A Gnat May Drink

"One Hundred Annotated Games of Chess from 1900 to 1999"

It has been more than twelve years since I finished and published A Gnat May Drink, and it is gratifying that Chess & Bridge approached me to arrange for the book to be re-issued. At the time the original edition was published I was very pleasantly surprised by the positive recognition that it received. There were favourable reviews in Chess and the British Chess Magazine as well as a number of other places, and the book was nominated for the British Chess Federation’s Book of the Year award for 2000. Above all, however, I cherished the enthusiasm with which A Gnat May Drink was received by my family and friends, and by team-mates at Ashtead Chess Club where many signed copies were distributed.
One of the questions that I have frequently been asked about the book (along with “It took you how long to write?”) is to identify my favourite games. No easy task – I believe each one of them has some feature of interest otherwise it would not have been included. However, in choosing ten games that have particular appeal to me I came up with those from 1900, 1903, 1919, 1923, 1936, 1949, 1954, 1976, 1982 and 1986. And 1967 too, although this is primarily because it enabled me to use the line “Calapso collapses”, which rather sadly still makes me chuckle.
Since the book was published much has changed in the chess world, most notably the inexorable increase in the potency of chess engines. In the five years between 1995 and 1999 that I spent writing the book, computer chess programs were strong enough to provide a useful blunder-check, as well as generating some ingenious ideas in complex tactical positions (and of course there are many of these in the one hundred games). Nowadays, the likes of Rybka and Fritz are so strong that I have no doubt that a full computer analysis of the games would uncover some further intriguing possibilities and potentially material errors in my analysis. However, although I have made a significant number of corrections to the text, I have not attempted to re-examine the analysis of the games in the book in immense detail, merely making modifications where I have discovered obvious analytical inaccuracies.
Chess publishing has changed, too, and happily for the better. The titles from Gambit and Quality Chess, and several masterpieces from McFarland, are but three examples of the considerable improvements across most of the chess publishing community. Thus I am delighted that this book is the first title published by Chess and Bridge's new publishing venture, LCCP The last decade has also been exciting for Barbara and me personally – so this time round I extend my dedication to include Marcus and Sam, our two lovely and lively little boys.
Jonathan Hinton
Surrey
September 2012