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Spartanburg Chess Club
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I've been reading Grandmaster Chess Strategy: What Amateurs Can Learn from Ulf Andersson's Positional Masterpieces by Kaufeld and Kern (New In Chess, 2011). It contains 24 annotated games that feature the English Opening out of 80 total games. These games are organized into 15 chapters by themes such as "playing against two weaknesses," "the bishop pair," "fighting against the hedgehog," and so forth. The authors strike a good balance between text explanations and specific variations in their comments. The games are current through about 2004. My only quibble with this book is that emphasis is placed on Andersson's OTB play. In recent years, the Swedish grandmaster has been focusing on correspondance chess. I would love to see games included from this aspect of his career. I give this book 4 stars out of 5. Postscript. Unbeknownst to me, Spencer bought this same book within a week of when I did, and neither of us knew the other was interested in it. Review by D.K. Williams
The Blackmar-Diemer Gambit (2011) by IM Christoph Scheerer is a comprehensive, 336 page work published by Everyman Chess. In the preface, Scheerer admits that he has never played the BDG, yet sees this as an advantage in that it leads to greater objectivity. After reading much of this book, I agree. It does appear that IM Scheerer evaluates all major lines of the BDG (and many minor ones) in a fair and objective manner. The author cites an extensive bibliography, although he omitted one fairly significant source, NM Charles Diebert's The Blackmar-Diebert Gambit (1991). One surprise, at least to this reviewer, is that Scheerer views the most critical line against the BDG as the Ziegler Defense (that is, 1 d4 d5  2 e4 dxe  3 Nc3 Nf6  4 f3 exf  5 Nxf3 c6). I assumed it is the Lemberger Counter-Gambit (i.e., 1 d4 d5  2 e4 dxe  3 Nc3 e5). However, I defer to the author's judgement on this point.

One minor, but annoying, error is a typo in the very first paragraph of the preface. Fortunately, this seems to be an anomaly. In sum, Scheerer's BDG book is worthy of a place alongside that of Rev. Tim Sawyer'sKeybook II in any BDG player's armamentarium. Review by D.K. Williams



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