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The Colle System by: Adam Harvey

Publisher: Chess Enterprises
Release date: 1st March, 2003
Media: Paperback

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Customer Reviews -

Rating: - A worthwhile addition to chess literature

This book, which incidentally is entitled "Colle Plays the Colle System," brings together for the first time ALL of the extant games that Edgard Colle played using the opening system that bears his name. Apart from the 116 games, it includes a fascinating introduction with sections on Colle's career, the history of the Colle System and ideas behind the opening. As well as being an anthology, the games themselves have been set out in variation order, rather than chronologically, which makes the book a useful companion to other opening books on the Colle System. Using this method, the reader is able to see at a glance the different ways in which Colle and his opponents handled similar positions. If you play the Colle System, then this book is ESSENTIAL reading.

With most chess books these days concentrating on opening theory and being written by GMs or IMs who churn out seemingly endless reams of variations, it is refreshing to find a book which attempts to provide an entertaining read - no mean feat when writing a chess book! To this end, the author has included as much prose as possible, with the odd amusing comment, and includes a large number of contemporaneous quotes.

This is not to say that the book does not include any analysis. Nearly all of the games have notes and most of these have been drawn from magazines such as L'Echechier, Deutsche Schachzeitung and Kagans Neueste Schachnachrichten, which were published during Colle's lifetime; some of these include annotations by Colle himself. In addition, the author has deftly collated the differing opinions proffered by authors of other books on the Colle System to give a considered overview of the different opening lines and variations one can take (the notes to the famous Colle-O'Hanlon game are a fine example of this), but without overloading the reader with too much information.

Furthermore, the book contains numerous unpublished or hard to find games, and it is worth praising the depth of research that the author has bothered to take in this respect - this is a major failing of many current writers of chess books. One need only glance at the broad bibliography to see the extent to which the author has gone to obtain as much data as possible.

On the down side, there are a number of errors - missing letters, incorrect diagrams etc. - although I suspect these are down to the publisher rather than the author. This prevents me from giving the book a 5 Star rating, but it should be noted that these errors do not detract from the book's value.

To conclude, it is worth quoting Jeremy Silman, a respected chess author and International Master, who, in his own review of this book, gives the following summation:

"If you are intending to make the Colle your White system, the following two books are more than enough: Lane's THE ULTIMATE COLLE and Harvey's COLLE PLAYS THE COLLE SYSTEM. Players under 1600 can get everything they need from Mr. Harvey's book, and they will learn a lot about chess in the process. COLLE PLAYS THE COLLE SYSTEM is a worthwhile addition to chess literature. It has its flaws, but I for one am happy to have it in my library."

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