Over 1000

Following on from my post about librarything.com, I have finished cataloguing my collection of chess books. At this stage I have just cracked the 1000 book total, although there are some books I have more than 1 copy of, and there are other books I haven't been able to add.
In the case of multiple copies, I have tried to remove duplicates if they are the same publisher and edition, but leave them in if they are from different print runs. So I probably have 5 different entries for "Logical Chess: Move by Move" but am treating the 3 copies of BCO 2 as a single entry.
On the other hand I probably have at least 50 books I am yet to add, either because the ISBN number doesn't match what Amazon or Google has, or that they are in a foreign language (usually Russian). As an example I have a Russian language copy of '200 Open Games' by Bronstein, but without an ISBN number, it is very difficult to add it.
If you are interested in seeing what books I do have (or seeing how the website works), you can check it out here https://www.librarything.com/catalog/shaunpress/

Bookfair 2020

Today was the first day of the 2020 Lifeline Bookfair in Canberra. I, as usual, was part of the queue that formed before it opened, hoping to pick up some second chess books.
This year there seemed to be quite a good collection and I even found a number that I don't already own (or so I thought). I ended up buying around half a dozen books, and in a first for me at the book fair, some quite recent issue of New in Chess magazine that someone was getting rid of.
Of course when I got home I realised I purchased a copy of a book I already did own, but that is always a risk for me, and I'd rather buy a duplicate, than miss out on a title that I really wanted.
The Bookfair runs until Sunday at EPIC Canberra, and there are still plenty of chess books left, if you are planning to make the journey.

A missed opportunity

One of the big things I missed while overseas was the Lifeline Bookfair. I did kind of participate, as my son kindly rang me while I was in Khanty, and asked me if there was anything I wanted him to buy for me. As it was a voice call I had him read out a few titles, and picked up a couple of books (including one I discovered I already had).
Based on early reports it seemed I hadn't really missed out (only about a dozen books I was told), but later summaries described a large pile of books available on Friday morning, including a number of very good titles. This seems to be more accurate, as a visit to at least one second hand bookshop in Canberra showed they had acquired quite a large number of chess titles, and were now selling them at a bit of a mark up.

The Chess Tournament (London 1851) - New Release

e+Books has just released a new version of Howard Staunton's book on the London 1851 chess tournament. "The Chess Tournament" was produced at the completion of the event, and contains all the games from the main tournament, as well as every game from the subsidiary events. This new edition is in algebraic notation, but the comments and analysis are the same as in the original edition.
This version is available through the ePlusChess app, which runs on iPad's and iPhone's. The app is free to download, and allows you to read a chess book, and play through the games at the same time. There is also a free copy of "Chess Fundamentals" by Capablanca, which you can download to see how the app works.
In the next few months there will be more books released. This includes Bill Egan's wonderful book "The Doeberl Cup", a updated version of "My Chess Career" by Capablanca, and a collection of classic 19th century games titled "Chess Brilliants". Currently the app has 51 published titles from authors such as Silman, Nimzowitsch, Lasker and Benjamin. There is a mixture of well known classics such as "My System" and "Common Sens in Chess" as well as new titles like "The Perfect Pirc-Modern" by Mosalenko.

*** Disclaimer: I am an employee of e+Books, and typeset "The Chess Tournament". I am also the author/typesetter for a number of books mentioned here ***

A book so nice they named it twice

Taking advantage of an online book sale a couple of weeks ago, I thought I had picked up a bargain when i spotted David Bronstein's "The Chess Struggle in Practice". I'd seen a few people mention it as one of the classics, so buying it for $2 seemed like a great deal.
Alas, when it arrived I realised I had purchased a book I already owned. Bronstein's classic is also known as "Zurich International Chess Tournament 1953" and I already had a copy sitting on my shelf. Nonetheless, I won't be getting rid of my newer copy, as there are a few formatting differences that make it worth keeping. And as a book, it is probably worth reading twice, once in algebraic, and once in descriptive!


Taimanov,Mark E - Petrosian,Tigran V [E58]
Candidates Tournament Zuerich (20), 06.10.1953

Lifeline Bookfair 2019

The 2019 Lifeline Bookfair started today, so I made my biannual trip to EPIC in Canbbera. As in past years I arrived before it opened, so as to try and get the pick of the chess books on offer. And as in past years there seemed to be quite a large collection on offer.
However, as my own collection grows, the opportunity to add new books diminishes. While there would have been around 60 books, I seemed to own most of them. However I did at least manage to grab a few, the most interesting being a book of opening traps in 'Fianchetto Openings', while the most useful was David Levy's classic 'Sacrifices in the Sicilian'. Apart from that there were the usual collection of Reinfeld books, the obligatory copy of 'Play Better Chess', and an increasing number of books on Sudoku, Crosswords and other things of lesser interest to chess players.
If you want to get along, the sale runs over the weekend. While they do replenish the stock for most subjects, if past history is anything to go by, all the chess books have already been put out. That doesn't mean there won't be some good ones left, but they might be harder to find.

