Book Reviews

A Winning Combination
Michael Tomlin

1000 Opening Traps by Karsten Müller and Rainer Knaak (CD), 2005
ChessBase, $34.95

Chessplayers have long placed a great deal of

importance on the opening. Whether that importance
is justified or even desirable may be another matter,
but one need only take a look at the selection of
books, CDs and other published material to realize
that the public seems to have an insatiable appetite
for most everything related to openings.

The question may be asked why there is such

emphasis on the opening. Ask most players and the
response you will probably get is that studying the
opening should allow you to get through the first
stage of the game without using a lot of time while
also holding out the prospect that an advantage might be achieved, one that will
carry through the entire game until the full point is secured.

Over the years, opening traps have been treated by a number of well-known
authors, including Al Horowitz, Bill Lombardy and Bruce Pandolfini, to name a
few. With the coming of the computer age, it is not a surprise that not only has
the study of openings moved to your desktop, but so has the subject of opening
traps.

ChessBase recently published a CD on opening traps by two German

grandmasters, Karsten Müller and Rainer Knaak. Most ChessCafe readers will
probably already be familiar with Müller’s work. The co-author of the splendid
endgame book Fundamental of Chess Endings, he writes the comprehensive
monthly endgame column Endgame Corner. Three other books by Müller deal
with tactics: The ChessCafe Puzzle Book, The Magic of Chess Tactics (co-
authored with Claus Dieter-Meyer) and Danish Dynamite (strictly speaking an
opening book, but the nature of this opening is quite tactical) co-authored with
Martin Voigt. Rainer Knaak may not be as well-known but he is no less
accomplished. Two very popular ChessBase programs, Attacking the Castled
King and the Trompowsky Attack have been authored by Knaak and he is also
the editor of ChessBase Magazine and the Mega Database.

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So how do two experienced grandmasters approach the topic of opening traps in

the 21st century?

From the Introduction:

The work on this CD has been spread over several years. It has
been a lot of fun. Discovering a new opening trap into which a
dozen people have already fallen (including grandmasters) is a
pleasure (despite the misfortunes of others) and expands one’s
own chess horizons. Looking into the fringes of chess theory also
brought into the light of day many a new variation or evaluation.
This is no wonder, since lines which have a bad reputation only
occur over the board by chance and then only between less strong
players. But previously, opening theory was compiled without the
help of computers.

When you consider that most of the known opening traps go back
to Znosko-Borovsky, it was time that there was a further
collection of them … [t]he work encompasses the total bandwidth
of opening theory from A00 to E99…

A player makes an obvious looking move; it appears normal – at

least at first sight. His move develops or takes something, or it can
be to ward off a threat. It is an apparently natural move, but it
turns out to be wrong…

Opening traps…can be divided into two categories:

A) On one hand there are opening traps in which the person

setting them deliberately chooses a line in which he hopes that his
opponent will make a mistake. The player setting the trap may
well be taking a risk: If his opponent should make the correct
move, then he himself is caught by the trap…

B) But if one simply plays one’s normal lines and the opponent is
suddenly faced with a situation in which the “normal” moves are
met by a (usually) tactical counterstroke, one can only
conditionally call this an opening trap. But avoiding such typical
mistakes is just as important and will therefore play a large part
on this CD.

This program installed without any problems. The stated system requirements
are Pentium 166, 32 MB RAM, Win98, WinME, Win2000 or WinXP. The
program is stand-alone; ChessBase Reader is included on the CD so you do not
need any other software (although I prefer to use Fritz or Junior to run these
programs).

After the Introduction and other preliminary sections (including a bibliography,

very unusual for CDs!) each opening section – and there are nine of them listed

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by ECO code covering the entire opening spectrum – is given a general

overview. These overviews are well thought out and give the reader a good idea
of the kind of traps to be found in each section. There are direct links to the
sections so the reader need not wade through hundreds of games to find the ones
wanted. This is very helpful.

Then the 1,000 games are presented, each with annotations, some deeper than
others, but always more than sufficient to illustrate what is taking place in the
trap. Many of these games also indicate how many times the trap appeared in
ChessBase's Mega Database, so you can get a good idea just how common it is.

After these core 1,000 games, there are two additional databases. The first is
called “Traps Motif” with additional opening traps presented by theme: Attack
on f7, attack on h7, motif based on Nd5, etc. There are over 300 games
(different from the core 1,000-game database) in this section; it is followed by
another database with 142 training exercises.

A few examples will give you a good idea of what you will find in this program.

