Grandmaster Chess Strategy: What Amateurs Can Learn from Ulf Andersson's Positional Masterpieces [Paperback]

This book has gotten very good reviews both here on Amazon and other sources such as New In Chess (publisher of the book) and my input takes a slightly different perspective.

The book itself is based on the games from Grandmaster Ulf Anderson. Anderson in his prime was a top 5 player in the world and has played the world elite from the past 30+ years. The games of Anderson are well worth studying and the authors certainly picked a ripe and fresh topic using Anderson's games. The book steps through a series of strategic themes that are fairly typical of books on strategies. No real shockers in the list but I will shortly make some mention of additions specific to Anderson. The book starts with an intro from Peter Leko, the Hungarian world title contender. It's very prophetic when he says in the intro that he played a number of moves and really didn't see how he ultimately lost against Anderson. Other players back this observation up with a notable quote from IM Mark Dvoretsky saying something similar. This in fact is part of the problem with the book.

Why is that a problem??

Well, in games where there are a number of strategical subtleties, it really takes an advanced player to understand them. I actually think that a club player studying Anderson's game can learn a tremendous amount about strategic play wrapping up most of Nimzowitch's lessons from My System. Unfortunately, the authors are very clumsy in the way that they handle the games and the annotations. They definitely provided an interesting mechanism by pausing in the games to ask about the next move, but often there are a number of points in the game where subtleties occur with absolutely no mention. Very oddly, the authors will go into very long variations and points in the game where there is no mention at all what the strategic or tactical plan is for that 15 to 20 move sequence (ending either with an unexplained positional assessment or a reference to a single played game for that variation). Well, long sequences with assessments is an indication that a computer was used for analysis and then likely checked by the author. This really is not very valuable for me personally because I could simply take a game of Ulf Anderson from a game database and used the computer to look at possible moves.

Other structural problems included the preable to each chapter with a summary of the games and critical moves. For me, this is just annoying because I'd much rather have the authors give this preamble prior to the actual game with some better outline of the overall game plan for each side (or something). In fact, many to most of the games, the authors really didn't point out where the game was really slipping into a lost position. I know that some might argue with this point, but because so many moves were not really looked at critically, you could see trends well before the authors put in annotations that said something like "all other alternatives are also bad". The annotations did improve as the book progressed but I highly doubt that the club player really can try and play like Ulf Anderson unless they spend a tremendous number hours on technique. And this is really the point. Ulf Anderson had superb technique. He generally simplified positions through trades and took advantage of a subtle positional advantage. Often this advantage was perhaps in a slightly better than equal position. It should be noted that many of the games are not with heavy hitting GMs, so you may suffer from not recognizing quite a few of his opponents. In some games, the opponents made highly dubious moves and that is when the author's paused with their highlighted box asking "what do you think Ulf did and why?". The problem is that the club player to get to those positions is likely to make a considerably larger number of mistakes and therefore may find a single move in a position that he can't navigate into against an opponent of decent strength. The book could have easily been a selection of game positions with critical choices followed by a detailed explanation of the factors going into the "turning point".

With all that said, the true audience for this book is really a very narrow set of players that can fill in a lot of their analyses and details. Even Luke McShane in his New In Chess review of the book waved off the analyses and annotations of the authors and cited a position "buried" in unannotated game moves. Any player with attention for detail will in fact do the same thing challenging many unnannotated moves. The book does provide one the games to do such a thing, but so would a database. I don't want to be overly hard on the authors, they took on one of the most daunting tasks, using Ulf Anderson's games as the vehicle for their teaching. The book could easily have been called "How Ulf Anderson Squeezed Out Wins with Small Positional Advantages". However, there isn't a consistency through the games or themes to really say that they did better than a 3 star job in doing that.

Because the book is primarily about technique, the authors included some chapters on the endgame including one on the Catalan endgame. Endgames often are where positional themes start to fall apart with (in my opinion and as offered in the book Endgame Strategy by Shereshevsky)is about taking advantage of multiple weaknesses. Anderson really understood how to do this extremely well and furthermore, had a great nack for creating additional weaknesses.

