Reti: Move by Move by Thomas Engqvist

Of the Capablanca-era Move by Moves, my clear favorite.

Jan 27, 2024

Let’s get this out of the way: I think that Reti: Move by Move is the best in the series for understanding other players during Capablanca’s reign.

There are a few reasons for this:

The selection of games is the best for getting a handle on Reti’s style and personality.
The openings and resulting positions in said games are the most interesting.
Personally, I just preferred Reti’s approach to games in general over Rubinstein, Nimzowitsch, and Capablanca.

This is not the first Move by Move book I’ve read or reviewed. At the time I read it was my fifth foray into the series. You know what to expect at this point. But I do want to point out what stands out above the others in this particular game collection.

Like Nimzowitsch, Reti experimented a lot in the opening, and engaged in a lot of debates over the board about the efficacy of hypermodern concepts. 1.Nf3 was known as Zukertort’s opening, though Zukey almost always transposed to a more main line opening shortly thereafter. Reti, however, fully deserves the namesake. If you’re curious about the English Opening or Reti Opening/System, I think this particular collection will hold a lot of extra value for you, since these are frequent appearances in Reti’s games.

Reti was also known for slightly renegade middlegame plans. These weren’t always correct, but they were almost always interesting, and that adds to the entertainment value apart from the education you might also receive. Reti’s instructive. His lack of exacting accuracy means that against tougher competition he didn’t always shine brightest, but there’s more to chess than average centipawn loss. Reti’s set of games from the New York 1924 tournament contained in this book are blazingly daring and impressive. Reti defeated Capablanca and Alekhine with the White pieces using 1.Nf3 (and, somehow, 31.Rd5) and these games are instructive. It’s one of the clearest triumphs of hypermodernism over the classical school — so much so that Capablanca and Alekhine both would later begin to adopt some of the less extreme ideas. One wonders if their handling by Reti in this tournament contributed to that shift.

As well, I think this book most clearly shows the changing sensibilities Reti possessed as one of the top hypermoderns of his short-lived era. Reti was a romantic player at heart, even as he shifted from the King’s Gambit to the Queen’s Gambit and Spanish Game to the Reti and English openings. In this sense, he is a much more lively player than Nimzowitsch, who I wouldn’t really describe as a romantic in any way (at least as it comes to Chess), though Engqvist uses the poignant “neo-romantic school” as a stand-in for “hypermodern” and obviously Nimzo falls under this umbrella along with Reti and Breyer.

Really instructive in the beginning in the book is the brief description of Reti’s “idiosyncracies.” Listed:

Castling late in the game.
Delaying development of the bishops, particularly the queen’s bishop — and often for good reason.
Not pushing the d- and e-pawns until the middlegame.

There are many examples of this in this collection, and it’s always diligently pointed out when appropriate. As well, multiple times, Engqvist points out occurrences of the so-called “hypermodern paradox” (originally coined by Reuben Fine"), in reference to the act of when the center is finally occupied by pawns with nothing to stand in their way — an apparent specialty of Reti’s! These games and each mention of the paradox were always a treat and make a striking case for trying something outside of the usual box.

In short, I recommend Reti: Move by Move — so far it’s the best one I’ve read and the one I found most entertaining and interesting. Beside the aforementioned NY1924 games, Game 25 (R.Reti-F.Fischer, Vienna 1923), Game 27 (R.Reti-A.Rubinstein, Carlsbad 1923), and Game 39 (R.Reti-P.Romanovsky, Moscow 1925) were some of my favorites.

Lastly, I will show you this striking example (Game 39), but the analysis itself is well worth digging into. Engqvist ends his annotation by drawing the reader’s attention to White’s d- and e-pawns, which ended the game on the third rank.

If you like how this game looks, you should pick up this book, because there are plenty of cool games like this and more. It might even make you start playing 1.Nf3.