Tag: chess

A review of Endgame by Frank Brady

Anyway, there’s a nice account here (in chapter 15) of Fischer looking for an apartment in Reykjavik in his last years, complaining and kvetching all the while. (Brady writes that, ‘Before he made a move, everything had to be perfect.’ Just as with his chess.) Read in a certain light, it’s hilarious and you could very well imagine it as a Woody Allen sketch. Now what does that tell you?

A review of Schlechter’s Chess Games by Tom Crain

width = “80” height = “110”> This book contains pretty much all of Schlechter’s available games – about eight hundred in number – arranged chronologically by tournament and match; and there is also a section devoted to miscellaneous games: exhibition games, games played at odds, etc. Just the bare score of the game is given; there are no, or to be precise, very few annotations.

A review of Capablanca by Edward Winter

We follow his chess career from prodigy to young pretender to world champion; and even though the loss to Alekhine took the wind out of his sails for a bit, renewal and revitalisation followed soon after. He continued to show his calibre at Carlsbad 1929, Moscow 1936, Nottingham 1936 and elsewhere.

A review of The King’s Gambit for the Creative Aggressor by Thomas Johansson

One practical advantage to playing the King’s Gambit is that you cannot get sidetracked into other openings. If you play the Spanish or the Scotch, for example, you have to reckon with encountering the Philidor or the Petroff (amongst others) instead. There’s none of that here: with 2.f4 White sets out his stall and determines the future course of the play.

A review of Blindfold Chess: History, Psychology, Techniques, Champions, World Records, and Important Games by Eliot Hearst and John Knott

One especially fine section of the book concerns itself with Miguel Najdorf’s blindfold simultaneous displays of the 1940s; and the authors are to be highly commended for their research in bringing to light the full scale of Najdorf’s achievement. They make a convincing case that Najdorf should be regarded as the holder of the world record (on 45 boards), rather than Koltanowski, the generally accepted record holder.

A review of The Safest Grunfeld by Alexander Delchev and Evgenij Agrest

It’s uncertain whether White’s pawn superiority in the centre will turn out to be a strength or a liability. But what’s meant by ‘safest’ here are those lines that are relatively straightforward, positionally based and, insofar as is possible, not dependent on long forcing tactical variations to make them viable.

A review of 1000 Checkmate Combinations by Victor Henkin

That being said, 1000 Checkmate Combinations is an excellent book containing a wealth of tactical examples, including 456 (!) exercises. The solutions could perhaps have been more fulsome and detailed, since usually only the main line of a combination is given.

A review of Mastering Positional Chess by Daniel Naroditsky

We are given a good number of mainly modern games and positions, rather than the usual tired examples (or classics as they are sometimes called), with a fair number of them Daniel’s own. As you might imagine, Naroditsky’s annotations are especially candid and lucid when he comes to commentate on his own games.