Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #61414 in Books
• Published on: 2004-12-15
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 496 pages

Customer Reviews

Fourth book in a historic series.
This is a luxuriant hardcover volume of 496 pages. Each page is crammed full of analysis by arguably the greatest analyst in the world; Kasparov. I say this due to his competitive success, his workrate, and his support of the analytical approach to chess improvement all the way through his career, inherited from his mentor Botvinnik. Kasparov's search for the truth in chess and his obsession with objectivity, (obviously having been important to his unfathomable success rate in modern chess), is the spirit of this entire series, and it is a great privilege to take this journey into chess history with such a guide.

Any chess player - regardless of strength - can enjoy reading the story in history that this book tells, and in playing through the games. However, I believe weaker players can benefit from reading certain parts of the analysis in small doses to gradually gain more chess understanding, but admittedly, struggling with the analysis of a sacrifice that Kasparov is testing the validity of with numerous nested lines of analysis could be a waste of time if there is little comprehension being made of the lines given. On the other hand, for a reasonably strong club player, this book - and all the others in the series - are a true treasure trove of chess discovery. I particularly enjoy following Kasparov's analysis in the sharpest positions as Kasparov is extremely strong at playing out an attack and looking for the objectively best lines, and it is very beneficial in terms of exercising your tactical brain and also improving your instinct for the best continuations of an attack. This however is only one level on which to enjoy the analysis in these books. Someone interested, for example, in particular in the opening evolution of chess in the modern game, (from Steinitz to Karpov), will enjoy Kasparov's annotations of the openings on that level. Let us not forget that Kasparov is the most notorious openings expert the game has ever known.

So overall, this book, and the other 4 volumes in the 5 volume series, are a great treasure trove and something that will be treasured forever by any chess enthusiast.

for the more advanced player
Kasparov's latest addition to his "great predecessors" series may seem at first glance like the best thing since sliced bread. It is the eagerly awaited version that features analysis on many of Fischer's great games up to his famous world championship win over Boris Spassky.

The first half deals with Samuel Reschevsky, Miguel Najdorf and Bent Larsen. The second half of the book concerns itself with Bobby Fischer, arguably the greatest chess grandmaster to grace the game until Kasparov himself came along and it is a treat to view the analysis of one great player by another, though i have read elsewhere that the main contribution of analysis actually comes from Dmitry Plisetsky. How true this is i do not know.

Kasparov's comments about Fischer's contribution to chess and his personality are both entertaining and illuminating and it is nice to learn something of the biographies of other greats such as Reschevsky.

Personally speaking much of the analysis, as a weak to average club player, is rather beyond me and the collections of games are more of an interest piece than likely to improve your chess dramatically. I feel however that strong players may pick up ideas of interest in Fischer's games. However Fischer's "my 60 most memorable games" (now sadly out of print) is already held to be on of the best chess books money can buy. One need only run a search on Amazon to see how much second hand volumes of this work command. However those who have read and digested most of the key ideas of this may find additional nuggets in Kasparov's analysis.

The volume however is presented in an attractive hard-cover and is likely to find its way on to the bookshelfs of most chess affecianados. Having not read the other books in the series it is difficult to compare, but it seems likely that the next volume on Karpov may prove to be the most interesting.