Wednesday, July 5, 2017

Move along...


Monday, July 3, 2017

Counter Gambits by T.D. Harding

   

  How to win with Black! This is a great book! It's packed with 22 pages, including an updated chapter written in 2001. And, the format is perfect: long-algebraic, bold type for game moves; short-algebraic, light type for analysis. Great diagrams. There are 75 complete games and many more complete games in analysis. It's by Dover so you know it's a good book and the price is only $8.95. 
     OK, so it's old and the analysis on the Benko Gambit, especially, is outdated, but even so reading over the material will at least give you the groundwork to build upon. The Henning-Schara, Budapest, Blumenfield, Albin-Counter Gambit, Falkbeer Counter Gambit and Latvian are covered as well as a few others. 
     If you want some ideas about what to play as Black and like gambits, this book is a good starting place. There are three types of gambits by Black: 1) theoretically sound, 2) risky but worth trying and 3) garbage. And, another great selling point about this book is that Harding doesn’t make the mistake of trying to prove that all gambits are good. He gives his honest opinions and gives many games where Black loses. Not all of his analysis is correct, but that’s not important because you must always do your own analysis!