The penultimate
page of Instant Chess by David Levy and Kevin O’Connell
(Oxford, 1984) contains the following observation:
‘Many books,
to be blunt, are mediocre or downright bad.’
Nobody who has
struggled through the preceding 74 pages will be in any mood to
argue.
Pity the poor
beginner who tries to pick up the game from this truly awful work.
Vital matters are never mentioned at all: that White moves first,
that the players move alternately, what the pieces look like ‘in
the flesh’, what perpetual check is, what is scored for a draw,
etc. The following
list of other complaints is far from exhaustive.
Page 4: ‘The
king may move one square at a time in any direction – forwards,
backwards or sideways.’ What about diagonally?
Pages 5-9: Some
pieces are said to capture exactly as they move, others ‘almost
exactly’. What is the difference? In any event, is a capture not a
move?
Page
7: ‘... the bishop may advance ...’ – as if retreat is
prohibited.
Page
8: In the diagram the possibility Nxg5 is ignored. It is, moreover,
specified that the queen, bishop and rook cannot take the enemy king,
but there is no such comment regarding the knight.
Page 9: ‘Like
all the other chess pieces (except the knights and kings) the rook
can move as far as you wish until it meets an obstruction.’ All the
others? Just bishops and queens.
Page
9: A further use of ‘advance’ in the sense of ‘move’.
Page
12: ‘However, when a pawn is still on its initial square
it enjoys an excellent supply line from the powerful forces behind
it. Under these circumstances it can utilise these good
communications and supplies to rush two squares forwards.’ To make
this link between the pawns’ double advance and the back-rank
forces is an irrelevance which is just asking for trouble. And so the
co-authors
have to extricate themselves: ‘This right applies throughout the
game, even if the pieces that were behind a pawn have since moved out
into battle.’ Unnecessary complications.
Page 12: ‘Note
that a two-square advance cannot be made if the square immediately in
front of the pawn is occupied.’ Why no mention of the square in
front of that?
Page
13: Conditions under which castling is temporarily illegal; point
three is already fully covered by point two.
Page
14: ‘When a pawn reaches the opposite end of the board it can,
indeed must, be promoted to the rank of a piece.’ Fine, but since
the writers have just referred to a pawn which ‘reaches the far
rank’, the quoted sentence is ambiguous and bound to confuse.
Page 15: More
confusion, this time over the difference between ‘man’ and
‘piece’.
Page 16: ‘It
is also possible for a piece to attack an empty square.’ Only very
rarely will it not.
Page 23: In
notation white pawns are twice promoted to black queens.
Page 32: ‘It
may seem impossible for a king to carry out a successful fork because
it is such an important and
valuable piece.’ Where is the logic in that?
Page
35: Skewers are limited to ‘Queen Skewers’.
Page
44: The authors overlook the alternative 1 Qxf8+ and mate next move
(diagram position). Also, after 1...Kh8 2 Rxf8 is a third mating
move.
Why mention only two out of three?
Page
45: An exclamation mark is awarded to a move without explaining what
this means.
Page
45: In the first sequence of moves there is no mention of 3...Nf5
/ 5 h3 mate, etc.
Page
45: No explanation as to why Morphy should have played the given game
without his QR. Nowhere is the reader told anything about odds games.
Page 46: Second diagram; no note that White can delay the mate
with
bishop and queen moves.
Pages 46-47: They
overlook the faster mate beginning with 2 Qh5+.
Page
47: (Tartakower game). The unfortunate co-writers wrongly have Black
manoeuvring to play 3...Qc5+, when he could have obtained the
self-same position at once by 1...Qc5+. [C.N. 1357 noted that the same
mess (down to virtually identical notes) had appeared on
page 127 of Chernev and Reinfeld’s The
Fireside Book of Chess.]
Page
48: Another snap mate is missed, in the note (8...Qf2+, rather than
8...Qe3+).
Page
54: ‘Whereas a knight normally has only three possible development
squares
(for example, a3, c3 and d2 ) ...’ This implies that there are
cases when a knight may have more from its starting position.
Page
55: (first sentence) Squares for developing bishops are listed as
though Black did not exist.
Page 58: (first sentence under ‘Rooks’).
Again, only White is thought about.
Page
61: Chigorin’s opponent was Cohn, not Cohen.
Page
63: ‘An isolated pawn is a weakness.’
Far too
dogmatic.
Page 64: The
white queen on h1 should
be a king.
Page
65: The term ‘second player’ is used
without explanation. (Remember, we have never been told that White
moves first.)
Page
66: ‘Passed pawn’ is used before it has been defined.
Page
67: ‘Seventh rank’ needs rather more careful use in a beginners’
book using the algebraic.
Page 68: Pawns cannot be decimated.
Page
69: A feature
‘The Golden Rules of Good Chess’ begins with ‘The
mistakes are all there, waiting to be made.’ A great help... And
was it really Morphy who said ‘Help your pieces so that they can
help you’? Algebraic notation destroys the alleged Anderssen quote,
given as follows: ‘Once get a knight firmly posted at e6 (White) or
e3 (as Black) and you can go to sleep. Your game will then play
itself.’ Normally ‘K5’ is
the square in question.
Page
73: Blitz: ‘Both players’ clocks are set at 5 minutes to the hour
and the first player whose flag falls loses.’
So it is not possible to lose by being checkmated is the implication.
Page 75: ‘We
will recommend some suitable books.’ The ‘some’ turns out to be
two.
Page 76: The
book concludes with an unacceptably dismissive attitude to chess
problems: ‘The
position will usually be an artificial one, in which the winning side
has an enormous material advantage, and so if you had that position
in one of your games you would not worry about finding a mate in two
moves, you would just win! Problems of this type are of no real value
to the aspiring player, and will not help you to improve your
game.’ Note
the insistent tautology of that final sentence. Observe also how the
reference to not worrying about finding the fastest mate contradicts
one of those precious ‘Golden Rules’ quoted just a few pages
previously: ‘If you have a good move, look if there not be a better
one – Rowbotham.’
It is scarcely
credible that two prominent chess writers could dare place before the
public such a pathetic book. How did they manage to take Pergamon
Press in?
(926)
C.N. 1559
described Instant Chess as ‘one of the least impressive
beginners’
books ever published’ and noted that a German edition had just been
published by Walter Rau Verlag under the title Blitzschnell Schach
gelernt – and with a flamboyant strip on the front cover
proclaiming
‘Recommended by Garry Kasparov’.
