The latest contender for chess book of the year examines the intricacies of the ever-tempting bishop sacrifice.
 
My second nomination for chess book of the year is Sacking the Citadel: The History, Theory and Practice of the Classic Bishop Sacrifice by Jon Edwards {Russell Enterprises}.
 
It always looks so tempting: the enemy knight chased from the key defensive square at f6, our bishop unobstructed on the b1-h7 diagonal, knight on f3, queen on its starting square ready to race to h5 or d3. Most of us have tried Bxh7+ at one time or other, and most of us probably have experience of messing it up. When is the sacrifice sound? What forces does White need to press home the attack? What defensive resources can Black conjure up to frustrate us? .. These are the questions Edwards addresses.
 
Divided into three parts, the book begins with Greco and the discovery of the sacrifice, followed by a survey of the work of Vukovic and other key theorists, and closes with 300 games. Most are annotated lightly by today's computer-enhanced standards, which comes as a relief. Do we really need two pages of annotations on a single move? Well, sometimes actually we do. Take Colle-O'Hanlon, Nice 1930, a game still subject to very keen analytical debate (and well worth playing through if you haven't before). Here we get not just two, but three full pages of commentary after O'Hanlon's 13 Kg6; I found every line fascinating.
 
I was also surprised by the variety of openings that can give rise to the standard starting position for the sacrifice – the Petroff, King's Gambit, Ruy Lopez, Queen's Gambit Declined, Nimzo-Indian, Polish, you name it. But it is probably in the French that it most frequently occurs, as in the diagram position.