hard copy still runs to about 350 or so pages but format and presentation are much improved since the early days. Recent innovations include regular contributions by GM Morozevich who provides a fascinating section entitled "Midnight in Moscow", an insight into his unique perspective on openings and also sections on various middle and endgame features by reputable GM’s such as Marin, Ivan Sokolov and acclaimed endgame virtuoso GM Karsten Mueller. There are also several articles on developments in topical opening lines. Another recently introduced feature on Women’s chess is provided by Scots GM Ketevan Arakhamia-Grant and helps to provide its overall almost magazine like presentation.

Old favourites such as "Combinations", "Endgames" and "Studies" remain. About a year or so ago an electronic format was made available containing all the material to be found in the printed copy. A Chess Informant Reader can be downloaded free of charge enabling access to all the available material although, quite significantly, the files are also available in ChessBase format which can easily be transferred over to your pc’s ChessBase programme. Thus far I haven’t tried downloading the Reader to my i-Pad and so can’t comment further. One final comment I can offer here is one first made by the late Danish GM Bent Larsen who was quoted as saying that Chess Informant was the publication only really necessary as it contained all the information that anyone could readily absorb – studying other chess publications in addition to Informant were too much for the brain to absorb and could be discarded!

The "opposition" Hamburg based ChessBase provides a huge number of specialist DVD’s, largely on Openings, but most available also by download. Our interest here is its "ChessBase Magazine" a bi-monthly presentation providing another substantial amount of material. Every issue contains about 5 or 6 reports with almost all games annotated, many by the players, from recent "super GM" events as well as file containing about 1,000 or so recent games from other events. Additionally there are usually about a dozen or so openings articles on topical variations (I find most of these to be a wee bit obscure or rather they’ve never featured in my games!). Finally, there are the old favourites - Endgames, Combinations and Studies. The "hard copy" is a DVD along with a well-produced wee 32 page booklet whilst the download version contains all the available material. The magazine bills itself as being "the publication the professionals use" – probably true and although whilst I do enjoy the games when I have time available I do find it all to be a wee bit "heavy". One small gripe I would mention is that ChessBase can be used only on Windows – there’s been a wee announcement for some time now on their web site that this is so and that they’ll get round to adding access for Mac but have never done so (I wasn’t going to mention "New in Chess" but they do provide access to both). It seems to me that with i-Pads and the like becoming increasingly popular they’re missing out on a good business opportunity.