by Bruce Harper and Yasser Seirawan, 330pp. (HC) (2008 Chess'n Math Association)

Chess on the Edge is a three-volume work which contains all of Canadian Grandmaster Duncan Suttles' tournament games found as of the time of writing. The first volume contains 100 games organized by theme ("The Suttles Style", "Pawns", "The Center", etc.), plus 7 supplemental games. The second and third volumes contain another 513 games organized by opening (219 games in Volume 2, 294 games in Volume 3), plus 3 and 4 supplementary games, respectively.

All the games are annotated in depth. There are 628 diagrams in Volume 1, 585 diagrams in Volume 2 and 472 diagrams in Volume 3.

 

This, the second volume of the three-volume series of Canadian Grand-master Duncan Suttles' games, contains the games which begin with the "A" category of openings, using the opening classification system popularized by the Encyclopedia of Chess Openings. The classification of chess openings is difficult, and doubly so for Suttles' games. After two Anderssen's Openings and a Polish Opening, the reader will enter the labyrinth of "Unnamed Openings", where White plays 1.g3. Only after many games will more familiar English Openings appear, although with many unusual ideas and twists – including transpositions into other openings. The games in this area are sometimes hard to fathom, but they are well worth the effort. The line between Black and White can be blurry in Suttles' games.

Readers who are interested in picking up ideas in the Closed Sicilian for White will find Suttles on the Black side of these positions, facing the English opening. Similarly, devotees of the Pirc and Rat will find many games in this volume where Suttles plays these defenses with colors reversed. Those same enthusiasts will find much of interest when they arrive at the Rat games in the last third of this volume. Many of the games are of historical interest, showing how this opening developed, while others contain ideas and maneuvers which can still be effective today.