The Livonian Knight: Selected Games of Alvis Vitolins

En bok med 25 utvalgte partier av angrepsspilleren Alvis Vitolinsh fra Latvia, en sparringpartner med landsmannen Mikhail Tal. Dette en engelsk utgave av en lettisk bok i 2008, nå med forord av Sosonko, som også kjente Vitolinsh.

Forlagets egen omtale:

Alvis Vitolins (1946-1997) was a seven-time chess champion of Latvia, a player with a ferocious attacking style, and one of the game’s last true openings innovators in the pre-computer age. He was a world-class blitz player and was a regular blitz sparring-partner of his friend, world champion Mikhail Tal. Vitolins often deployed gambits, and his attack-minded novelties in the Ruy Lopez, Sicilian, Nimzo-Indian and Bogo-Indian set trends that were copied at top-level chess, including in world championship and candidates matches. He gained the International Master title in 1980.

Through an analysis of 25 of his most exciting games, this book, first published in Latvia in 2008, tells the reader of Alvis’s chess legacy, which includes many breathtaking Talesque sacrifices. Additional full games and fragments from Vitolins’s career are incorporated in the annotations. Opponents include the authors of this book as well as grandmasters Alexei Shirov, Vladimir Bagirov, Vladimir Tukmakov and other stars of Soviet and post-Soviet chess.

The book contains a new foreword specially written for the English edition by Genna Sosonko, who met Vitolins on several occasions.

Fra forordet til Sosonko:

Tal had a plus score in the endless blitz games they played, but Alvis still managed to beat his famous opponent numerous times, usually with quick, crushing attacks worthy of Tal himself. Vitolins was a brilliant blitz player, able to defeat anyone when he was in the mood.

As I watched the games, I saw exactly what Tal meant when, during analysis, he would sacrifice material for an initiative and, rubbing his hands together, said, “And now, let’s play like Vitolins...”

Alvis became a master at the age of 16 – very early by that time’s standards. His former rivals, now grizzled veterans, remember Vitolins as one of the most talented players of that 1960s generation. All of them said that Alvis loved chess with all his heart and had a very unique, different understanding of the game.

The Latvian master’s motto was “The initiative, by any means necessary!” He created positions where two or even one pawn were sufficient compensation for a piece, because the remaining pieces became fiercely active. He would get the absolute maximum out of these pieces, and such sacrifices were often followed by the most amazing events. His opponent’s numerically superior forces suddenly turned sluggish and uncoordinated, while Vitolins’s attacks grew stronger with every move.

The opponent’s king was often the main target of the aggression, but Vitolins’s main goal for these sacrifices was to make his pieces as energetic as possible. A quarter of a century later, another Latvian player, Alexei Shirov, embraced a similar approach to chess.

Even though everyone agreed that Vitolins’s chess potential was enormous, the Latvian master didn’t managed to fully realize it. His mind overflowed with ideas, and so in classical play Alvis could become fascinated with a spectacular move, a pretty, tempting, but not entirely correct combination,