Book Review: Blackmar Diemer Gambit, Method of Operating (Part 1)

Eric Jégo has come out with a second, English-language edition of his Blackmar Diemer Gambit, Method of Operating, Accepted - Declined - Avoided.

Today I want to share my review (from Chessville) of his first, French-language edition. Tomorrow, I will address what improvements he has made in the new edition.

Gambit Blackmar-Diemer Modus Operandi

by Eric Jégo


TheBookEdition (2010)
ISBN: 978-2-9536013-0-5
softcover, 188 pages
figurine algebraic notation
http://ericlediemerophile.blogspot.com/
http://gambit-blackmar-diemer.cabanova.fr/


Serious chess players are always looking for an edge. Bobby Fischer learned Russian to keep up with magazines coming out of the U.S.S.R. Later, grandmasters grabbed each issue of Chess Informant as it came out – as they do today with New In Chess.


The advent of computer chess game databases meant getting the largest and the newest – and keeping it up-to-date with games from internet sources such as "The Week in Chess." Internet sources like "Chess Vibes Openings" and "Chess Publishing" keep subscribers up-to-date on the latest opening wrinkles.

Serious followers of the Blackmar Diemer Gambit are no different. As Ken Smith wrote:

For every White initiative a better defense always seems to present itself for Black, and for every refutation the Black side recommends improvements are found for White.

Where do you find those improvements?

While it’s nice to have FM Eric Schiller’s Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, for example, it’s important to have IM Gary Lane’s The Blackmar-Diemer Gambit as well. Have Tim Sawyer’s Blackmar Diemer Gambit Keybook? His The Blackmar-Diemer Gambit Keybook II is much bigger! You say you have Tom Purser’s entire run of “BDG World” magazine on CD? What about Tejler’s and Kampars’ “Blackmar Diemer Gambit / Opening Adventures” magazine?

And so it goes.

How far will the members of the Blackmar Diemer Gemeinde go in pursuit of esoteric knowledge? Brush up on their German so they can read Diemer’s original Vom Ersten Zug An Auf Matt! ? Freshen up their French, so they can appreciate Dany Sénéchaud’s, Emil J. Diemer, missionnaire des échecs acrobatiques ?

Actually, if you are a BDG fanatic, that’s not a bad idea. And I have just the place for you to start: Eric Jégo’s new Gambit Blackmar-Diemer. Even if you speak French like a Spanish cow, it’s time to get out your Petite Larousse English-French dictionary (or download a free copy to your iPhone) and start discovering.

Or you can simply bypass the language for now and just play over the 287 games that Jégo presents in figurine algebraic notation. More than half of them were played in 1999 or more recently – check your bookshelf, how many BDG titles do you have from the new millennium?

Eric Jégo is a serious member of the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit Gemeinde, as even a few minutes on his web pages (given at the top of this review) will show you. His enthusiasm is contagious.

Several things set Gambit Blackmar-Diemer apart (aside from being the only whole book in French devoted to the opening). For starters, it is one of the most attractive and well-laid out books that I have seen on the BDG, easily bypassing the efforts of Schachverlag Rudi Schmaus, for example, in their Das moderne Blackmar-Diemer-Gambit series. Props must be given to the author and the people at TheBookEdition (a print-on-demand publisher) for their efforts toward perfection.

Inside a glossy cover with a picture of the Black King lying on its side, signifying surrender, the book arranges its games in 28 chapters, by variation. Each chapter starts with the title, the opening moves, and a short strategic description. A “thermometer”-style bar is then given, showing the percentage of wins by White, draws, and wins by Black in the author’s database.

There is a diagram of the starting position for the variation, and then the games follow, with words for annotations, not merely Informant symbols. (Each game “starts” from the diagram, so that the initial moves are not given; this accommodates transpositions from other openings into the BDG, and likely saves space as well.)

At the beginning of Gambit Blackmar-Diemer, after a striking "Preface" by Dany Sénéchaud (it’s not often that you see Jean Paul Sartre referred to in a chess book; my comparison of IM Ilya Odessky’s writing to Fyodor Mikhaylovich Dostoyevsky hardly counts) and a "Preamble" by the author, readers encounter Jégo’s 14 “Elementary Principles” of play in the Blackmar Diemer Gambit.

For example, “After Black castles, the White King Bishop will to to c4 against …g6, or d3 against …e6” and “White’s Queen Bishop will ideally be placed on g5, to pin or eliminate the Black Knight on f6.” Thereafter, the author can simply refer in a discussion in his annotations to the relevant principle, e.g. “PE8.” (BDG enthusiast Rev. Tim Sawyer lists all 14 Elementary Principles in his review on Tom Purser’s blog – another fine BDG resource.)

At the end of the book there is a short list of BDG references (here is a long, albeit incomplete, list) and a very nice list of internet resources.

I have a few, basic, suggestions for a second edition of Gambit Blackmar-Diemer. I know that it was probably done to conserve space, but identifying a game solely by the players’ names and the year it was played – e.g. “Le Goff F. X. – Guinovart J. 2005” – is too spare; at least the location of the match, if not the name or kind of tournament, would be informative additions. A Players’ Index would be nice, as well.

In the meantime, here is one of the 287 games in the book – the only one that doesn’t start from a diagram, but has all of its moves; and given that White was played by Gary Kasparov, no wonder...

Kasparov – Carneiro
2004

(I discovered that this game was played in a simultaneous exhibition in Sao Paolo, Brazil - RK)

1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5 Ne4 3.Bf4 d5 4.f3 Nf6 5.e4 dxe4 6.Nc3 exf3 7.Nxf3 Bg4

(Via the Trompowsky Attack, Kasparov has made his way to the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, Teichmann Defense – actually, a move up for White.

A little research shows that if instead 7…e6, we would transpose to Jansa – Sosonko, Amsterdam 1975 – a BDG, Euwe Defense, again a move up. For that matter, 6…e3, instead of 6…exf3, would have transposed to Milov – Gelfand, Biel, 1995 – a BDG declined, Langeheinecke Defense, likewise a move up.

Perhaps the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit is just a tempo away from making it big with the Grandmasters? - RK)

8.h3 Bxf3 9.Qxf3 c6 10.O-O-O e6 11.Bc4 Nbd7 12.d5 cxd5 13.Nxd5 Nxd5 14.Bxd5 a5 15.Bxb7 Ra7 16.Rxd7 Qf6 17.Rhd1 Be7 18.Rxe7+ Qxe7 19.Qc6+ Kf8 20.Bd6 g6 21.Bxe7+ Kxe7 22.Qc5+ Kf6 23.Qxa7 Rf8 24.Qd4+ e5 25.Qd6+ Kg7 26.Qxe5+ Kg8 27.Qf6 h5 28.Bd5 Kh7 29.Bxf7 1-0

So: if you’ve made the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit your secret weapon, go one more step and make Eric Jégo’s Gambit Blackmar-Diemer your ultra super secret weapon – only your opponents will regret that you did so!