Kirjahaku

A companion volume to Larry Evans's selection from the 1960's, this book takes the story of the best games of the top players from the beginnning of the 20th century up to 1940. This volume is arranged chronologically and reaches the period of the Second World War. The games by such immortals as Capablanca, Alekhine, Lasker, Botvinnik, Nimzowitsch and Rubinstein are annotated with the customary lucidity, authority and elegance synonymous with Golombek.

Morphy, Charousek, Pillsbury, Fischer...the history of chess is illuminated by shooting stars who burn briefly across the chess firmament, only to vanish without trace. The parabolic career of the Latvian genius Mikhail Tal conforms all too well to this astonishing pattern. As a virtually unknown student in 1957 Tal swept aside the revered phalanxes of Soviet Grandmasters and ultimately annihilated the Red Czar of Soviet chess himself - Mikhail Botvinnik - all within a mere three year period.

Jose Capablanca was a phenomenon who burst onto the chess world and took top prize in the first ever elite tournament in which he participated. This was at San Sebastian - otherwise known as Donostia - in the Basque country of Spain in 1911. Capablanca's style was serene - no position seemed to trouble him, and he crushed most of the established European grandmasters with seemingly little effort. Only against the mighty Lasker did he experience serious problems. Then in 1921 Capa - as he was known - obliterated Lasker in their world title match and took the championship without losing a single game. Other triumphs followed, such as London 1922, and Capablanca acquired the legend of an invincible superman when he went for 8 years without losing a game! His supreme moment was in New York 1927 - a quadruple round trial of strength between Capa himself Alekhine, Nimzowitsch and three other contenders for the crown. Capa whitewashed the field, creating a fresh masterpiece practically every day. Possibly this easy victory left him over-confident for later the same year he lost his world title to Alekhine.

All too often chess openings books consist of reams of variations and sub-variations and bracketed sub-sub-variations, with no apparent explanation for why a move is chosen or why one path deserves precedence over another. Golombek fought tenaciously against this denigration of his art, for he considered chess an art form. The Grandmaster Emeritus always sought to explain the ideas behind the moves and give the strategic justification for any course of action. For this reason alone Golombek's chief openings manual, reprinted here, will outlive the ephemera which largely characterise rival efforts to explain the entire gamut of openings available to the ambitious player. Armed with Golombek you will understand what you are doing -not just become a performing monkey which apes the movements of the masters!

The Candidates' Tournament of 1959 was one of the most dramatic and exciting of all tournaments, launching the flamboyant Grandmaster Mikhail Tal on his road to become the youngest-ever World Champion. Keres played possibly the best chess of his career at this event, restraining his natural attacking flair in the service of a more universal style, able to turn out finely honed strategic campaigns and subtle endgames. His three(!) victories over Tal in this tournament must have made him believe he could take the champion's crown, if he finished first... It was also notable for the arrival on the world's stage of Bobby Fischer, already twice USA champion and World Championship Candidate at 15 years of age. Several of his contests from this tournament appeared in his magisterialc ollection of 'Memorable Games', including an extraordinary game with four queens on the board against future Champion Petrosian, who was for once tempted out of his legendary caution into a rich and strange chess environment. In fact, it can be said that Fischer's games decided the tournament, because of his lop-sided scores against the two top-finishing players, and his near-miss in the penultimate round against Tal. Other players included the former Champion Smyslov, who brushed Tal aside in the very first game of the tournament; and Gligori, the Yugoslav Champion, fresh from his great result at the Interzonal, who handed Smyslov the shortest defeat of the Russian's career in front of an appreciative home crowd. Benkoe, the recent emigre, riding the wave of his fine performance in the qualifying tournament at Portoroz, and Olafsson, the quiet Icelandic wizard, added to the drama with their frequent excursions into time trouble... This collection of games is undoubtedly one of the finest of modern times, claims the author in his introduction from 1960. This claim still stands after nearly 50 years, and many of the games have been printed since in collections of brilliancies, best games and instructional books. The book has been set in this enhanced digital edition by David Regis. Diagrams have been added before many critical points in the games, so that readers wishing to test their skills against the best in the world from that time can use this volume as a puzzle book. Golombek's innovative index of middlegame and endgame themes makes this overlooked book a real manual of practical chessplay.