Technique in Chess

Beschreibung

”And the Rest Is Just a Matter of Technique...“
How often has this comment been appended to a game move or variation? As many players know, it really may not be all that easy to figure out what is meant by this familiar phrase.
After the untimely passing of legendary instructor Mark Dvoretsky, Artur Yusupov was given access to Dvoretsky’s famous card files. With the core material based upon these files, the former top ten grandmaster and perhaps the most successful of all of Dvoretsky’s students put together this book, modifying and refining the content as needed.
The book begins with a ”theoretical“ explanatory section. This is followed by 102 practice positions, which increase in in difficulty. Good technique for gaining an advantage is useful in all areas of the game, so there are positions from the opening, middlegame, and especially the endgame not only from practical games but also from various studies.
The comments to the solutions are very detailed, explaining not only the main line but also the supplementary side variations. Yusupov thought it important to demonstrate the logic in the search for a decision and to show how a chessplayer can come to the right conclusions at the board.
Dvoretsky’s master student Artur Yusupov has done a great job in selecting and presenting the material so that this book ”feels“ like another genuine Dvoretsky work. This book is a real gem and I hope that it gives you as much pleasure as it has given me. And that from now on, when you have an advantage, the rest really will be, well, just a matter of technique… From the Foreword by Grandmaster Dr. Karsten Müller

Details

Weitere Informationen
EAN	9781949859645
Gewicht	350 g
Hersteller	Russell Enterprises
Medium	Buch
Erscheinungsjahr	2023
Autor	Artur Jussupow Mark Dworetski
Sprache	Englisch
Auflage	1
ISBN-13	978-1-949859-64-5
Seiten	176
Einband	kartoniert

Hersteller

Hersteller Informationen
Name	Russell Enterprises
Adresse	234 Depot Road Milford, CT 06460 USA
Internet	www.Russell-Enterprises.com
E-Mail	hwr@russell-enterprises.com

Verantwortlicher Importeur:

Verantwortlicher Importeur
Name	Schachversand Niggemann
Adresse	Schadowstraße 5 48163 Münster Deutschland
E-Mail	info@schachversand.de
Internet	www.schachversand.de

Inhalt

Rezensionen

A thought-provoking, challenging, well designed book.

Clearly the word ‘technique’ carries many different (albeit often related) meanings in chess, as Mark Dvoretsky and Artur Yusupov state in Part 1 of this book. Here they quote Igor Zaitsev’s pithy, justly famous statement: ‘Technique is an art from the past’, a rather gnomic way of saying that, as chess players, we don’t reinvent the wheel (Gligoric expressed a similar thought and much more clearly, in my view: ‘Technique is the skilful application of the laws of strategy and tactics’). Instead we all (being cultured) make use of what players and theoreticians have worked out before, in bygone days, whether that be Alekhine’s gun, Lucena’s bridge or Damiano’s mate. We can acquire technique by, amongst other things, studying the games of past masters. Some arts, though, have been irrecoverably lost…

The focus of the book, however, is on a very specific aspect of technique and a very specific question: how do you realise an advantage? There are positions where you stand better but, allowing for best play on both sides, a draw will result. How should you proceed in those cases? What should you do to make the most of your chances? These are the sorts of questions (sometimes described as squeeze play, grinding out the win, etc.) that are discussed in the first part of the book, all of which I found fascinating. I have one point of disagreement with the authors, though, and it is when they characterise ‘concrete play’ as being ‘contrary to the golden principles’ of technique, as they do on page 38. To me, ‘concrete play’ is related to exactness and accuracy of calculation, and it is necessary whether you realise an advantage through attack or technique. (If you sacrifice your queen to carry out an attack, you must ‘concretely’ checkmate the opponent’s king; if you simplify to a pawn ending, you may need to ‘concretely’ promote one of your pawns first; and so on.)

In Part 2 you are presented with a position and asked to find white or black’s best move, supporting your choice with some analysis and an evaluation. What would you play if you got this position in an actual game? Do you stand better? Would you be confident of victory? All told, there are 102 exercise positions here, a goodly number, and about 10% of them are studies. Endgame positions predominate and, of the players on show, Smyslov and Petrosian are especially well represented on the winning side, as well they should be. Curiously, in quite a few cases the move played in the actual game (even though lauded as brilliant and spectacular by the winner in his subsequent annotations) is shown by the authors to be inaccurate. Generally a calm, methodical course of action is advised. Quite a few positions are taken from games featuring older players (the likes of Janowski, Tartakower and Bogolyubow, say) and the solution and commentary here is usually along the lines of ‘this great master had the right idea, but he could have executed it more precisely’. There is a clue here as to how Dvoretsky selected his material: by forensic examination of the chess classics. Needless to say, the solutions, which make up about two thirds of the book, are very full and detailed, rich in analysis and explanation.

Later, just before the close, the authors recommend a number of books on the endgame and endgame technique. I cannot really quibble with the books listed, though I would probably have added Nunn’s two later volumes as well as the one listed. I did note some omissions, mind: Averbakh’s celebrated series of endgame books, Shereshevsky’s Endgame Strategy, this latter being the book that is closest in spirit to the book under review. It is as though the Soviet School of Chess has been airbrushed out of history…

I benefited greatly from studying and working through this thought-provoking and well designed book. As with all of Dvoretsky’s books, you don’t so much read it as wrestle with it, an experience both humbling and challenging, and one from which you (hopefully) emerge stronger. Wonderful stuff.

Paul Kane
https://thecaissakid.wordpress.com/2025/12/15/technique-in-chess/

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