First Review

My apologies for this delayed entry. I have had a busy week with little time for blogging, and this too will be a minor entry.

It was not unexpected that the first review of "The Ruy Lopez: A Guide for Black" would appear at "John's Chessbook Reviews" by John Elburg - Elburg's greatest strength is his speed, volume and regularity. Neither did it come as a shock that his review was fairly positive (they usually are).

I have also become accustomed to Elburg's fairly helpless English, but this time I struggled a bit more than usual to understand his review. What does "Johannessen & Johnsen." which is used two times mean? It obviously indicates a quotation of some kind, but where does that quotation start?

Also the expression "chess crack" was unknown to me. But actually in this case Elburg's English vocabulary may be better than mine. At least my OALD (Oxford Advanced Learner's Dictionary) indicates that the adjective version "he's a crack chess-player" would mean "he's an excellent chess-player", so I assume it must be quite positive.

Anyway, his conclusion "A very important reference book on the Zaitsev variation!" was welcome.

When speaking about reviews, I must mention that Phil Adams' Book Reviews has been improved with four downloadable documents complete with older reviews. Excellent idea - they really were worth preserving!