Article: 15762 of rec.games.chess.misc Newsgroups: rec.games.chess.misc Path: info!dregis From: dregis@exeter.ac.uk (D.Regis) Subject: Re: Using older editions of "classic" books Message-ID: Organization: University of Exeter, UK. References: Date: Mon, 20 Jan 1997 10:11:22 GMT In article franklin@chaos.ph.utexas.edu (Scott Franklin) writes: >My playing partner plays the Sicilian. I do a bit of research in my >used copy of Fine's "Ideas Behind Chess Openings". This says that >white's king bishop should *not* be placed on c4 (where it could be >driven off by ...d5) but rather should be put on the h1-a8 diagonal. >I lose several games playing like this, especialy against my computer. >Finally, I say to hell with Fine and play Bc4 and aim to actively >control d5 (f4, f5, Bg5, Bxf6, etc...). I start beating my computer. They say a player with a plan will always beat a player without a plan... Maybe a better way to say it is that all moves have positive and negative features. ("Some part of a mistake is always correct"). If you can argue the positive side better than your opponent can put the negative side, you will win. I have often been frustrated by opponents who play an opening (like the reversed Grob) that I think is unsound, but they beat me with it! [I still believe the opening's unsound, but I've discovered I don't play the White side of the positions well enough...] >I tell this to my friend who looks in his new version of Fine's book >where it now says "it used to be thought that Bc4 was bad. now it's >the best move." Well, Fine's book is fifty years old, and openings are the most busy area of chess. I'd say most of Fine's judgements are pretty good and have stood the test of time better than some books that have come out later, mostly because the heart of the book is ideas rather than variations. (For example, the 197? RHM title on the Caro-Kann needs supplementing with material on the advance variation, which has been the big growth area of the C-K in subsequent years). Despite his dismissal of things like the King's Indian, if I am teaching an opening I still look in Fine first. By the way, are we talking the Closed Sicilian with 2. Nc3 and f2-f4 here, which I call the Grand Prix attack? I expect that Bc4 will go out of fashion again; players like Hebden who pioneered and popularised The GPA have been giving it up because antidotes have been found. I don't know how many players would still say the system with Bc4 is best. Fine underestimated it, sure, but what he said was wrong about it is still wrong - that is, players of White are still finding the Bishop in trouble after ...e6/...d5/...b5/...c4 P.S. I didn't know there was a new edition of Fine: could you provide details, please? Off the top of my head, the major things that I remember having to revise from Fine are: King's Indian Defence (general) Open Sicilian with ...e5 Closed Giuoco Piano with d2-d3 Pirc/Modern defence >wow! what a turnaround. now i start to wonder what *else* i'm >missing by using some 2nd hand books. obviously, books about openings >will change the most. this is fine (pardon the pun) because i don't >really use too many openings books (at 1600 my friend and i are out of >book after 5 moves!). last night i picked up older editions of >soltis' "Art of Defense in Chess" and Znosko-Borovsky's "Art of a >Chess Combination". do you think there have been any major changes >in these books in the recent editions (other than moving to >algebraic)? I didn't know there were algebraic editions of these either! But I'd say you were pretty safe with both of those - again, ideas will have dated less than variations. I think they are both good books; in fact, I don't know too many non-opening chess books that have dated so badly that I'd give you a caution on them. The ones that need a caution are the ones that have always needed a caution, like Nimzo's My System. (...) -- May your pieces harmonise with your Pawn structure and your sacrifices be sound in all variations D _ / "()/~ Dave Regis &8^D* WWW: http://www.ex.ac.uk/~dregis/DR/chess.html || \_/| = DrDave on BICS ~\ / "...what else exists in the world but chess?" _|||__SHEU: ~/sheu.html -- NABOKOV From info!dregis Tue Jan 21 14:02:59 GMT 1997