John Watson & Eric Schiller, Taming Wild Chess Openings: How to Deal with the Good, the Bad and the Ugly over the Chess Board (New in Chess, 2015). 430 pp., $29.95/€26.95. Reviewed by Dennis Monokroussos.
Let's start by addressing the authorship of this volume. To put things rather bluntly, John Watson has a reputation as a reliable and hard-working author, while Eric Schiller does not. Some of you have no doubt seen some pretty harsh reviews of Schiller over the years, but in fairness to him those critiques go back 16 years or more. Even if everything they said was right, that was a long time ago. I don't know about you, but I'd like to think that people won't hold mistakes I made 16+ years ago against me, so let's just evaluate this book on its merits and give him the benefit the doubt.
The book is divided into six main sections: Bad Openings (first for White, then for Black), Ugly Openings (first White, then Black) and Good Openings (same story). The distinction between "Bad" openings and "Ugly" ones isn't entirely clear to me: they acknowledge that some Ugly openings are bad, while some of the Bad openings are as ugly as sin. Starting with the latter, is what they call the Senechaud Countergambit to the King's Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.f4 Bc5 3.Nf3 g5?) not just bad but too ugly even for a mother's love? Similarly, isn't the the "Brentano Gambit" to the Ruy (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 g5?) both bad and ugly? Or 1.e4 g5, for that matter, or 1.e4 Nc6 2.d4 f6 (in case you think I have it in for ...g5 lines and only ...g5 lines)? Most of the so-called Ugly openings aren't really bad, but what about 1.h3, 1.a4, 1.a3 e5 2.h3 and, of course, the absurdity that is 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 f5?
There are other classification issues as well. It's easy to see why the openings listed above would be classified as Bad, Ugly, or both, but what are openings like the Danish Gambit, the Goring Gambit, the Smith-Morra, the Colle, the Ponziani and the Milner-Barry Gambit against the French doing in the "Ugly" section? All of these lines involve classical principles involving central play and speedy development; it's hard to think of an opening that wouldn't count as ugly if these can't make the cut.
So what openings count as "Good", and if good openings are here too then isn't this just going to be an encyclopedia of chess openings? It seems that the cut for being in the book is that while the line is playable it's a bit of a second-tier choice, like the Torre Attack, the Trompowsky or even...the Colle(!?). (Note: It's odd that the Torre and the Tromp are "Good" but the similar London System and Veresov with 3.Bg5 are considered "Ugly". De gustibus non est disputandum.)
I'm a bit confused about what goes where, and I'm even more confused about the ordering of the lines. Within a given section, the procession from one line to the next isn't by ECO code or alphabetical order; it seems entirely haphazard. That's a little annoying, but as there are indexes in the back listing the lines in alphabetical order and, more importantly, by a move order tree, the situation isn't as bad as it could be.
Another surprise. While many obscure lines are covered, the authors disregard 1.e4 e5 2.Qh5; the "Matrix" as it's sometimes called. Of course it's junk, but that doesn't stop them from discussing such theoretical hot topics as 1.h4, 1.e4 h6, 1.e4 g5, 1.e4 f5 and so on. As Hikaru Nakamura played this (1.e4 e5 2.Qh5) on multiple occasions in the mid-2000s, even in serious tournaments against elite opponents, this really is an omission. (Note: it's possible that this is covered in passing in some other section without making it into the index. For instance, the Jerome Gambit - 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+? Kxf7 5.Nxe5+ - is covered at the start of an entry on the Evans Gambit, even though it isn't listed in the index. So maybe the same is true of the Matrix.)
A different sort of thought. If the target audience includes the sorts of players who could worry about lines like 1.h4 or 1.e4 h6, sometimes even simple things ought to be explained. They generally are, but not always. For instance, in some early chapters featuring King's Gambit sidelines, it's probably worth noting that after 1.e4 e5 2.f4 Qf6 or 2...Bc5 or almost any other way of declining the gambit, White should avoid 3.fxe5?? because of 3...Qh4+, winning a rook or generating a powerful, often lethal attack on the white king.
Ultimately, what we care about is the quality of the analysis. While I'm unsure about using the title of a (great) Spaghetti Western as an organizational principle for a chess book and find the random ordering a nuisance, the book will still merit an upturned thumb if the analysis fulfills the authors' mission to "provide a simple and safe way to approach the position, requiring little memorization and hopefully leading to a promising game". (They rightly make an exception for certain lines where sharp and precise replies are required.)
