[This review first appeared in Westward
Ho!]
Timman’s selected games – chess the
adventurous way
by Jan Timman
248pp.+index Cadogan Press, 1995
“It is not always the games with the best chess that leave
behind the strongest memories (…) This selection of 80 games
gives a picture of the fighting chess I have always
championed.”
This is simply a collection of annotated games, some of
which are very well-known and many of which have been annotated
elsewhere. If you have not met Timman’s annotations before (as I
hadn’t), you may be tempted to regard this volume as warmed-up
leftovers, but this is to do the author an injustice. The games are
mostly from top tournaments and the World Championship cycle, and
Timman is a top Grandmaster writing for a professional audience.
His annotations are quite modestly put, but are deep and precise.
If you have ever sat through games annotated glibly by GMs[*], you will appreciate Timman as a commentator who
comments only when necessary, and at an appropriate level.
His play features crisp openings, enterprising middlegame
play and endings rich in detail. The search for the crucial
inaccuracy in a master game is often a challenging piece of
detective work, and while I am in no position to judge how well he
has done this, I enjoyed accompanying Timman on his journeys. I was
particularly struck by a number of critical endgames, in particular
a fascinating KBB vs. KandN ending against Speelman, and a really
thorough study of the fourth game of the 1990 Karpov-Timman
Candidates’ Match. Timman has a point to prove here and takes the
stand with great assurance – it reminded me of Fischer’s tour
de force of analysis in his annotations of the
Botvinnik-Fischer endgame. The other striking feature for me was
the number of games where there was a difficult material imbalance
that required technical resolution – Queen against Rook and Bishop,
for example.
But what Timman relishes above all these is the human
struggle: there are great set-pieces, superb escapes, desparate
time scrambles, enterprising pawn sacrifices and some glorious
messes… like the fifth match-game Ivanchuk-Timman, 1990 – which
Timman dryly introduces with “The game annotated below does not
really come within the confines of what is commonly understood to
be top chess.” As you can tell from this, Timman is also a
fluent and entertaining writer of English: I also enjoyed a remark
from a Candidates’ Match game where after 1. d4 f5
he offers: “A very surprising opening for Speelman, but I must
say I had expected him to do something unexpected.”
The range of openings on show is impressive: he opens
with 1. e4, 1. d4 and 1. c4, and plays as Black the French, the
Sicilian, the Pirc/Modern and defends the Ruy Lopez and Petroff,
while against the QP he plays as Black the Modern, King’s Indian,
Grunfeld, Queen’s and Nimzo-Indian. He is a true modern – there is
hardly a classical, merely ‘equalising’ defence in the book – and a
real fighter. For example, the fifth game of his 1989 match against
Portisch he went for victory by playing very riskily as Black – but
won. His play attracted a lot of criticism at the time, and this
itself roused Timman’s fighting spirit – so in his annotations he
takes on a ‘simultaneous display’ against his critics. I was also
struck by the number of games where time trouble played a part. I
wonder if Timman also makes note of clock times against his moves
(a practice which I believe was first recommended by Bronstein), as
even here he is precise, often citing (e.g.) 15 minutes for 17
moves.
Compared to Nunn’s recent book, it lacks the anecdotes
and personal glimpses – this reflects the origin of the
annotations. He does permit himself the occasional splendid piece
of prejudice or spleen – for example “I still don’t regard [the
King’s Indian] as a fully-fledged opening“, or “It is hard
to believe what Russian commentators sometimes try to foist on the
public“. [You will recall from the paragraph above that Timman
plays the King’s Indian as Black!] But, like Nunn, the depth and
quality of the analysis is consistently high. If you are looking
for study material this is a good source.
I didn’t much welcome the use of the NICbase opening
classification – RL, SI, and
FR for Ruy Lopez, Sicilian and French. This is
very natural for English speakers at first look but soon lapses
into an impenetrable RL 26.2.1 and FR
4.4.4 and lacks the universality of the ECO [A00-E99]
system. It also has some obvious anomalies – for example, the
opening to the game Kasparov-Timman is given as QI
1.6 and confidently labelled Queen’s
Indian – but it began 1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 e6 3. Nf3
Bb4+ (the Bogo-Indian), and as can be seen from the
diagram, on move 16 the Black b-pawn is still at home on b7. By all
means Cadogan should go along with the author’s framework, but
could have supplemented the classification with ECO.
If I have another reproach, it is that what Timman
regards as an ‘appropriate level’ to comment often left me
struggling to follow him. This is, I suppose, the cream of chess,
and in quantity may be too rich for many club players. In
particular, the whole opening phase of the game is often left up to
the reader as common knowledge. Common knowledge amongst GMs, may
be, but I would have been glad of a few landmarks being pointed out
before we headed off into the middlegame. I still was glad to read
this book – when I travelled with Timman, he showed me many sights
on the journey that I would never have noticed on my own.
[*] I will always remember “prevents Nf5”
as the complete annotation to …g6, followed by “prevents
Bg5” after …h6 – any guesses as to the author?