Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #389052 in Books
• Published on: 2000-07
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 224 pages

Synopsis
In 1960 Mikhail Tal defeated chess champion Mikhail Botvinnik in one of the most celebrated world championship matches of all time. In this volume, Tal sets the stage and explains every one of the 21 games, telling both the on- and off-the-board story of this clash of styles and thought.

Customer Reviews

Best game collection ever!
Within this pages Tal account's of his 1960 match with Botvinnik. Tal holds nothing back as far as describing his thoughts and feelings. And the vivid prose makes this book a real pleasure to read.

The analysis of the games are just as wonderful. Not only will you gain insight to Tal's style of playing, but to Botvinnik's as well. There are plenty of diagrams and you can even see how much time the players used for each move, wich gives the process of going over the games a "live" feeling.

This is as far as I know the best game collection ever, in every respect (even better than for instance Alekhine's "my best games of chess" wich is a great book).

Dont miss it!

P.S

In his book "how to ressess your chess", Jeremy Silman urges the reader to practice his thinking technique using a collection of annotated games.

I can not think of a more suitable book than this for that purpose.

First play over the games using the thinking technique, writing down your thought processes. Then read Tal's account of the plans, and you will not be able to avoid improving your chess.

Could do better
This English version of Tal's book "Tal-Botvinnik 1960" receives a huge amount of praise, but I seriously wonder how many of those praising it have really read it in detail, cover to cover, and tried to make sense of it, as I have. I am a huge fan of the late Mikhail Tal but, in my opinion, in its present form this book does not do him justice, since the translation by H.Russell is so poor. I have recently studied the so-called "revised and expanded" 5th edition, "edited" by Taylor Kingston.

Compared with the fourth edition, some errors have finally been corrected, such as incorrectly spelt names (e.g. Liliental-Lilienthal, Flor-Flohr, Porreka-Porreca, Lipitsky-Lipnitsky, Fogelman-Foguelman), but not all (e.g. Gligorich, which is phonetically accurate but correctly spelt without the h).

There are still some small "technical" errors, which one would have expected to have been weeded out by the 5th edition, e.g. page 61, note to Black's 9th move, 9...Qb6: "Black immediately begins to take action against the d5 square." Of course, this should be d4, not d5.

There are also still some obscure or meaningless sentences, e.g. page 18: "Capablanca's 'lighter' system and other orthodox defenses seem to have been forgotten in the archives of history." Did you understand that? After much thought, my guess is that the reference is to Capablanca's once famous "simplifying manoeuvre" (...dxc4, ...Nd5) in the orthodox Queen's Gambit.

I checked the relevant pages against a list of errors pointed out in New in Chess magazine 1997/7 and found that most of these have still not been corrected.

I should be less concerned if all the errors in the book were trivial and did not spoil the sense. But how about these:

On page 19 there is a serious error: referring to the Modern Benoni, Russell's version reads:

"Aron Nimzowitsch was the first to use it in a game with Frank Marshall in the New York International Tournament of 1927. Marshall immediately transferred his knight to c4, and the instant Black hesitated (...) he was smothered in a few moves." In fact, in the game referred to here, Nimzowitsch was White and Marshall Black! This is a very famous game, and reversing the names of the players is arguably evidence of a deficiency in chess culture, as well as in Russian grammar.

On page 58; "There is a curious story behind the King's Indian Defence. It got recognition 20 years ago. Before that it was rarely, or as they say, spontaneously employed. In particular, Chigorin would never have selected such a system." The last sentence should read something like: "In particular, such a set-up was chosen long ago by Chigorin."

On page 59: (Discussing the history of the g3 system against the King's Indian): "Black's difficulties in this variation arose when he started searching for more active continuations..." This should read rather: "Black's difficulties in this variation prompted him to start searching for more active continuations..."

On page 59: Discussing the Petrosian system against the King's Indian (usually reached by 1 d4 Nf6 2 c4 g6 3 Nc3 Bg7 4 e4 d6 5 Nf3 0-0 6 Be2 e5 7 d5) "The talented Ukrainian master Leonid Stein has had the last word for Black in this variation in which he played h6 in answer to Bg5 and nipped White's idea in the bud, of course at the cost of a tempo." It should have been obvious to the translator and especially the editor that "In answer to Bg5" is an incorrect translation; it ought to say "before Bg5" or "to prevent Bg5". (Remember, these are just a few examples among many, and this is supposed to be the 5th revised edition!)

There is no doubt that, even with the errors and ambiguities, there is much to enjoy and learn from this book, but it could have been so, so, much better. Unless and until there has been a FULLY revised edition, potential readers should be at least somewhat wary of this book.