To evaluate this, I spot-checked a number of lines I've played, faced, or investigated in the past. What I looked for was whether the recommendation was sound for the reader facing the line, whether the intended victim's moves were the best or at least reasonable and plausible rather than cooperative, and whether the proposed variation was practical for the relatively lower-rated audience the authors seem to have in mind.
In the "Bad" division, I checked the Halloween Gambit, the Spike/Grob, the execrable Philidor Counter-Gambit and both 3.Nxe5 and 3.exd5 vs. the Elephant Gambit. Most of the lines I examined checked out, with at most minor improvements available for one side or another, but I did find a fairly big error in the 3.exd5 line of the Elephant. After 3...e4 4.Qe2 Nf6 (4...Qxd5 is objectively best but not an especially tricky and therefore not well-motivated approach - if Black wants to play conventional chess he can do a lot better than the Elephant Gambit! At any rate, I concur entirely with their treatment of that move.) 5.d3 Be7 6.dxe4 0-0 the authors recommend 7.Qd3, which they attribute to a T. Breyer and which, they say, is considered a refutation by Stefan Buecker. (Buecker is a German FM and theoretician who specializes in offbeat lines, many of his own devising.) With no further commentary they give the following, citing a game De Smet-Rehfeld, corr. 1989-91: 7...Na6 8.Be3 Nb4 9.Qc4 b5 10.Qb3 Nxe4 11.Bxb5 with a clear advantage to White. So they say, and maybe so the engines said when Buecker offered his obiter dicta, but the position looks pretty messy after 11...Rb8. In fact, the computer thinks that Black is better despite being two pawns down, and I'd be happy to take Black in such a position. Unfortunately for fans of the Elephant Gambit, White can improve on both moves 7 and 8, but the book's suggestion in this case isn't very good.
One more "bad" opening, the "Orthoschnapp Gambit". Never heard of it? Me neither, at least by that name. It is, however, the goofy gambit against the French that I used to play from time to time and which I wrote about in the earliest days of this blog back in 2005: 1.e4 e6 2.c4 d5 3.cxd5 exd5 4.Qb3. This was a line I saw attributed to the aforementioned Buecker back in the 1980s, and that was all I knew of it. Their main line goes 4...dxe4 5.Nc3 Nf6 6.d3 exd3 7.Be3 g6 8.0-0-0 Bg7 9.Bxd3 Qe7 10.Nf3 0-0 and "White still has to prove that he has something concrete for the pawn."
I suppose that's true, but White has a big lead in development, active pieces that are going to get even more active after Rhe1 and Bc4, and he has gotten Black out of anything even remotely resembling a typical blocked-up French Defense. This is the kind of position White wants and that Black wants to avoid, and I think even a pretty strong club players would find it easier to handle the white pieces. To their credit, Watson & Schiller give a better option for Black, though they don't give it as the main line. (I don't like when books do that, especially without a great reason. Most consumers of chess books are looking for information; we're not reading to soak up every jot and tittle of the narrative. With rare exceptions, the absolute main line should represent what constitutes best play for both sides.) They don't examine the way I preferred to handle the gambit, many many moons ago, but as that's also inadequate against good defense I'll let them look it up themselves, if they're feeling up to it, as a minor research project in case there's a later edition of this book.
This review could go on forever, but by now you all probably have a pretty fair idea about the book and whether you'd want to get it. I'll leave you with one last suggestion of theirs, from a more mainstream line: the Smith-Morra Gambit. After 1.e4 c5 2.d4 cxd4 3.c3 dxc3 4.Nxc3 they offer 4...e6 5.Nf3 Bc5, a relatively rare antidote that has scored pretty well. About this, they say, among other things, that "out of the first 10 top-rated games [in the database], Black scores seven wins and the other three are draws! The surprise value will apparently persist, since the main two recent books advocating the Morra Gambit for White either don't mention 5...Bc5 at all or dismiss it without analysis. So this is a great opportunity to put your opponents on their own resources."
