Bitter & Twisted

Probably just as well you drank all that beer, otherwise it might have hurt too.

Bitter is good. Over the past decade I've definitely become a devotee of heavily hopped ales. Though I do like a good English ale as well, hard as they are to come by in this part of Toronto (local bar serves a toxic mess of ale that's been sitting in the tanks since D day).. There's a wonderfully bitter IPA brewed not ten miles from here, but, of course, unavailable in these parts.

You really ought to let me drive. I've no license to lose!

I think we should talk about chess books more here (rgcm, that is, not ukfdra) I'm browsing the "candidates 68" book, inspired by a recent discussion as to Spassky's strength (looks like I actually underestimated him!).

So a question to all. What pre-1990 chess book do you think is worth discussing here and now? Let's leave off some classics, such as Zurich

William Hyde

Bill, wouldn't it be easier to list post-1990 chess books that are worthwhile? At least they'd be fewer in number. Anyway, for what it's worth, a few of my pre-1990 favorites:

Decisive Games in Chess History, by Ludek Pachman (1972) The Kings of Chess, by William Hartston (1985) Dynamic Chess, by R.N. Coles (1966) The Human Side of Chess, by Fred Reinfeld (1952) Soviet Chess: Chess and Communism in the USSR, by D.J. Richards (1965) Logical Chess: Move by Move, by Irving Chernev (1957) My Best Games of Chess, by Alexander Alekhine (two volumes,

Grandmaster Achievement and The Sicilian Labyrinth by Lev Polugaevsky.

My thought was that these have been discussed here quite a bit in the past few years, as have certain classics from the earlier period. But some great books are sliding into obscurity. Or so it seems to me.

A remarkable book, full of real games played under stress.

I thought it was OK, but no more. Why was I wrong?

IIRC I have never even seen a copy of this. Could you tell me a bit more about it?

Very enjoyable.

This also sounds like something I should read.

A perennial favourite. I wish I had seen this book when I was a B player.

I read volume one by the "predict Alekhine's next move" method, then didn't have the energy to do volume two.

Another book I should have read when younger. For years I played, not so much to win, as to avoid ever losing a pawn. I never sacrificed anything unless I could prove that the material would come back, or mate result. Chess became much more fun when I started sacrificing - soundly or otherwise.

William Hyde

And Pachman does a good job of setting the scene. So often, examining a game in the quiet of one's home, one sees it in isolation, as an abstract composition. But Pachman puts the game in full context, telling the reader about the players, the tournament standings at that moment, what was at stake, and what effect the game may have had on later history. And his selection of games is good; many are ones where careers were made or unmade, or that marked the end of an old era and the beginning of a new, or were similarly significant.

I wouldn't say you were wrong; probably just a matter of taste. There are lot of similar books in this genre, the general historical survey of the world champions and their major rivals. I like Hartston's prose style and personal insights, e.g. Alekhine's "book of the [New York] 1927 tournament ... lays out in great detail all this thoughts about Capablanca. It is one of the greatest character assassinations in chess literature."

It's somewhat like Euwe's "The Development of Chess Style," a general historical survey, but concerned less with individuals and more with the development of opening theory, strategic ideas, and most of all the concept of dynamic play. Starting with the time of Morphy, it discusses the development of chess through the Romantic, Classical, and Hypermodern periods into the era of Soviet hegemony.

It has quite a number of minor factual errors (Winter compiled a long list), but I don't feel that detracts much from the book's main theme, which is to portray the world champions as human beings and give insights to their personalities. Loved his image of Alekhine voluntarily locking himself in an oubliette to play Capablanca.

It's an academic work by an Oxford don. Compared to Soltis' "Soviet Chess 1917-1991" it's more scholarly, game-poor but fact- and history- rich, drawing on a lot of Russian sources most Western writers would not have. Has a lot about the administrative aspects of the Soviet chess machine, and the propaganda use chess was put to in the USSR.

It's the book that, more than any other, changed me from a complete patzer to a B-player.

Noting the x-post, I wonder if the pub (name lost due to beer) in Eton still has a strong chess club?

Some others I find very useful and interesting:

Chess Tournament Crosstables 1851-1900 (1969) Chess Tournament Crosstables 1901-1910 (1971) Chess Tournament Crosstables 1911-1920 (1972) Chess Tournament Crosstables 1921-1930 (1974) Chess Tournaments — A Checklist 1849-1950 (1985) Chess Personalia (1987)

All the above by that supreme chess archivist, Jeremy Gaige. And I should mention:

Hundert Jahre Schachzweikämpfe 1851-1950 by Dr. P. Feenstra-Kuiper (1967)

These are all pure reference tomes for the serious chess historian or history buff, probably not all that interesting to the average reader. I find them invaluable in preparing the International Chess Calendar every year

Another similarly useful book, which does have some narrative text and is therefore more accessible, is "Chess: The Records" by Ken Whyld (1986). Beaucoup data on World Championships (men's, women's, juniors, U-16, correspondence, blind, etc.), Candidates tournaments and matches, Olympiads, major tournaments, national and major city championships, etc.

"Draw!" by Wolfgang Heidenfeld (edited by John Nunn) - a marvellously annotated game collection.

The availabilty to read old material on-line opens up new possibilities. The Westminster Papers and City of London Chess Magazine, available on google books, read very well. I found A Century of British Chess quite interesting reading, as are the books of the

More and more is becoming available all the time. Recently, many of Steinitz' columns in the NY Tribune (through August 1891, and picking up again from Jan 1893 through Apr 1893 at the moment) became available through the Library of Congress website, and I imagine that it will not be long before all of them appear there. He was really an excellent annotator. I have not seen his International Chess Magazine; the mix of wonderful analysis and violent personal attacks would prpbably make excellent reading.

Jerry Sp> >

"Draw!" by Wolfgang Heidenfeld (edited by John Nunn) - a marvellously annotated game collection.- Hide quoted text -

To put in a plug for an obscure modern book, I recommend Luftmenschen: Die Schachspieler von Wien for all those who read German.

Jerry Spinrad

snipped-for-privacy@vanderbilt.edu wrote: .

Trans: How to fly the Fw-190, eat sausage & play chess all @ the same time..

m.

Ah yes, the FW-190:

A very good plane, though by the time of the Allied invasion the Luftwaffe didn't have many pilots of comparable quality. I recently read the comments of an inexperienced German pilot who got to fly but two sorties in an FW-190, in 1944. In the second his squadron was attacked by P-38s. He described the ensuing action as "being chopped up by experts."