Matthew Sadler

Sadler on Books

The Russian Sphinx

Three new titles show that the chess opening book is still relevant. However, the five-star reviews are for new volumes about chess greats Alekhine and Korchnoi. These book reviews by Matthew Sadler were published in New In Chess magazine 2025#5 After diving into 4000 pages of Paul Keres last month, 300-page opening books now feel like an absolute breeze! This month, I reviewed a record number of titles.We start with Richard Palliser’s The Tricky Tromp from the rebranded Popular Chess label (formerly Everyman). One thing to note right away is that this book only covers the Trompowsky after 1.d4 ♘f6 2.♗g5, so it’s not a complete opening repertoire for White. But it will help you sidestep those pesky Nimzo-Indians and Grünfelds! In fact, Palliser pulls off a double sidestep by focusing on less popular Trompowsky lines. For example, after the main line 1.d4 ♘f6 2.♗g5 ♘e4rather than focus on the current main line 3.♗f4, Palliser picks up Julian Hodgson’s old favourite 3.h4 as well as re-examining175

GM Matthew Sadler

A monstrous Keres project

Now past fifty, Matthew Sadler finds himself looking backward as much as forward – and correcting a few false assumptions. His most recent reappraisal was prompted by a 4,013-page project on Paul Keres. These book reviews by Matthew Sadler were published in New In Chess magazine 2025#4 As I head towards my fifty-second year on this earth, I have the strange sensation of looking backwards as much as forwards. Plans for the future are tinged with a hint of melancholy because I’ve become aware that my life path has made some dreams very unlikely to happen. It’s the chess player’s equivalent of staring forlornly at your black pieces at move 30 and thinking, ‘What possessed me to play the Czech Benoni?’I don’t have too many regrets about the mistakes I’ve made in life, because life is something you figure out as you go along and accidents are bound to happen. However, I have felt quite irritated about some of the mistakes I’ve made in chess – strangely enough, not so much about the blunders175

GM Matthew Sadler

Seekers of the ultimate truth

These book reviews by Matthew Sadler were published in New In Chess magazine 2025#3 To players of my generation, the clash between Nimzowitsch and Tarrasch is still a burning issue! You truly feel some personal connection because you read Nimzowitsch’s My System as an impressionable teenager. Willy Hendriks chronicles the clash in his new book, full of humour and larger-than-life characters. At such times, a certain gloom (British understatement) about the life that awaits us is unavoidable, but chess books remain a ray of joy. In particular, I’ve loved the attention that authors of the past years have shown to the many facets of chess history. The publishing house Elk and Ruby has brought the grimly fascinating Soviet era of chess to life, highlighting the lives and games of many forgotten figures of that period, while, thanks to books about FIDE President Folke Rogard and Gideon Stahlberg, I seem to have spent many days reading about the Swedish175

Sadler on Books

100 Studies and 50 Mistakes

These book reviews by Matthew Sadler were published in New In Chess magazine 2025#2 In idle moments, I’ve sometimes found myself thinking to which period of chess history I would choose to return if given access to a time machine (well it beats thinking about work I guess!). My choice has fallen most often on the period between the two World Wars. Pretty much everything you could love about chess is in there: fantastic players (Capablanca, Alekhine, Lasker, and a host of other colourful and interesting characters), huge classical tournaments, the emergence of new chess approaches such as hyper-modernism, a growing professionalism in opening preparation leading to new systems and discoveries, but not so much that lifelong King’s Gambit romantics like Rudolf Spielmann couldn’t find a place in the world elite. However, chess history isn’t even a fraction of the whole story of course and chess players weren’t spared from the horrors of the rise of Nazism and the outbreak of war (the abovementioned175

GM Matthew Sadler

Timeless anecdotes

These book reviews by Matthew Sadler were published in New In Chess magazine 2025#1 In one of those chess books without chess in it, Peter Doggers manages to serve the contingent of new chess fans who started as Netflix watchers or YouTube subscribers. It is a worthy introduction to chess and the world behind it. My youngest nephew received a SIM card for his phone for Christmas which has led to some late-night calls from him (don’t tell his parents) excitedly explaining the ins and outs of an esports game called Rocket League. It involves flying cars playing football, it’s played professionally, and the best player in the world is a Frenchman called Zen. My nephew hasn’t shown much interest in chess so far but after the chess.com announcement that chess would be included in the inaugural 2025 Olympic Esports Games (next to games like Rocket League), maybe I’ll jump in his esteem!Announcements like this do make me feel my age. As a chess player175

GM Matthew Sadler

So confusing!