The first comes from the section on the French Defense.

Xie Jun-Akhsharumova
1988 Thessaloniki ol (Women)
French Defense C02

1. e4 e6 2. d4 d5 3. e5 c5 4. c3 Nc6 5. Nf3 Bd7 6. Be2 Qb6 7. a3 c4 8. Nbd2

White is now ready for b2-b3, so there is only one move which should be played
here. 8…Nge7? There are 30 games with this position in Mega 2005, so it is
important to know the refutation. Strategically speaking the move is wrong,
because it takes no action against b2-b3. 9. Bxc4! Ng6 (9...dxc4? 10. Nxc4 Qa6
11. Nd6+ Kd8 12. Nxf7+ Kc7 13. Nxh8) 10. Be2 White is simply a pawn up.
10…f6 11. exf6 gxf6 12. Nf1 0-0-0 13. Ne3 Kb8 14. b4 Be8 15. O-O Rg8 16.
Ng4 Bg7 17. Nh6 Rf8 18. Qd2 Qc7 19. Rb1 Nce7 20. b5 e5 21. dxe5 fxe5 22.
Bd1 Nf4 23. Ng4 h5 24. Ne3 d4 25. cxd4 exd4 26. Nc2 d3 27. Nb4 Bxb5 28.
Bb2 Ne2+ 29. Kh1 Bxb2 30. Rxb2 Nf4 31. Ba4 Qa5 32. Bxb5 Qxb5 33. Rfb1
Rd7 34. Qe3 Rfd8 35. Ne5 Nxg2 36. Kxg2 Nf5 37. Qe4 1-0

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From the section on the Alekhine’s Defense:

Bopp-Ramini
IECG Email
Alekhine’s Defense B03

1. e4 Nf6 2. e5 Nd5 3. d4 e6? 4. c4

19x in Mega 2005 4...Bb4+? 5. Ke2! A surprising motif. White now wins a
piece. In the 19 games in Mega 2005 this strong move was not seen. 5…Nb6 6.
c5 Nc4 7. Qb3 Ba5 8. Qxc4 d5 9. Qc2 0-0 10. Nf3 b6 11. Nbd2 Ba6+ 12. Kd1
b5 13. Nb3 1-0

And last but not least, from the section on the King’s Indian Defense:

Bulthaupt-Panzer
1983 Germany
King’s Indian Defense E77

1. d4 Nf6 2. c4 g6 3. Nc3 Bg7 4. e4 d6 5. f4 0-0 6. Nf3 c5 7. d5 e6 8. Be2 Re8?

Over 50 games in Mega 2005, but the move is not a good one (8... exd5). 9. e5!
dxe5 10. fxe5 Ng4 11. Bg5 Qa5 (11...Qb6? 12. Qd2 Nxe5 13. 0-0 +-) 12. 0-0
Nxe5 (12...Nd7 13. Nb5 Ndxe5 14. Nxe5 Nxe5 15. Nd6 Rf8 16. Be7 Bd7 17.

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Ne4 f5 18. Bxf8 Rxf8 19. dxe6 Bxe6 20. Ng5 Bd7 21. Bf3 +- 1-0 Vaisser,A-
Georgiev,Ki/France 1996/CBM 055 ext35) 13. Ne4 Nxf3+ 14. Bxf3 Qb6 15. b4
exd5 16. bxc5 Qb2 (16...Qb4 17. Nf6+ Bxf6 18. Bxf6 Qxc5+ 19. Bd4 Qxc4 20.
Rc1) 17. cxd5 Na6 18. Rc1! Rxe4 19. Bxe4 Nxc5 20. Qf3 Bd4+ 21. Kh1 f5 22.
Bd3 b6 23. d6 Bb7 24. Bc4+ Kh8 25. Bd5 Ne4 26. Bxb7 Nxg5 27. Qg3 Ne4
28. Bxe4 fxe4 29. d7 Rd8 30. Rc8 Bf6 31. Rxd8+ Bxd8 32. Qb8 1-0

Perhaps the first reaction by many players when seeing a program (or for that
matter a book) about opening traps might be one of disdain or doubt. Will these
positions really arise in your games and what purpose is served by studying such
material? That attitude would be a mistake, at least as far as this program is
concerned. Tactics certainly abound here, but careful review of these thousand
traps will raise your awareness as you play through the first moves of any game.
The core database of one thousand games, complemented nicely by the two
additional databases of tactical motifs and training exercises, makes for a
winning combination.

Order 1000 Opening Traps

by Karsten Müller and Rainer Knaak

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