So, in summary ... I'm very happy that I went through the games of Ulf Anderson, definitely feel that I've learned a great deal from the book, but I am disappointed in the overall annotations and positional assessment explanations in the book. This is partly because authors that try and stay "theme-oriented" often muddle the works because most games have multiple themes. There are very few games where one of the players does not have the advantage of giving his opponent two weaknesses. How many games aren't critically affected by the decision of the knight/bishop exchange? The list goes on and so the better books don't actually try and classify these things but instead help the student RECOGNIZE positions with potential for transformation. This is a tough skill to learn and even tougher to teach, but Ulf Anderson is perhaps the best that chess has ever offered in this area (other players include Fischer, Capablanca both who could squeeze out the advantage in any position).

I conditionally recommend this book to those students who really can critically examine EVERY move of Anderson's games and extract as much value as possible from the author's comments. But using Anderson as a model for play could result in a great many losses or draws because so much skill is required to take advantage of subtle positional advantages.

As I say in many of reviews of chess books, the price for the chess lessons in this book are extremely inexpensive and it really is time that is the deciding point on whether you'll really get something out of this book.

PS If you are a Reti player or English opening or hedgehog, they make up the majority of games in this book. I would caution you that the annotations on these openings are poor relatively to the work of Shipov (Hedgehog, five star book) or even McDonald's book on the Reti (3 star but still much better). Of course Marin's three volume set leaves all annotations on the English looking sub-standard including this book.

Had always wondered why there is no book on Ulf Andersson's games.
The only available source for Andersson's games before this book is
Aagard's "Excelling at Chess" and Pritchett and Kopec's "Best Games
of the Young Grandmasters". The wait is over! The current book offers
a deep look into Andersson's subtle positional (and very technical)
chess with incredibly many useful endgame ideas.

Agreed with Yermolinsky's comments that Andersson is a cult figure.
Polugaevsky even said (comments at the end of the book) that no one
[in the Soviet Union] plays like him. His endgame technique has been
compared to Capablanca, Rubinstein, Smyslov and Karpov.

It is unfortunate that Andersson is too modest to author his own game
collections. But the authors had done a nice job of letting the games speak
for themselves. They are organized according to thematic concepts.
The games in the book are not unlike Tal's games which tactically contain
mind-boggling ideas; Andersson's games also contain some mind-boggling
positional ideas (some are counter-intuitive and as daring as sacrificial
attacks: simply check the chapter on positional Queen sacrifices).

This is an excellent book for anyone who appreciates subtle technical chess
and beautiful endgames. This book is as enjoyable as Shereshevsky's classic.
Another fine offering from New In Chess.

I played through all the games of this book (80 of them) and really liked it. I did not find a single editing mistake or typo (New In Chess is the publisher). Andersson's style seems deceptively simple. In many endgame positions which to me seemed drawn or difficult to win because of my lack of technical skills, Andersson wins in logical fashion and makes it look easy. I think this is part of his art, making the endgame seem simple when it is not. The analysis was well aimed at a player of my strength, 1700-1800, and it did not bury me.
The book has 15 chapters based on theme, for example: playing against two weaknesses, an advantage in space, control of the d-file, fighting against the hedgehog, the art of defense, the Catalan endgame, rook endings, and various others.
Andersson's openings as White are mostly 1 Nf3 2 c4 3 g3 with an English Opening resulting. This move order also works against the Tarrasch Defense, Queens's Indian and King's Indian. He plays the Catalan if Black plays ...Nf6, ...e6, ...d5. He usually answers 1 Nf3 d5 with 2 d4. He is willing to go into the Sicilian Maroczy bind after playing Nf3 and c4 by playing e4 and d4 if Black heads that way.
Out of 80 games, Andersson has White in 70, Black in 10. As Black against 1 e4, there is one French and two Sicilians.
I actually finished this book, which does not happen with most of my chess books, and I think the design of the book and the approach of the authors is part of the reason. It was more enjoyable than I expected.