These book reviews by Matthew Sadler were published in New In Chess magazine 2024#8 The third volume of Viktor Korchnoi’s biography still does not bring clarity. So many things happen in Korchnoi’s games that they are sometimes very difficult to understand. It’s a strange feeling to read a modern repertoire book, Queen’s Gambit Accepted by Nicolas Yap, about an opening you have known extremely well, only to discover that every recommendation would have been considered completely unsound in your day! In all fairness, none of Yap’s lines are particularly well-known even a year after the publication of the book, but they have been played by super-grandmasters on various occasions.It’s always an interesting question for an older player like me to ponder why certain possibilities remained hidden to us in the pre-computer age, despite intensive analysis of that opening over many years. I certainly thought a few times about meeting 1.d4 d5 2.c4 dxc4 3.e4 with175

GM Matthew Sadler

Clarity or Chaos in Chess

These book reviews by Matthew Sadler were published in New In Chess magazine 2024#6-7 The modern world is a confusing place. Aren’t chess players lucky to live in this rational parallel world, where an engine can provide clarity in any position? Or should we ignore the objective truth, take risks, embrace chaos and strive to use our intuition creatively? The modern world is a confusing place. And it’s not just what happens that’s baffling. The biggest confusion lies ahead when you try to form a view! You wade through myriad explanations of what has happened and why, amid a deluge of fake news and bots. All the while, you’re aware that your own prejudices (some conscious, some inferred by algorithms) limit the breadth of opinions you are exposed to. It makes you long for the rational world of chess, where an engine can show you the guaranteed best move in any position...So why is my confusion in chess just as great as in life? After all, in chess, engines aren’t trying to trick175

GM Matthew Sadler

Amazingly subtle endgames

These book reviews by Matthew Sadler were published in New In Chess magazine 2024#5 Milos Pavlovic has managed to write an interesting book full of boring openings. But luckily a massive endgame manual by Jacob Aagaard works pretty well as entertainment rather than just as instruction. After the recent European Championship football final, The English Defence (Everyman) feels like a risky topic for Spanish Grandmaster Jose Gonzalez to put in front of an English reviewer! In 316 pages, Gonzalez presents a complete repertoire for Black based around 1.d4 e6, which has been the perennial favourite of English free spirits such as Plaskett, Keene, Miles and Speelman (even Sadler sometimes ☺). Gonzalez also takes care to deal with all the annoying ways that White can avoid this line, most notably 2.♘f3 (recommending a lovely Rapport Stonewall Dutch line also analysed by Sedlak for Quality Chess) and 2.e4 (with a transposition back to the French). Reading the book made me somewhat nostalgic. In175

Sadler on Books

‘I am so angry I could burst’

These book reviews by Matthew Sadler were published in New In Chess magazine 2024#4 Three excellent books about Simen Agdestein, Mark Dvoretsky and Bobby Fischer each contained some amazing stories.by Matthew Sadler One of the things that struck me when I started work after my professional chess career was how little energy I needed to work at a decent level compared to chess. Anything less than eight hours’ sleep and a chess disaster was looming, whereas I’ve worked off four hours’ sleep for most of my (single) life and rarely felt the effects. Even with plenty of rest, by the time I’d got halfway through a classical tournament, I could feel myself retreating into a narrow, ‘programmed’ state where I was capable of doing everything related to chess but nothing else. At a certain moment during a tournament, I couldn’t read novels anymore (tiredness made me too sensitive to bad things happening to the characters) and I became quite vulnerable to the effect of negative comments (which led175

Sadler on Books

Adult Improvement

These book reviews by Matthew Sadler were published in New In Chess magazine 2024#3 Books dedicated to adult improvement can have long-lasting value. Especially the human thought process around the moves (below elite level) hasn’t changed as much in the past thirty years as you would think.by Matthew Sadler We start this month’s reviews with some books dedicated to (adult) improvement, starting with Perpetual Chess Improvement by Ben Johnson (New In Chess). Over the last few years, Ben Johnson’s Perpetual Chess Podcast has become a haven for intelligent conversation about chess, covering a wide range of topics such as elite chess and chess books! One popular series within the podcast is dedicated to ‘Adult Improvers’, where amateurs with varied chess backgrounds explain how they train and try to improve. This series – running now since 2017 – was the inspiration for Perpetual Chess Improvement, with 41 interviews providing a host of tips, tricks and discussion material! The book is divided175

Sadler on Books

Real chess is ugly and dirty

This book review by Matthew Sadler was published in New In Chess magazine 2024#2 Matthew Sadler wanted chess to be a clean and simple game. He desired to win with a carefully prepared opening and a clear middlegame strategy. But chess more often resembles a dizzying mix of refined play and the brutal desire to win any position by any means, all interrupted by a manic time-trouble phase. One of my biggest failings as a professional chess player was that – in my heart – I wanted chess to be a simple, clean game. Direct opening schemes polished by careful preparation leading to clear middlegame strategies powered to victory by precise calculation – that’s what I desired, especially with the white pieces! This yearning was so strong that I tailored my preparation towards that goal in every variation of every opening. When it worked, it went beautifully. However, this approach made me inflexible and vulnerable to the inevitable glitches of practical play. I wasn’t helpless when things did not175

GM Matthew Sadler

A blast from the past

These book reviews by Matthew Sadler were published in New In Chess magazine 2024#1 There are many wonderful chess books that instruct you, inspire you with unexpected new ideas or make you think about chess strategy in a fresh way. However, there is also a very rare type of writing that essentially puts a mirror in front of your soul as you read it. We start off this month’s reviews with a blast from the past! Dutch grandmaster Paul van der Sterren’s autobiography was first published in the Dutch language in 2011 as Zwart op Wit, looking back on an eventful career that stretched from first beginnings in 1969 to his retirement from professional chess in 2001. I was just starting to emerge from retirement when Zwart op Wit came out and didn’t catch it the first time around so I was intrigued to read the English translation appropriately entitled In Black and White. Just before I forget, I have to mention how impressed I was by the quality of the translation by Peter Boel. I don’t think Peter175