[Please note that I‘m no specialist for recent theory of the Alekhine!
10-30 years ago I played some games in the Alburt system]
Chetverik‘s book is probably a good summary of existing theory up to 2014(!),
covering the complete Alekhine Defense. Slightly biased for Black but objective.
Maybe mainly aimed for club and expert players (1700-2100?!) but not really
contributing to topical theory discussions in the critical Miles system.
The book as book is a good one: hardcover, nice paper, good layout &print,
index of players, table of content, obviously a good translation without
much cruelties for native speakers ...
The bibliography lists all important sources from Alburt/Schiller85 and
Bagirov87 to Bogdanov09, Greet11 and Taylor11.
(Chetverik refers a lot to Taylor, mostly agreeing with him). At one point
in the Voronesh (p311) Chetverik mentions a suggestion of Lakdawala.
As I don’t have Lakdawala14 at hand I can’t verify if this book is meant,
at least it’s not listed in the bibliography. Neither Shaw14 is.
So this English edition from 2018 is essentially a non-updated translation
from the Russian original 2015?!? There IS a small update giving 5 slightly
annotated games from 16/17 but (as far as I can see!) these games don’t
reflect the developments/discussions since 2015!?! Maybe the whole sense of
this update was the advertising effect of having an updated translation!?!
Nevertheless it’s still good to have a complete „encyclopedia of the Alekhine“
(that was the subtitle of the russian editio!) the way theory stood in 2014/15!?
Probably especially useful for players who only have repertoire sources so far
and want to look at other systems of the Alekhine.
Chetverik has many interesting comments and suggestions here and there
but my impression(!) is that these are no ground breaking improvements or the latest
twinkles in critical variations!? Generally he doesn’t question the general += .
Though he doesn’t use symbol evaluation but the usual phrases like
Black‘s position is very hard to break or
Black can draw at best but this seem
to be achievable (the last sentence is the overall conclusion on the Voronezh)
A good source up to expert level but should not expect the solution to the question
how Black can minimize his problems around move 20 on master level.
Probably that’s not a problem of the book but of the opening!?
I noticed two unproblematic typos:
p.371, right column: name „Cholmov“
p.508, left column: it’s not 12...Nf6xd5 but 12...Nb6xd5
tracke