Liubarski - Soultanbeieff, Liege 1928

Dear all,

I have another game from Chernev's "Logical chess move by move" for which I would like to hear your opinion.

Similarly to the previous game I have reported, I see something strange in there. According to Chernev, 11...g4! is the winning move, and the position for White is irremediably compromised.

Once more, Fritz is giving at this point still a clear advantage to White (with a +1 evaluation at 20ply), and (again according to Fritz) the game is lost only because White goes after a lose pawn with 13.Bxh6. If you look at the variation given in the move list, White would have saved the game.

I fully understand that at Chernev's time computer analysis was not an option, but I still find awkard that these lines are given as "clearly superior", while this is apparently not the case at all.

As usual, I thank you in advance for any comments you may want to provide!

Andrea

how would fritz rate this position with black castling long?

Fritz understands little about attacking.  Chernev you should also realize tends to overuse the ! annotation (he has received much criticism for this) but the book is still of high caliber.

Thanks all for your replies and comments. I think they are all very valid, in particular the fact that the book remains highly valuable especially to beginners like me: it is out of doubt that most of the concepts are indeed sound and should be followed; I also totally agree with the comment regarding Chernev overusing the ! annotation.

I am looking forward to moving a little bit up on the chess ladder, so to be able to move to books like Nunn’s “Understanding chess move by move”, which from what I’ve seen seems to be a little bit more objective and unbiased (even if more difficult to follow).

Thanks all again for your contributions.

Until next time,

Andrea

"Logical Chess" is one of the best books for beginners. I have a copy that I go through from time to time - and you don't need a board! There are copious diagrams so it's really easy to follow the games and that means that your visualisation skills improve as well.

Many thanks for your reply, Chawil - appreciated. I second your opinion. I try to reproduce the games on a (real) chessboard because I think this helps me in tournament games, given I mostly play over the internet, so on 2D chessboards.

Cheers,

Andrea