The Blackmar- Diemer Gambit KeyBook II byRev. Tim Sawyer The KeyBook II is here! Now the exciting Blackmar-Diemer Gambit is brought up-to-the-minute in this incredible volume, featuring the latest in computer-guided analysis (with unexpected results!), correspondence and e-mail tournaments, even high-rated blitz encounters from the Internet Chess Club! An unbelievable 2700+ games - many seen nowhere else - along with thousands of new analytical suggestions, makes the KeyBook II your complete "Play to Win" manual. Tim McGrew, a noted BDG expert, writes: "Tim Sawyers new KeyBook II brings together a staggering amount of fresh material, including recent games and unpublished analysis, in a well-organized format....it defines the state-of-the-art for this aggressive opening." And the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit is fun to play! White sacrifices one measly pawn in return for open lines, quick development, and early threats. For the pawn White gets dangerous attacking chances, and guarantees a lively and tension-filled struggle. In fact, this cut-throat opening wins a high percentage of games at every level, often in 20 moves or less! Not surprisingly, many Grandmasters have played the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, such as Tartakower, Velimirovic, Bellon, and Serper. Other Grandmasters have faced and lost to the BDG, including U.S. champion Joel Benjamin. At the club level the BDG is a deadly weapon, able to inspire fanatical devotion; here the BDG is a cult opening with its own magazines, websites and thematic tournaments. Years of careful research and testing have shaped the BDG into a powerful Kingside attacking machine - and now the KeyBook II propells this combative opening into the next millenium! "The Blackmar-Diemer Gambit is not a boxing jab; it is a knockout punch - and White gets to throw the first punch! Stop playing for the endgame; play to end the game! Be a winner. Play the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit!" -Tim Sawyer
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
32 of 33 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great opening for the attacking player,
By
This review is from: The Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, Keybook II (Paperback)
If you are a positional player who loves obscure maneuvering behind locked pawns, this book is not for you. If you are a GM or IM, you won't be reading this review. But for the rest of us class players, this is a great book. Chess is supposedly 99% tactics (Soltis would say 'calculation' rather than tactics) and the best and most fun way to learn how the pieces cooperate and coordinate is to play attacking chess. But you can spend months learning, say, the King's Gambit, and then never get a chance to play it in a world teeming with Sicilian, French, Caro-Kan and Modern defenses. By playing 1. e4, you are allowing Black to dictate which opening will be played. The beauty of the Blackmar-Diemer gambit is that (in my experience, at least) over 90% of the games are steered into a BDG or related system. If Black replies to 1. d4 with 1. ... d5, 2. e4 puts you directly into a BDG. If Black responds with 1 ... Nf6, you have a choice of transposing via the Veresov, 2. Nc3 or the Paleface Attack, 2. f3. Either approach will almost invariably land you in a BDG, so your study will not be wasted.I was a B-player when I bought the first edition of this book. After I read it, the only tournament game (40/90; G/1) I lost with it was to a master, who I later defeated with another BDG (I got lucky). I beat two experts and drew a B-player. The first edition has a lot of stuff that the newer edition leaves out, such as how to play against a Benoni, Pirc, and French, but the second edition has some great traps. The very first game in the book has a fantastic trap which I have sprung on four opponents in a few months; this stuff is usable! The downside is that this is a complex opening and is difficult to learn. On the bright side, you never get bored, since every game has a different complexion. If you are bored with cat-and-mouse positional maneuvering and want to slug it out toe-to-toe in the center of the ring, this book will show you how. The BDG is the only attacking opening I have been able to steer opponents into playing. There is a psychological shock value to it too--your opponent does not expect a Queen's Pawn player to start slugging it out with him. By all means, buy the book! It's a bit pricey, but has lots of useful information. Then read the Introductions and the general approach to the opening (which is clearly spelled out) and go out and play some Blitz chess. When you lose, as you frequently will in the beginning, then it is time to look up the variation in the Keybook, and it will be burned into your memory. There's nothing like an abject defeat to get your attention! A final comment. I find that an early Bd3 keeps me out of many unpleasant variations. Lasker's dictum, "Knights before Bishops" should really have been phrased "Play the Obvious before the Optional" Since the White Bishop belongs on d3, why not put it there before fooling around with other moves (assuming that you aren't hanging the d-pawn by putting it on d3). Be bold. Throw this opening at any opponent, regardless of rating. I guarantee that you will not be bored!