Adventures in book buying

During the week I have had to make two trips to Sydney for chess related business. While Sydney is becoming increasingly difficult to get around in (by car at least, public transport is often better) I did make one useful detour.
Sappho Books is a second hand bookshop / cafe on Glebe Point Road, and currently has quite a large collection of second hand books (and by large, their catalogue has over 1000). Due to the sale of a personal collection, the range of books (and pamphlets)  cover almost every facet of the game, and range in age of recent publications to a number of old classics.
Operating on a very limited budget, I looked rather than purchased, as I was likely to walk out with more than I could carry if I unleashed the credit card. Of course I will probably have a more detailed shopping list the next time I return, but for now, I leave it to others to empty the shelves.
Some books are probably priced a higher than they should be (no doubt based on price lookups on the interent), but there are still plenty of cheaper and/or historic books. So if you are in the Glebe area of Sydney (or in the mood for a special trip) I do recommend you drop in, either to build up your chess library, or simply for a coffee and a browse.

An Annotators Responsibilities

I'm back to typesetting some chess books over the summer, and it is interesting to see the different approaches to writing that some (historical) chess authors have. Certainly older books seemed to provide an opportunity for chess personalities to engage in personal feuds, but often the older the book, the more vitriolic the comments.
Without giving either the title of the book, or the identity of the author away, I was particularly amused by the following quote
"In some respects these players were well paired, not for equality of force, indeed, Mr. Williams being by far the stronger, but because each, in his degree, exhibits the same want of depth and inventive power in his combinations, and the same tiresome prolixity in manoeuvring his men. It need hardly be said that the games, from first to last, are remarkable only for their unvarying and unexampled dullness."

I wonder if a writer would be allowed to say such things today?

Plenty of bargains

White to play and win

Today saw my biannual pilgrimage to the Canberra Lifeline Bookfair, a trip that involved more walking than normal. For once Miles Patterson and myself seemed to be the first to the chess section, so we had the pick of the collection.
I'm pleased to say that there were plenty of good chess books on offer, and while there were a number I already owned, I still grabbed about half a dozen. One of my more curious finds was a signed copy of "A Guide to Attacking Chess" by IM Gary Lane. However, it wasn't actually signed by Gary, but instead contained the signatures of GM Darryl Johansen and GM Ian Rogers.
One other book a picked up was "Secrets of the Russian Chess Masters". Early in it is a study from 1933 by Mark Liburkin, as shown in the diagram. It is White to play and win. Obviously the first issue is to deal with the threat  of 1 ... c1=Q# or 1 ... Be5, with the threat of discovered mate. Once you have done that, then it becomes a battle between White and the Black bishop. There are a number of subtle touches all the way through, although sadly, there may be a tougher line at the end that the composer may have originally missed. If you find it too hard to solve, feeding it into any strong engine should give you enough of a solution to see what the composer was trying to achieve.

You snooze, you lose

Today was the first day of the 2018 Lifeline Bookfair in Canberra, so I made the effort to try and get there early. While I'm not mad enough to bring a tent and sleep by the door (in fact, no one is) I do try and make sure I'm at least close to the door when it opens.
The strategy was reasonably successful this year, as almost all the second hand chess books were still on the table, although a few had been picked up by one fleet of foot chess parent!
As I've mentioned in the past, I usually don't buy that many books these days, as I already have copies of most of them. I did get an Informator No. 2, to go with the No. 1 I picked up last time. A couple of problem books, a collection of games by Rubenstein and of course a copy of "Play Better Chess" by Barden were also some of the books I grabbed.
Luckily I was in early, as about 5 minutes after I made my selection, a lot of books went in one sweep of the hand as someone just tipped half of them into an open bag. I'm assuming it was a second hand book seller, as a more discerning collector would have at least checked the prices.
If you do plan to visit tomorrow, I'm not sure if there will be many chess books left. They usually have extra boxes for most categories, but if past years are anything to go by, the whole chess collection goes out at the start and does not get replaced.

Learn a new thing every day

How much better do you think you would be at chess if you learnt a new thing everyday? A lot, a little, or would you not be able to keep up the pace?
The question popped into my head after picking up a new book by Andrew Soltis called "365 Chess Master Lessons". To be fair, what appealed to me about the book wasn't the promise of daily chess improvement (I'm a bit old for that), but that each lesson featured a couple of interesting miniatures to illustrate the point. I've long been a fan of quick games of chess, so grabbing another collection  of said games was to tempting to pass up.
The book contains a wide selection of games, drawn from a number of different era's. I was quite pleased to find a quick win by Rashid Nezhmetdinov in one of the early chapters, but oddly I couldn't find the game in my reasonably large database. However I did find a few identical games (at least 4) which isn't that surprising, as the game is essentially a continuation of a trap in the Levenfish variation of the Dragon. So while the game below was played in 2002, it was also played in 1946 between Nezhmetdinov and Ermolin.


