Recently, we had attacks here on Taylor Kingston's review of Soltis'
books by Phil Innes and GM Ray Keene, OBE.

The attacks were silly and self-contradictory: first, Kingston was
accused of paying special attention to a specific game (Duras-Teichman
1906) and still missing a mistake in the analysis, no doubt because
Kingston is not of master strength. Then, when it turned out that
Kingston actually only mentioned the historical introduction to the
game in the context of criticizing Soltis' historical writing in the
book, they criticized Kingston for *NOT* paying attention to the game,
no doubt because Mr. Kingston knows he cannot really check analysis,
not being of master strength.

So first Kingston paid special attention to a certain game and then he
didn't pay enough attention to it. Well, which one is it? Doesn't
matter, as long as Kingston can be attacked unfairly.

That aside, The real point of this criticism is nothing that Kingston
wrote or didn't write. It is the "general principle" that one should
ignore book reviews by non-masters (or as as they are known today,
grandmasters...) I admit that there is something to it (the best
reviews, I think, are written today by the likes of John Nunn and
Richard Forster, who are *both* knowledgeable about chess history and
strong players; and a complete patzer will probably not be a good
reviewer.) However, it is simply not true that one cannot be a good
reviewer without being a master, or that masters are necessarily good
reviewers.

But above all, I wonder: does GM Keene, OBE, *REALLY* want us to judge
his books by what masters wrote about them? Does he want his friend and
co-author, Eric Schiller, to have HIS books judged by what masters
wrote about them?

I doubt it.

To give a short selection, Hans Ree claimed Keene cannot be bothered to
spend time in his writing on "trifles such as truth and style"; John
Donaldson called his books "potboilers" and accused him--truthfully--of
plagiarising his work; Paul Lamford accused him of writing "Keene
junk"; B. H. Wood (the editor of CHESS) said he can "claim anything on
the slightest evidence"; Korchnoi (not exactly a patzer) called him "a
man without moral scruples" when it turned out that he was busy--what
else?--writing a book about the Korchnoi-Karpov 1978 match when he was
supposed to be acting as Korchnoi's second. This, of course, doesn't
stop GM Keene, OBE, from bragging that "Grandmaster Ray Keene was
Korchnoi's chief second during this wild chess extravaganza and this
book tells the inside story" in the web page selling the same book on
Hardinge Simpole's web site.

As for his friend Eric Schiller, Tony Miles called one of his book
"utter crap" (this being the complete review) and Carsten Hansen called
another "the worst book I have ever seen". Hugh Myers called him an
"assassin of chess history" and, as it turned out, proved that Schiller
praised as "best" a book about Nimzowitsch's defense that does not even
exist, apparently in a bungled attempt to "get back" at Myers (who
published a book about same defense) for criticizing him.

If I were GM Keene, OBE, I would probably try to get *more* non-masters
to review chess books, not less. If one could get a a total patzer
ignorant of chess history--a member of Keene's and Schiller's target
audience, in other words--a post as a chess book reviewer (presumably
by offering the editor money), then Keene or Schiller's latest book
might have half a chance of being reviewed positively. As far as the
opinion of GMs about their work, however, it is uniformally that of
disgust and justified derision.