Two More Stonewall Reviews

Yesterday I noticed two more reviews of 'Win with the Stonewall Dutch' on the net:

• Donaldson's review is now available on Silman Chess. I suspect it has already been published somewhere (possibly in print) a couple of months ago, as Gambit's infopage has already quoted it for some time.
• In Dansk Skak Union's 'Skakbladet' (available as a pdf-file for download) there is a review (in Danish) by Peter Heine Nielsen.

Donaldson's review focuses more on the opening than on the book. That happened all the time with 'Win with the London System' with a lot of reviewers stating that the book was fine but the subject boring. Fortunately Donaldson likes the Stonewall and quotes Kramnik's endorsing but slightly dated statements in Dvoretsky's 'Positional Chess'.

I found Peter Heine Nielsen's review very interesting. The great Dane is generally considered one of the best prepared GMs around. He has not been playing a lot lately but being a second for Anand and Carlsen is not less prestigious than some tournament wins. He points out that the Stonewall to some extent a Norwegian specialty and is of course right. All the early Norwegian GMs (Agdestein, Gausel, Djurhuus, Tisdall and Østenstad) played it regularly in the late eighties and early nineties (usually in combination with the French) and I think the main reason its popularity slowly declined in Norway was the fact that most of these players got less active on the tournament circuit.
Below you can see the original text (in danish) and my attempted translation.

En fremragende bog. Ud over forfatterne fungerer Leif Erlend Johannessen som rådgiver, og Simen Agdestein har skrevet forord og været involveret i kapitlerne med illustrerende partier. Agdestein selv har haft stor succes med den hollandske stonewall og beskriver godt de typiske planer. Stonewall er en strategisk åbning med stor dybde, og netop derfor har en af bogens forfattere, Ivar Bern brugt den med succes i kskak, hvor han vandt VM-titlen.

An outstanding book. In addition to the authors, Leif Erlend Johannessen has been an advisor and Simen Agdestein has written a preface and been involved in the chapters with illustrative games. Agdestein has had great success with the Dutch Stonewall himself and describes the typical plans well. The Stonewall is a strategical opening with great depth and exactly for this reason one of the authors - Ivar Bern - has used it successfully in correspondence chess where he won the World Championship.

Computerne tror oftest på Hvid, men forstår ikke altid de atypiske stillinger, hvor Sort måske har optisk svage felter og en dårlig løber, men i virkeligheden står udmærket. Ikke blot rehabiliterer de en undervurderet åbning, men de gør det med inspirerende kapitler bakket op med personlige erfaringer fra førende eksperter. Og selv om de vedkender sig deres inspiration fra Jens Kristiansens berømte artikel om åbningen her i Skakbladet, fornemmer man, at her videreformidles en slags fælles norsk skakforståelse.


The computers normally prefer White but don't always understand the atypical positions where Black has optical pawn weaknesses and a poor bishop but in reality has an excellent position. Not only do the authors rehabilitate an underestimated opening - they even do so by means of inspiring chapters supported by the personal experiences of leading experts. And although they admit being inspired by Jens Kristiansen's famous article on the opening here - in the 'Skakbladet' - you can sense that they are conveying a kind of common Norwegian chess perception.

Peter Heine Nielsen

Elburg on Win with the Stonewall Dutch

I am for the moment struggling with the Noteboom and some Stonewall lines and just note in passing that another review of 'Win with the Stonewall Dutch' has appeared. This time it's John Elburg - a little early with his reviews of August 1st. His review is positive (as they almost always are - even for quite poor books) and contains some useful information for potential buyers. Unfortunately he this time has missed the fact that Ivar Bern is a co-author (mentioning only Sverre Johnsen and Simen Agdestein). It's a pity that Elburg's command of the English language is lacking to the extent that it will be hard to find a complete sentence to quote. My guess is that Gambit on the book's info page will go for:
Conclusion: A very important reference work of the Dutch Stonewall!

Win with the Stonewall Dutch Finally Completed

Exactly one week ago I sent a final minor correction (one single letter actually) to Gambit Publishing and now our book is at the printers. The total number of corrections were considerable:

• 126 corrections/additions - including some references to recent games.
  
• 20 suggestions for how to make room for those changes that required more space.
  
• 8 suggestions/questions, mainly regarding the English language.
  
• 5 replies to the editor regarding information given in the manuscript.

It will be interesting to see how many of our changes will be included. From my perspective as an author it seems that Gambit tends to be on the restrictive side. But I suppose that from a publisher's point of view they may well consider themselves generous with last minute amendments.

Updated information on the book can be found at Gambit's information page for the book. The book will be 224 B5 pages (not 208 as previously announced) and will be available in June. I have no inside information about printing time but my guess would be quite early in June.

There is a pdf-sample available for download. There, in addition to some pages from Lesson 4, the Table of Content can be found:

4 Symbols
4 Bibliography
5 Preface
6 Foreword
8 Stonewall Invitation
15 Lesson 1 7 b3: Introduction
36 Lesson 2 The Critical 7 b3 Qe7 8 Ne5!
54 Lesson 3 7 Qc2, 7 Nc3 and Rare 7th Moves
67 Lesson 4 7 Bf4
89 Lesson 5 Lines with a Delayed Bf4
100 Lesson 6 Early Deviations
117 Lesson 7 4 c4 with Nh3
145 Lesson 8 2 c4: Non-Fianchetto Lines
156 Lesson 9 2 Nf3: Non-Fianchetto Lines
169 Lesson 10 2 Nc3 and 2 Bg5
183 Lesson 11 The Staunton Gambit and Rare 2nd Moves
195 Lesson 12 1 c4, 1 Nf3 and 1 g3
211 Solutions to Exercises
222 Index of Variations
223 Index of Players

Win With the Stonewall Dutch

It's official!

On Gambit's homepage, there is now a list of their forthcoming books, including 'Win With the Stonewall Dutch'.

As usual it took me a second look to fully appreciate the cover artwork - at first the dominating grey looked a little drab. But now I'm convinced it will stand out in a positive way in the book stalls. I assume the artist is Wolff Morrow as for my previous books.

The title was as expected (I assume Gambit would have contacted me if there had been a substantial change from the working title) but I was a little surprised by the author part. It says 'Sverre Johnsen and Ivar Bern With a contribution by Simen Agdestein' but in my opinion '...With contributions by Simen Agdestein' would better describe the reality.

Also the publishing date (February 2009) was slightly surprising. I was expecting December 2008 but I can understand Gambit's conservative target date as our agreed deadline now has been overstepped by more than three weeks and they still have not received any final manuscript. That also explains the sparse updates of this blog!