Book review: Lakdawala's book of Nezhmetdinov's best games

The Greatest Attacker in Chess: The Enigmatic Rashid Nezhmetdinov

By Cyrus Lakdawala

New in Chess 2022, 288 pages

This is a collection of 116 games by the legendary attacking player Rashid Nezhmetdinov (1912-1974). Although 'only' an International Master (Alekey Zakharov reveals why here), Nezhmetdinov was one of the greatest tacticians in chess history. His games are wonderful.

Try Lakdawala's sample pages, or the links to Douglas Griffin's blog below, if he's new to you.

It was high time that a new collection was published, since both the English translation of Nehzmetdinov's own best game collection and IM Alex Pishkin's Super Nezh Chess Assassin (both published in 2000) have long been out of print.

In this book the games appear in chronological order. High-profile victims include Tal, Spassky, and Polugaevsky. 1 e4 is usually the order of the day when Nezhmetdinov plays White.

IM Lakdawala, a very prolific author, has annotated the games well. Although I am personally not keen on some of his more purple prose, that is a matter of taste. The games tend to be complicated, yet Lakdawala generally succeeds in avoiding excessively long computer-generated variations. I like the 'moments of contemplation' he sometimes introduces after a diagram, which often lead to a useful 'principle'.

The best feature of the notes is the exercises that feature in each game. The author helpfully signals whether we are looking for a combination, a plan, or making a critical decision. I don't think readers should worry about finding it tough to solve these positions. My playing strength decreases in chaotic positions, and some of the exercises are too difficult for me. But I found myself learning a lot just from attempting to predict Nezhmetdinov's calculations, and this is a fun way to get actively involved in the games.

Here is a relatively straightforward example:

I wondered whether more thought could be given to the layout of the exercises. The reader has to be quite adroit at covering up the solution in each case.

This will no doubt be the standard Nezhmetdinov collection for some time - it deserves to be so.

My remaining comments are of less significance, hence the new section.
****
In the stunning game Nezhmetdinov-Tal, USSR Championship 1961, a slightly wrong move order is given in the opening. This could have been avoided by consulting Nezhmetdinov's own annotations as translated on Douglas Griffin's blog, a major source for Soviet-era chess.

Griffin's translation of Nezhmetdinov's notes to his immortal win against Polugaevsky was also very much worth using.

The title and front cover don't seem particularly well judged. The Greatest Attacker in Chess - greater than Alekhine, Tal, Kasparov? And why 'enigmatic'? This never becomes clear, unless the enigma is how a late-starter from such a disadvantaged background could become so strong.

The other oddity on the cover is that it proclaims: '17 million views on YouTube'. You have to turn to the back-cover blurb to learn that this doesn't refer to a video by Lakdawala, but to the efforts of 'Agadmator'. This appears a lapse on the publisher's part.

The brief biography of Nezhmetdinov is entertaining. However, it appears to rely heavily on Jessica Fischer's video series https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=T_Io7jbHsYs

This is entirely understandable as anything else would require the ability to search through Russian-language archival sources. But since Fischer's videos, fascinating though they are, do not cite any sources, a full biography of Nezhmetdinov is still awaited.