Book Notice: Victor Bologan's The King's Indian: A Complete Black Repertoire
Victor Bologan, The King's Indian: A Complete Black Repertoire (Chess Stars 2009). 356 pp. Reviewed by Dennis Monokroussos.
I don't have time to write a proper review, but Victor Bologan's new book on the King's Indian deserves a quick mention while it's still very much hot off the press. Bologan, an elite GM, has written two previous books (at least in English) that have been highly acclaimed (his autobiographical Victor Bologan: Selected Games 1985-2004 and The Chebanenko Slav According to Bologan) - and I would join the chorus on them - and this book looks promising as well.
Here are the book's obvious pluses: it's written by a very strong GM (2689 FIDE, at last count), it's up-to-date, it's thorough and while there are game scores a-plenty there's a good deal of independent analysis as well. There are many small-scale explanations, which is useful but presupposes a certain degree of sophistication (this isn't a primer for beginners); still, even average club players can learn something more than series of moves for memorization.
As I noted, the book is thorough - perhaps more so than necessary. Bologan often presents multiple lines for Black, including on occasion some he thinks are distinctly inferior to other choices. While this may be unnecessary, strictly speaking, it provides a broader understanding of the variations and the problems each player is trying to solve, and as such it improves the reader's chess culture.
The bottom line is that if you're a King's Indian player, you're probably nuts not to buy it. That said, there are some flaws in the book. As is often the case with Chess Stars volumes, the translation is leaden.Generally speaking, that’s fine by me – I’m not buying opening books to read Shakespeare. (And who would? “Two-b or not two-b, that is the question: whether to fianchetto my queen’s bishop or not.” Or “Behold, thy bishop has come under attack; verily, get thee to a monastery – hie!” It would take a huge amount of space to get through a single game – almost as many pages as Hübner would take to cover a single move in a position he finds interesting.) It’s a very nice tradeoff: high quality books by non-native English speakers, brought to press in a hurry, in exchange for mediocre prose in translation; I’ll take it every time.
However, there were more problems this time than I can recall in any previous Chess Stars volume, and they weren’t always minor matters of grammar or eloquence. For instance, on p. 321, covering the position after 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nf3 Bg7 4.g3 d6 5.Bg2 d6 6.0-0 Nc6 7.Nc3 a6 8.d5 Na5 9.b3 c5 (Bologan also covers 9…Rb8) 10.dxc6, Bologan’s main line is 10…bxc6, but here’s what he says about the other capture:
“It is obvious that Black cannot equalize with 10…Nxc6 11.Bb2 Qa5 12.Nd5 (12.Qc1 Bf5 13.Rd1 Rac8 14.Nd5 Nxd5 15.Bxg7 Kxg7 16.Rxd5 Qc7 17.c5 Rfd8 18.cxd5 Rxd6= Ilincic – Kislik, Budapest 2008) 12…Nxd5 13.Bxg7 Nc3! (Black avoids cxd5, thanks to this intermediate move and he should equalize gradually.) 14.Bxc3 Qxc3 15.Rc1 Qa5 16.Qd2 Qxd2 17.Nxd2 Nd4 18.Rfe1 Rb8 19.c5 dxc5 20.Rxc5 Rd8 21.e3 Ne6 22.Rc2 b5 23.b4 Bb7= Dobosz – Lanka, Austria 2009.”
This does not compute! Does he mean to say that it’s obvious that Black _can_ equalize with 10…Nxc6? It doesn’t seem so: he thinks 10…bxc6 is only good for equality as well, but should be preferred; further, even if it does equalize, it clearly takes Black some work (“…and he should equalize gradually”). Does he mean instead to say that Black cannot _easily_ equalize with 10…Nxc6? Or did he leave out some superior option for White? Who knows?
It is an annoyance, and I found many more errors without having to look very hard for them. Generally speaking, it wasn't too tough to figure out what was meant or what was missing, so this is no recommendation to avoid the book. It is a plea, perhaps, for more careful translation and possibly copy-editing - maybe a native English speaker should be involved with the final product.
So, while I have only skimmed the text and checked a few variations of interest, what I have seen so far is encouraging, and consistent with what I've come to expect from Bologan's early work. To recap my earlier comment, then, King's Indian players would be a bit crazy not to buy this book. How often are you going to find a player of Bologan's caliber writing about your pet opening?