19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A bit of a rebuttal,
By "katgambit" (USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, Keybook II (Paperback)
I am a devotee of this opening. I have played it hundreds of times with excellent results. Two years ago I was a 1500 player who started studying tactics extensively and adopted an almost all gambit repertoire. Now my rating is usually 2000-2050. I owe a lot of the improvement to this opening.First, let me say that the book is quite adequately reviewed by Electra 10, Zilbermints and Ichino. To the extent that they have minor disagreements, I agree with Electra 10. I am writing this review to point out what I believe are errors, both objective and subjective, by the Chessgeek review. Chessgeek says the Teichman Defense (1 d4 d5 2 e4 dxe4 3 Nc3 Nf6 4 f3 exf3 5 Nxf3 Bg4) is best. The author's database statistics dispute that showing it scoring only 32% and a couple of the other defenses doing somewhat better. He then gives the continuation 6. h3 Bxf3 7. Qxf3 c6 8. Bd3 Qb6 with the idea of castling Queenside as a winning plan for Black. Unfortunately there is no such variation in this book, or anything close to it. The move 8. Bd3? is mentioned only once in a footnote (the "?" because it allows ...Qxd4). The mainline moves at move 8 are: Be3, g4, or Qf2. I thought maybe his 8. Bd3 was a typo and he meant the aforementioned "old" mainline move, 8. Be3, there are four 8. Be3 Qb6 move order games referred to in the book and White wins 3 of them and should have won the fourth as he blundered in a nearly won postion. His suggested line is not in my Blackmar-Diemer Gambit Mega CD that has about 15,000 BDG games. It is also not in the first Keybook either. Then Chessgeek mentions that you can play 1. d4 d5 2. e4 dxe4 3. Nc3 e5 with "...easy equality." This is the so-called Lemberger Counter Gambit. In my BDG database White's "old" move 4. Nxe4 is scoring 61% with a +128 performance rating! Hardly "easy equality." Sawyer advocates the "new" move, i.e., 4 Nge2, which statistically is performing nearly as well as 4. Nxe4. Moving on to the subjective, Chessgeek feels that White is under pressure and must play with great precision because he is a pawn down whereas Black can equalize and maybe win just by playing commonsense moves. As this author and other BDG authors have pointed out, the White position becomes so menacing that the pressure on Black is intense and often he has only one possible saving move (and often not a very obvious one at that)whereas White often has the luxury of several attacking plans. This mirrors my own experience playing this opening. Even though I know the system reasonably well, I have very few wins as Black. This is one opening that you can truly reap benefits by studying the main systems and attacking motifs presented in this book since you will have the opportunity to play a BDG every time Black answers l d4 with d5 and most of the time when he responds Nf6. It can be a lot of fun and can greatly simplify your opening system.
11 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Blackmar-Diemer Keybook II,
By Lev D. Zilbermints (Newark, New Jersey, United States) - See all my reviews
This review is from: The Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, Keybook II (Paperback)
I bought the second edition of the Keybook. It has a lot of interesting games, but, like Mr. Ted Ichino of California wrote, its main problem is that it does not address the issue of playing against the Benoni, French, Pirc, or Caro-Kann (i.e. the BDG Avoided). For this reason I give this book four stars.It has many of my games included, such as the Zilbermints Gambit in the Euwe Defense to the BDG (5...e6 6 Bg5 Be7 7 Bd3 Nc6 8 OO! Nxd4 9 Kh1!), and my recommendations against the Bogoljubow Defense. I am disappointed, however, by the games Drueke-Sawyer and Sawyer-Just not being analysed deep enough. Both games are critical to understanding my gambit against the 7...Nc6 variation in the Euwe Defense. For example, in the Drueke-Sawyer game, 12 Bh4 instead of 12 Qh4?! would have been OK for White. And in the Sawyer-Just game, instead of 13 Ne5? , White should have played 13 Bb5! But overall, even with typos, this is an excellent book. If you wish to learn the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, I strongly recommend you buy it. Buy the first edition (1992) too -- it has some great stuff the second one does not -- and use both to learn the BDG. Good luck!!
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