Transpo Tricks in Chess

by Andrew Soltis

A transposition in chess is a little like a bait-and-switch marketing ploy. The customer thinks he’s getting a bargain on one piece of merchandise, but he ends up buying another at a much higher price. In the first book devoted to chess transpositions, New York Post columnist and acclaimed chess author Andy Soltis shows how this strategy works over the board. By transposing a series of well-known moves (i.e., making them in an unfamiliar order), a player leads his opponent into an unfavorable position that he would normally have shunned. Using entertaining examples from the games of the masters, Soltis covers a variety of transpositions in virtually every kind of double e-pawn, Sicilian, the Reti, English, Indian, and others.

Genres: Chess

224 pages, Paperback

First published September 1, 2007

Reviews

[patrick Lorelli · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is not just another chess book. This is a book that gives you different moves against some of doing the same defenses. For example the double e- pawn opening, or the Sicilian defense. These are just two but the author breaks down all of the standard moves and take an in depth look into the pros and cons of traditional and his new way. If you like to play chess then this is a book to at least take a look at if anything it will get you to think differently and that is what we need to do some times. To make the person we are playing against think what is he going to do next? He is not playing like he or she normally does. Advantage you. That is what I got out of this book. I got this book from net galley.

[Robert · Rating 4 out of 5]

I remember when a friend of mine was relying purely on the Slav Defense as Black to that extent, that even after 1 c4 he would stubbornly play 1...c6. However, he wasn't prepared for the transposition to Caro-Kan / Panno Attack after 2 e4!? d5 3 ed5 cd5 4 d4, which was cleverly exploited by the Hungarian GM J. Horvath. He lost the game in just 29 moves and as he told me later, I could see every White's move coming - but he couldn't figure out what to do against it.And here is another recent example of mine.Recently during the online blitz games, while experimenting with the King's Indian setup Nf6/g6/Bg7/d6, I was struggling to find a good plan against the Botvinnik setup c4/Nc3/g3/Bg2/e4&Nge2.Now, I'm aware that Bobby Fischer liked to play versus 1 c4 first 1...g6 (over 10 games), with the idea (as GM Ivan Leventic explained to me some 30 years ago) 2 Nc3 Bg7 3 g3 c5!? (sometimes 3...e5) followed by ...Nc6.
Still, I wasn't very keen to play this move order, since I never was a fan of the Symmetrical Defense.
However, what I realized just a couple of days ago, is that against the Botvinnik setup the Fischer prefered scheme g6/Bg7/c5/Nc6/e6/Nge7 could prove to be very resilient. And yet, these two examples of a possible transposition are not covered in Solti's book!?
I don't mention this to diminish the quality of the book. To the contrary, I want to emphasize how tricky this issue is and how easy it is to overlook such a simple move order.
So, kudos for Soltis for trying to bring some light to this very rarely covered subject, with a hope that the future books will do deeper research on this topic. 

[Ernie · Rating 2 out of 5]

I couldn't tell you anything about this book because I completely lost interest in it. Perhaps it would have come in handy if people didn't laugh at me every time I asked them for a game of chess.

I liked the display pictures ;)