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Rating: 
Summary: Attack and sacrifice to win
Review: Hi, "Rocking the Ramparts" by GM Larry Christiansen. 256 pages
8 chapters
83 complete games with heavy annotation.
289 diagrams
Numerous partial games
Each chapter is approximately 30-32 pages in length.
Paperback with glossy cover design.
Published by Batsford in the UK and Sterling in the US. chapter 1 "The Art of Attack"
chapter 2 "Attack on the castled King - Drawing the King from it's Lair"
chapter 3 "Kings Castled on Opposites Sides"
chapter 4 "Sicilian - Opposite Sides Castling"
chapter 5 "Important Motifs for the Attacking Player"
chapter 6 "Romantic Opening Thrill Rides"
chapter 7 "Some LarryC Games"
chapter 8 "Instructive Combinations and Inspirational Attacks" All major openings are covered. It is important to recall this book demonstrates how to attack not how to play your favorite opening. The information provided by GM Christiansen is superb. The sacrificial guidelines in chapter 1 is an eye opener.
Chapter 6 asks you to play some opening lines where you are forced to attack, these lines were chosen specifically for increasing your attacking knowledge and sacrificial eye.
How to they do it? Sacrifice piece's to a good end? The nuts and bolts of what to look for, how to set it up, why it will work, why it wont work are all here spread throughout the various chapters.
If you are wanting to improve your attacking play this book will insure you know what to look for and how to pull it off. In particular chapter #5 "Important Motifs for the Attacking player" A series of observations and techniques are given with examples to illustrate the fact.
Chapter 8 is a series of 30 partial games with back rank themes and smothered mates. The chapter concludes with some of the finest attacking chess played during this century.
The games depicted herein are beautiful in their style and grace making chess look easy. I am pleased with it. Already the ideas are showing up in my play. Who is this book for? Everyone except the beginner. Algebraic notation is not used in the diagrams.
No index of games.
No index of players.
Rating:
Summary: A Great Classic On Attack and Defense
Review: I am a USCF chess expert who loves good chess books. This giant book is a true classic. Although I have profited from fine middlegame books by Silman, Bronstein, Pachman, Euwe and others, Christiansen's book clearly surpasses them all. After I spent several weeks studying this book, my tournament results took a great leap forward.
Christiansen explains and illustrates an enormous number of attacking and defending principles: how to keep your own king safe when you are attacking; how centralizing your pieces changes everything; how a knight defends the king marvelously even against an enemy Queen; how active defense should culminate in a powerful counterattack; how often a rook lift wins the game instantly. I especially enjoyed the final chapter of inspirational combinational themes with many diagrams.
Like a chess Socrates, Christiansen subtly points you in healthy directions where you may reach out and grasp nuggets of chess wisdom. This subtlety and Socratic quality is extraordinarily refreshing. It compares favorably to, say, Jeremy Silman, whose tirades remind one of a browbeating from a lunatic grandparent.
Many instructional books pretend that a well-played chess game is like an Algebra proof where the victorious side smoothly demonstrates the winning technique while the losing player watches and applauds. Christiansen corrects that misconception and teaches you, as Bronstein does, that games between good players are rarely seamless. Christiansen serves up reality: ups and downs, advantages lost and advantages gained, trade-offs and balances, epic battles, terrific struggles between great fighters. He peppers you with a million examples of grandmasters winning brilliantly after falling behind in the opening. With this large dose of reality Christiansen subtly frees you from lingering worries about the encyclopedic opening knowledge that you do not possess. Gradually it dawns upon you that the opening is merely preparation for the real battle. Beautiful teaching technique! You may have resisted such an idea had he stated it directly, so he simply gives you the proof and waits for you to arrive at the healthy conclusions: A good player should never worry just because he stands somewhat worse in the opening. A grandmaster takes it in stride and starts maneuvering his pieces skillfully, fighting hard to take over the game. You can do the same. What a healthy attitude!
That healthy attitude has improved my results immensely and, better still, it has made chess more enjoyable. Thanks to Christiansen I now approach my tournament games with a sensation of high freedom. It is sad to see players sitting down to their tournament games as grimly as if they were taking the SAT. I am grateful to Christiansen for giving me the perspective to see the chessboard as a supremely enjoyable playground.
It is a pity that opening books sell more than middlegame books simply because most chessplayers cannot tell what will help them most. Christiansen's Rocking the Ramparts has helped me infinitely more than a million opening books ever could. It is a great classic on attack and defense. It is the best chess book I have ever seen.