I don't have time to write a proper review, but Victor Bologan's new book on the King's Indian deserves a quick mention while it's still very much hot off the press. Bologan, an elite GM, has written two previous books (at least in English) that have been highly acclaimed (his autobiographical Victor Bologan: Selected Games 1985-2004 and The Chebanenko Slav According to Bologan) - and I would join the chorus on them - and this book looks promising as well.
Here are the book's obvious pluses: it's written by a very strong GM (2689 FIDE, at last count), it's up-to-date, it's thorough and while there are game scores a-plenty there's a good deal of independent analysis as well. There are many small-scale explanations, which is useful but presupposes a certain degree of sophistication (this isn't a primer for beginners); still, even average club players can learn something more than series of moves for memorization.
As I noted, the book is thorough - perhaps more so than necessary. Bologan often presents multiple lines for Black, including on occasion some he thinks are distinctly inferior to other choices. While this may be unnecessary, strictly speaking, it provides a broader understanding of the variations and the problems each player is trying to solve, and as such it improves the reader's chess culture.
The bottom line is that if you're a King's Indian player, you're probably nuts not to buy it. That said, there are some flaws in the book. As is often the case with Chess Stars volumes, the translation is leaden.Generally speaking, that’s fine by me – I’m not buying opening books to read Shakespeare. (And who would? “Two-b or not two-b, that is the question: whether to fianchetto my queen’s bishop or not.” Or “Behold, thy bishop has come under attack; verily, get thee to a monastery – hie!” It would take a huge amount of space to get through a single game – almost as many pages as Hübner would take to cover a single move in a position he finds interesting.) It’s a very nice tradeoff: high quality books by non-native English speakers, brought to press in a hurry, in exchange for mediocre prose in translation; I’ll take it every time.
However, there were more problems this time than I can recall in any previous Chess Stars volume, and they weren’t always minor matters of grammar or eloquence. For instance, on p. 321, covering the position after 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nf3 Bg7 4.g3 d6 5.Bg2 d6 6.0-0 Nc6 7.Nc3 a6 8.d5 Na5 9.b3 c5 (Bologan also covers 9…Rb8) 10.dxc6, Bologan’s main line is 10…bxc6, but here’s what he says about the other capture:
“It is obvious that Black cannot equalize with 10…Nxc6 11.Bb2 Qa5 12.Nd5 (12.Qc1 Bf5 13.Rd1 Rac8 14.Nd5 Nxd5 15.Bxg7 Kxg7 16.Rxd5 Qc7 17.c5 Rfd8 18.cxd5 Rxd6= Ilincic – Kislik, Budapest 2008) 12…Nxd5 13.Bxg7 Nc3! (Black avoids cxd5, thanks to this intermediate move and he should equalize gradually.) 14.Bxc3 Qxc3 15.Rc1 Qa5 16.Qd2 Qxd2 17.Nxd2 Nd4 18.Rfe1 Rb8 19.c5 dxc5 20.Rxc5 Rd8 21.e3 Ne6 22.Rc2 b5 23.b4 Bb7= Dobosz – Lanka, Austria 2009.”
This does not compute! Does he mean to say that it’s obvious that Black _can_ equalize with 10…Nxc6? It doesn’t seem so: he thinks 10…bxc6 is only good for equality as well, but should be preferred; further, even if it does equalize, it clearly takes Black some work (“…and he should equalize gradually”). Does he mean instead to say that Black cannot _easily_ equalize with 10…Nxc6? Or did he leave out some superior option for White? Who knows?
It is an annoyance, and I found many more errors without having to look very hard for them. Generally speaking, it wasn't too tough to figure out what was meant or what was missing, so this is no recommendation to avoid the book. It is a plea, perhaps, for more careful translation and possibly copy-editing - maybe a native English speaker should be involved with the final product.
So, while I have only skimmed the text and checked a few variations of interest, what I have seen so far is encouraging, and consistent with what I've come to expect from Bologan's early work. To recap my earlier comment, then, King's Indian players would be a bit crazy not to buy this book. How often are you going to find a player of Bologan's caliber writing about your pet opening?
Posted by Dennis Monokroussos on
Thursday August 20, 2009 at 1:53am