Torres Samper,Rafael - Molina Vinas,Marcos (2140) [B71]
Asturias-ch Preferente Gijon (3.7), 03.03.2002

Maximum Haulage

The Canberra Lifeline Bookfair is on this weekend, and if you are looking for chess books, there are plenty to be had. I got in nice and early this morning (along with a few other collectors), and I'm pretty sure this year saw the biggest chess collection I can remember. There were a number of familiar titles, but there were also a few surprises. Someone donated quite a large number of Informators, including a No. 1, which I snapped up. Curiously there were a few books on the Laws of Chess, so I grabbed those as well, as they contained snapshots of the Laws for the years they were published.
Even the Board Games section had more than the usual amount of chess stuff, and I saw one shopper snap up every chess set she could fine. I found a Pavilion Talking Electronic Chess Computer for $8, adding to my growing collection of chess computers at home.
When I left there were plenty of books on the table, so you should be able to get something if you drop in over the weekend.

Chess Structures

Normally my overseas travels result in me returning with lots of books, but 2 months worth of supplies meant that there wasn't a lot of spare room in the suitcase. I did pick up a few books here and there, but there was one book that was worth its weight in excess baggage charges.
"Chess Structures: A Grandmaster Guide" by Mauricio Flores Rios turned out to be the type of book that I had been searching for for many a year. Over 22 chapters, Rios describes a number of important pawn structures, and the standard middle game plans that go with each of them. He looks at them from both sides of the board, and gives model games for each of the plans. While the structures are usually named after well known openings, he points out that they don't just come from these openings, as pawn structure isn't always a function of moves.
As an example, the Caro-Kann formation is listed under the d4/d5 section, as it arises after Blacks d5 pawn captures on e4, while White has a pawn sitting on d4. This does occur in the main lines of the Caro-Kann, but also the Scandinavian (1.e4 d5 2.exd Qxd5 often leads to the same kinds of position).
Rios focuses on  positions where the pawn structure strongly effects the strategy employed, which means tactical structures like the Dragon, or solid ones like the Closed Ruy Lopez only get a brief mention. On the other hand there are a number of chapters devoted to the Kings Indian and French structures.
And it was the section of the French that gave me some recent inspiration (and success). Having studied (from Whites point of view) the section where White plays exf6 and then targets the backward e pawn, I came to the following game better prepared than I normally am. While I didn't get a clear advantage until right at the end (and my opponent missed a tactical trick after Rxe7), I felt I at least knew what sort of moves I should have been playing throughout. As a result I didn't feel the need to lash out at any stage, and while the finish was nice, it was they play that lead up to it that was just as important.


Press,Shaun - Patterson,Miles [C06]
University Cup, 07.03.2017

A successful sortie

As flagged yesterday, today involved a trip to the Lifeline Bookfair in Canberra. In some years there are very slim pickings but this year wasn't bad. I was able to grab about 6 decent books, while a couple of other collectors picked up a similar amount.
There were a number of 'historical' books, including Botvinnik's book on the 1941 Absolute Championship of the USSR, and the tournament book from the 1972 San Antonio Tournament (Karpov's first big overseas success). And I also located a copy of The Batsford Guide to Chess Openings by Barden and Harding, which was the first real opening book I owned. My original copy (which was autographed by young IM's Rogers and Johansen in 1983) disappeared a number of years back, so it was good to finally track down a replacement.
Flipping through the San Antonio book I saw the late Ken Smith was one of the participants. He was well known for his advocacy of the Morra Gambit (or Smith-Morra as he called it), and he played it whenever he could. However his results with it were poor, leading Larsen to annotate "1.e4 e6(?) Stronger is 1. ... c5, which wins a pawn (Smith always plays the Morra Gambit, in this tournament with disastrous results)". Probably the best (or worst) example of this, was his game against Mecking late in the tournament. Having sat at the bottom of the tournament throughout, he decided to throw everything into the attack, but just ended up resigning.


Smith,Kenneth R (2395) - Mecking,Henrique (2570) [B21]
San Antonio San Antonio, 1972

Books

I had to curtail my usual over expenditure on books while travelling, as the excess weight charges on my luggage may have killed me. However there a no such restrictions on what I can take on the bus, which is good news, as the Canberra Lifeline Bookfair is on tomorrow.
While I did not deliberately time my return from overseas to make sure I could attend, it is indeed fortuitous scheduling. So I'll be up early in the morning, hopefully to snap up whatever chess books are on offer. If not, the fall back is always IT and maths, and failing that, whatever randomness peaks my interest.

