Willempie wrote on 08/05/08 at 07:41:54:


It's true that a lot of old lines are forgotton.  Forgotten, because there was a negative conclusion about them, and they were dropped from the manuals to save space.  Then somebody has to rediscover it all.   

But I think that the revolution in modern theory has mostly to do with computers.  You can store vastly more information, so why bother to prune it?  It's much easier to access; and theoretical advances, at least in lines where computation is important, is facilitated by machines.  Also there are so many more strong players now, and so many more games between such players to contribute to the advance of theory.

But really I'm surprised that anyone would argue this point.  Compare MCO-10, the bible of the 1960s and early 70s, to the multivolume ECO sets that succeeded it.  Yet today, ECO sits on the bookshelf, more or less inadequate to capture the enormous breadth and continual, chaotic ramification of modern theory.

I've been preparing a fairly comprehensive set of computerized notes on Alekhine's, and I've been struck by the vastness of existing theory on just this one defense, which itself has become something of a backwater.  I have in my files much more than would fit in a good-sized book.  Maintaining equally comprehensive notes on the Closed Spanish or the Najdorf Sicilian would be a full time job, or very nearly.

It's no wonder that the books written today tend to be summary, introductory works, like the admirable Starting Out series.  There simply is no way to do justice to the theory, even of just one major system, in a book.  And as soon as it's printed, it's obsolete.

Beetlejuice wrote on 08/03/08 at 20:52:03:


There is also a 1989 Bagirov work, Zaschita Alekhina, in Russian, which I don't yet have in hand but which I have ordered from Karel Mokry, a bookseller in Brno.  I decided not to buy the German work to which you refer just because it's sandwiched between the 1973 and 1989 works.  But for completeness' sake, I should probably buy it.

One thing you notice when you read these older works is how much more massive modern theory is than the older theory.  There has really been a damburst of chess information in the past 25 years or so.

I came by this 156-page book, published by A. Kalnajs & Son, online.  Copyright also Kalnajs & Son.  It's nicely produced on heavy paper, still white and supple.  The frontispiece is a cartoon of Bagirov in profile, in contemplation, presumably of a chess move.  The work is a very interesting exposition of early (from a current point of view) Alekhine's theory.  The style is more animated than one sees in Bagirov's later works, for example, his two-volume series on the English.  There is a notation, "Translated by Colleen T. Sen," but no indication of the original work or its language.  Russian, one would suppose; probably the first of two or three works entitled Zaschita Alekhina that Bagirov would eventually write.

Some of the theory is still good, but much is obsolete.  Still, it's very interesting to see how people thought about these chess ideas in those days.  Even by then, according to his introduction, Bagirov had played this defense in more than 100 games.

Original price printed on the cover, $4.85.  Those were the days.  I got it for $36.00.