Postscript: If you are an Internet Chess Club (ICC) member, then you can play chess against Christiansen twice a week. Every week he gives a simultaneous exhibition against 40 opponents with a 45-minute time control. Also every week he gives an exhibition where he gives his opponents odds, or, if you prefer, a normal game, 3-minute Blitz. If you log on reasonably early and put your name on the list, then you, too, can do battle with the distinguished author of this book.
Rating:
Summary: Simply The Best
Review: On an impulse I bought this book one Saturday morning, took it home, and started playing through its analysis. Within thirty minutes I was engrossed, shocked by its sky-high-quality. I could not put the book down. I was sorry to return to work on Monday.
I am a veteran tournament chessplayer (USCF rated 2136) and own all the most respected chess books available in English. No other book grabbed my attention like this one. I give it my highest recommendation to any chessplayer at any level.
Naturally I sought out STORMING THE BARRICADES, Christiansen's earlier work, and found it just as good. These are the two best chess books I know.
Before stumbling across ROCKING THE RAMPARTS, I paid little attention to Christiansen, a multiple U.S. Champion whose most recent U.S. title came in 2002 against one of the strongest fields ever. His FIDE rating hovers in the low-2600s--sky-high but not quite in the world's top ten, because unlike Kasparov, Kramnik, etc., he is willing to play lower-rated GMs and IMs. Many GMs consider Christiansen the world's strongest tactician and attacker.
In this book Christiansen teaches tactics and attack in rich and varied detail that defies summarization. He teaches you how to generate terrific pressure by maneuvering your pieces to their optimum attacking positions. Then your opponent can barely move without getting smashed by a double-attack, a skewer, a fork, a pin, an X-ray attack, a decoy. As Christiansen writes, "in such positions short combinations and tactical devices are readily available in bulk quantites." Everyone does tactics exercises, but this book demonstrates how to SET UP positions where tactical devices start presenting themselves like salesmen. Nobody else teaches you this like Christiansen does. Probably nobody else can.
Unlike Vukovic, Averbakh, Silman, Aagaard, Keene, Euwe, etc., who rehash the same tired, old material (Lasker's double-bishop sacrifice in fifteen different books?) Christiansen dishes up dozens of fresh and inspired examples. He selected his own material. Bravo!
Christiansen's English is crisp and imaginative, filled with lively verbs and vivid nouns. Bishops pray for the knights they slaughter, queens charge into sacrificial glory, knights dream of conquering outposts, rooks long to wrap the enemy queen in a fatal embrace. Knights call to Kings, "Back in your cage!" and Bishops become "chairman of the board." Superbly written, clear as a bell. Three cheers for a native English speaker who knows how to use the language!
Christiansen's powerful and serviceable attacking principles, beautifully explained and illustrated, are easy to apply in your own games. I have already won two tournament games following his principle that every sacrifice that draws out the enemy king should be calculated as deeply as possible; for they work more often than you think. I won another game when I remembered that it is worth a pawn to lift your rook to the third rank; and keep looking for rook lifts, for they, too, are available in bulk quantities--if you know where to look. Centralizing two key pieces in the midst of an attack often generates more tactical possiblities than the opponent can meet. Avoid sacrifices that mobilize only part of your remaining army, as being stuck with one inactive piece can ruin your plans. Taking your time, slowly remaneuvering your pieces, can work wonders even after you have sacrificed material, when most players would be charging forward rashly. There's more, much more. Get the book and you can see it all.
After one weekend with this book, I started crushing players who had always beaten me before.
ROCKING THE RAMPARTS is suffused with a love for chess reminiscent of the Zurich, 1953 tournament book by David Bronstein. Yet Bronstein gave few variations, and his comments were directed at intermediate players. Imagine reading Bronstein with many more variations, offering serious help to veteran tournament players. Christiansen's book is better than Bronstein's classic. Yes, it is that great.
Christiansen must have labored hard to produce such an abundance of the highest-quality material. This book is big. I am amazed the publisher did not insist upon breaking it up into two or three books. Only Silman puts a similar amount of work into his books, but Christiansen is a much better player, possessing a vastly superior understanding of chess, and it shows. Silman is a great teacher but could never write a book of this caliber.
In sum, it is miraculous that such a book has been written and published. It is almost too good to be true.
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