Fantastic Computer Chess resources

If you are a programmer looking for literature on computer chess, then the Springer publishing company have just released a small treasurer trove for you. It seems that they have decided to drop the price of their electronic publications to $0.00 for titles published over 10 years ago.
Doing a quick search for chess I found a number of important Computer Chess titles including "Chess Skill in Man and Machine" and the "Computer Chess Compendium" and some newer titles (for me at least) like "Scalable Search in Computer Chess". Apart from the chess titles, there are publications that cover a lot of areas, and after I am done with chess, I will probably dive into the Number Theory section.
To find the books go to link.springer.com and search for Chess (or any other topic of interest). Books that you still have to pay for have a little padlock symbol on them but otherwise you can juts click on the download link and get them for free
(Thanks to Arjang Assadi for alerting me to this)

2015 Lifeline Bookfair

That great Canberra tradition, the Lifeline Bookfair is on again this weekend, and once again provided me with an opportunity to pick up some second hand chess books. But unlike previous years, I was a little late to get going, as I was busy on Friday running a school chess event, rather than standing in a queue of 500 people waiting for the doors to open.
This gave other collectors first bite of the cherry, while I arrived a number of hours later to pick through the scraps. However, even with the delayed start there were quite a good collection of books there, although my choice was limited due to the fact that I already owned copies of most of them. To my own collection I added copies of Logical Chess Move by Move, New Traps in the Chess Opening (from 1964 mind you) and Learn Chess (to replace a missing copy). One new addition was Brilliance in Chess by Gerald Abrahams, which was a title I was previously unaware existed. Books I did not buy included Chess Praxis (there were even two copies on offer), Nigel Short's Chess Skills (which someone else pointed out is a very slim book), and Purdy's book on the Fischer v Spassky Match.
I'll intend to head back tomorrow afternoon for one final search, but I suspect that all that's left is what I have already seen. But at least the advantage of going at the end of the sale (as opposed to the start) is that everything left over is heavily discounted, so what I miss out in quality, I may make up in quantity.

The Australian Chess Annual

While searching for all things chess at archive.org I stumbled across "The Australian Chess Annual" It was published in 1896 and I think (based on the handwritten notes inside the cover) that it was the first edition of what is supposed to be a series. It is a very comprehensive book, and seemed to run for over 150 pages, with tournament reports, club directories and chess problems filling its pages. The author was H.B. Bignold, who listed himself as a member of the Arts, Sydney and Petersham Chess Clubs. Also interesting was the number of Chess & Draughts clubs (as opposed to just chess clubs). I assume that both games were on equal footing at the time, something that is not the case these days.
If you want to do some digging around of your own, just go to archive,org and type "chess" in the search bar. Plenty of stuff turns up, including books, magazines and even old chess playing software. However it may be a bit tricky to get exactly what you want as I found a couple of books that were catalogued as chess books, but instead turned out to be essays on dead French poets!

Missing the Lifeline Bookfair

Due to a new employment opportunity, I had to make a trip to Auckland, which I had to do at short notice. While I am having a fantastic time in New Zealand, it meant I did miss a couple of significant activities back in Canberra.
There was the regular Street Chess event, although FA (FIDE Arbiter) Alana Chibnall was able to step in and handle that. There was also the Canberra Multicultural Festival, otherwise know as BAMOAS (Beer And Meat On A Stick) day. I also missed Valentines Day, which I am sure I will pay for on my return.
Finally, I  was unable to attend the Lifeline Bookfair, which is a regular topic on this blog. For reasons unknown to me it was moved a few weeks earlier than normal, although I suspect the gods may have decided to mess with me. So I have no idea whether it was feast or famine on the second hand chessbooks, both in terms of numbers and quality. Miles Patterson, both a regular book buyer and blog reader  was in attendance (I assume), so I await his report on my return next week.

2014 Lifeline Book Fair - slim pickings this year

The range of chess books at this years (September) Lifeline Bookfair was very limited. In previous posts I have said that as chess books go, it could either be feast or famine, and this time it was definitely famine. I grabbed exactly 1 chess book, and even then I'm not sure I don't already have a copy. On the other hand Bridge books were well represented, as were poker and puzzle books.
Where I did do well however was in the area of computing books. PHP, Perl, jQuery and Drupal books helped fill my bags, which was quite fortuitous, as I am on the lookout for a new job. Although it is yet to be officially confirmed, a work review has recommended abolishing my current position, and I therefore need to find gainful employment. Currently I am working in the area of CMS development, but having covered a number of different tasks during my time in the IT industry, this isn't the only string to my bow.  A few job applications have been submitted, but nothing positive as yet.