|
| Title:
Yearbook 66 |
Author: New In
Chess |
Language:  |
Pages: 240 |
| Cover:
Softcover |
Published: 2003 |
| Publisher: New
In Chess |
Homepage: http://www.newinchess.com |
| Price: € 23,95 |
ISBN:
90-5691-105-8 |
| Reviewed by: Soren
Sogaard |
Date: 3/6 2003 |
|
Quick-Review: Yearbook 66
4 issues of Yearbook are published every year, and in each Yearbook
you find 35 surveys which makes more than 140 surveys year after
year.
This also means that the quality of the surveys is very different
which also is the case in Yearbook 66. I thought it could be
interesting to see who actually wrote the surveys, and here I was
surprised to find out that it wasn't the worlds topplayers who wrote
the surveys. Topplayers like Anand, Beliavsky, Shirov, Ponomariov
only contributed with notes to the games which by the way first appeared in the
Magazine "New In Chess".
There are of course very strong Grandmasters like Dautov and
Greenfeld who contributes to this issue. Also very
strong opening experts like Karolyi and Van der Tak contributed, but
it surprised me that there were some authors I never heard about
before. A closer look revealed that the authors ELO span was more than 600! The highest rated author was rated ELO
2600 and the lowest has ELO 2000 which came as a shock to me ;-) The
reason is of course that the Yearbooks main readership are people
with an ELO above 2000! Enough
of this, I only wanted to show you that it isn't only topplayers who
contributes to Yearbook, and that you might get a chance to write a
survey if you are an expert in an opening variation.
Content
- Forum (10 pages)
- Sosonko's Corner (3 pages)
- Surveys: 36 surveys (203 pages)
- Book review (8 pages)
As always Yearbook 66 are a mix of high quality surveys and
some of not so high quality. One of the surveys that caught my eye
was "The Kieseritzky Gambit Part 1" by Michael Agermose
Jensen (ELO 2000).
One of the reasons that this survey caught my eye is that it was played by
my "co-reviewer" Allan Holst and the Danish Grandmaster
Peter Heine Nielsen. I followed the development of this variation so I
had some basic knowledge of what was going on. The author made a
good historical survey of this variation, but at first it seemed
that there were not many new ideas. After a closer look (and a mail
from the author!), I discovered that the author in fact made some
interesting analyses. This also counts for the following variation
that I at first thought wasn't covered at all:
1.e4 e5 2.f4 exf4 3.Nf3 g5 4.h4 g4 5.Ne5 d6 6.Nxg4 Nf6 7.Nf2 Rg8 8. d4 Bh6 9. Nc3 Nc6 10. Qd3
After 10...Rg3 11.Qc4 the fun
is just starting, and the author actually analysed it in the game
Borge - Olsen, 1999. The above survey is very good so it is not only
the ELO of the author that counts ;-) Some of the other surveys are
not of the same high standard, and these authors just collected a
few games and tossed in some comments. I don't like these surveys,
and I don't think that they are very useful.
I always look carefully at the Book review section written by GM
Glenn Flear, and all I can say is that I wouldn't mind if he was a member of the
"Seagaard Team"! He is a very good reviewer and
writer, and this
time he reviews 6 opening books.
Tip to the Readers
If you don't know what a survey looks like, you can see sample
surveys at the New In Chess homepage. At the moment you can read two
surveys:
- A Tremendous Player has Passed Away by Tibor Karolyi,
Yearbook 64 (2002)
- Another look at the Traxler Gambit
by Maarten de Zeeuw, Yearbook 63 (2002)
I also think you
should try "NicBase Online" which contains games from all
the Yearbooks and the New In Chess Magazines. Read more at the New
In Chess homepage.
Final Remarks
Yearbook is still a very interesting periodical, and I hope that
New In Chess in the future will work hard to keep the high standard we are
used to. It is also my hope that the publisher will get rid of some
of the (in my opinion) "not so useful" surveys ;-)
New In Chess Yearbook are recommended to players with an ELO above 2000 who
look out for new ideas. Highly recommended!
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