Off On A Brief Tangent

I recently acquired Knight on the Left: 1.Nc3 by Harald Keilhack, an updated English version of his German language Der Linksspringer. I really like the book, and I am not alone - see the review by Paul Kane and review by lefthandsketch on the Brooklyn 64 site.

I noticed that in his chapter "Against the Sicilian - 1.Nc3 c5 2.Nf3" Keilhack took time to digress and address "The French Marshall" connection (1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 c5), where he mentioned my 1988 effort:

There is a booklet The Marshall Gambit in the French and Siclian Defenses by Kennedy/Sheffield with interesting material, however, its rather confusing presentation doesn't allow clear conclusions either.

Oh, well. In our book Riley and I opted to group the lines of play by patterns of piece development, rather than give example master games (with notes) or structure things along lines such as A1b1(c), etc. (By the way, we wrote back before electronic chess databases were prevalent - collecting the games from books, including those in the White Collection of the Cleveland Public Library.)

I will remember Keilhack's concerns as I prepare All or Nothing! The Jerome Gambit, my magnum opus on my current favorite opening.

Booking Mr. Joker

Continuing my on-line visits to some of the Jerome Gambit (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bc4 Bc5 4.Bxf7+) Gemeinde members, I stopped by Louis Morin's ("mrjoker") bookshop website. Interesting. It even has copies of my book (with Riley Sheffield), The Marshall Gambit in the French and Sicilian Defenses...

Hmmm... It also looks like Louis has translated a number of Jeremy Silman's books (from English into French).

I'll mention that Louis has contributed comments and analysis to Grandmaster Boris Alterman's web page, if only forme to be able to mention that The Alterman Gambit Guide White Gambits is due out this month, with The Alterman Gambit Guide Black Gambits due out in March, 2010.

The Jerome Gambit Gemeinde has some interesting members!

Kaissiber!

I've spoken quite positively of Stefan Bücker's awesome quarterly magazine Kaissiber, which focuses on games, analysis and history (see "To Infinity... And Beyond!", "Breaking News...", "My head is spinning" and "Jerome Gambit Blog: Tidying Up") -- especially unorthodox openings.

Kaissiber 33 is due out today (unless you are a subscriber; in which case you have already received your issue, lucky person) and is well worth tracking down. (Word is that it has some killer King's Gambit analysis...)

If you are interested in collecting back issues of Kaissiber, it is important to know that they are available in bound editions, with the fourth volume due out this coming January (or late December).

Finally, for those of you who have interest in such things, Stefan also has copies for sale of my (with Riley Sheffield; Introduction by Hugh Myers) Marshall Gambit in the French and Sicilian Defenses which focuses upon 1.e4 e6 2.d5 d5 3.Nc3 c5!? and 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 d5!? (and which is much, much sounder than the Jerome Gambit!)