It is a relatively rare line, that's true, though there are still 272 games with the position after 5...Bc5 in the database. But their first statement is misleading and their second statement is simply wrong - unless they know of two other, more recent books on the Smith-Morra I haven't heard about. First the misleading statement, about the statistics. It's true that if you click on the ELO tab for Black you get that figure with seven wins for Black, three draws and no losses. But that doesn't give you the highest-rated games per se. In fact, if you click on the ELO tab for White you get a similar result in the opposite direction, though it's not quite as impressive: three wins for White, six draws, and just one loss - and in that game Black was almost 200 points higher-rated.
As for the second statement, I'm assuming that the "two recent books advocating the Morra Gambit for White" are the second edition of Hannes Langrock's The Modern Morra Gambit (2011) and Marc Esserman's Mayhem in the Morra (2012). Neither player dismisses 5...Bc5, but Esserman does fail to take the plan mentioned by Watson & Schiller into account. While he gives 5...Bc5 in various indexes, when it comes time for the specifics ...Bc5 ends up getting played on move 6, and in neither game does his material interact with Watson's & Schiller's. So they're more or less right there, though I think they slightly overstate their case.
When it comes to Langrock's book, however, they're completely wrong, as Langrock has half a chapter on 5...Bc5. In fact, Watson and Schiller's error here is a little embarrassing, as of the three games Langrock uses to cover the variation one is the Chandler-Timman game used by W/S and a second is a correspondence game played by Schiller himself. So I'm not sure what Watson & Schiller had in mind when they talked about the books ignoring their proposed line, but let's get to the details.
After 6.Bc4 W/S offer two moves. 6...Ne7 is their main line, but they also support 6...d6 as a useful finesse. In fact, after 6...d6 7.0-0 a6 8.a3 they offer a new and interesting idea: 8...Nf6. Instead, 8...Ne7 was played in the correspondence game Walker-Schiller alluded to above, and Black was massacred after 9.b4 Ba7 10.Bf4 e5 11.Ng5 and so on. Black's problem is that he can't castle because of 12.Qh5, and that problem is solved by putting the knight on f6 instead. After 8...Nf6 it's evident that White has enough compensation for the pawn, but perhaps not more than enough, and at least Black has taken the Morra gambiteer out of the book.
As for 6...Ne7, Langrock gives 7.Bf4 as the most accurate move order (White should do this before Black plays ...Ng6), and after 7...0-0 8.0-0 both books consider several moves, but I'll stick to W/S's main move: 8...f5. Their line goes 9.e5?! (their punctuation) 9...a6 10.a4 Ng6 11.Bg5 Qc7 12.Qe2 [DM: This natural move goes unpunctuated, but it merits a question mark.] Nc6 13.Rfe1 Nd4 14.Nxd4 Bxd4 "and Black has a big edge, Ebeling-Utasi, Ravenna 1983". Perhaps so, but 9.e5 isn't so obvious that a non-dubious move shouldn't be mentioned, is it? Stockfish proposes 9.Bg5 and claims White has full compensation, while Langrock gives 9.Qc1 Nbc6 [DM: The engine suggests 9...b6] 10.Rd1 with compensation, e.g. 10...Qe8 (10...Qb6 11.Bg3 with compensation) 11.exf5 d5! (11...Nxf5 12.Nxd5 [sic] with an initiative) 12.Bd3 Nxf5 13.Nb5 Bb6 14.Bxf5 exf5 15.Nd6 Qe2 16.Rd2 Qe7 17.Rxd5 Be6 18.Rd2 (the position is equal, provided Black plays 18...h6, but no evaluation is given).
Time to sum things up. There is much to protest in the organization of the book, and to my mind a broadly ECO-style ordering would have been an improvement. The indexes in the back are very useful, but it would be better not to need them. The selection is a bit of a grab bag, but in general I like the diversity of lines they include, especially the number of more serious sidelines like the Torre, the Tromp and some very mainstream gambits. That makes the book much more useful than it would have been with a bigger dose or proportion of nonsense lines like 1.e4 h6. Some of the research seems to have been careless and perhaps out of date - maybe they reused material from earlier books they had done on obscure and dubious openings. (I don't have their earlier books, but know of them, and on occasion they cite them.) On the other hand, I found some good ideas in their work as well, and it's clear that they haven't merely culled existing theory but have developed some of their own.
So the book is a mixed bag, in my opinion, and while I can't give it a unqualified recommendation I do think it's interesting enough to buy if you have a fondness for offbeat openings. Even stronger players could use it as a first source in building a repertoire against some second-tier openings, as long as they do a little double-checking with the computer and their other sources along the way.