Game Collection Books

Award-winning historian Sergey Voronkov has written a four-volume psychological biography of Alexander Alekhine, presenting the former world chess champion in a much more complicated, conflicted and tragic light than you have ever seen him before! This first volume traces his early development through to his departure from Soviet Russia in 1921, while also attempting to untangle the knot of his complex relationships with all his five wives.

Unpublished or long forgotten memoirs, as well as original newspaper and magazine articles from around the world, are drawn together in forensic research to paint the most extensive picture of Alekhine ever created. Key events in his life are reconsidered, including his release from internment in Germany during World War 1, his escape from execution in Odessa, his service under the Bolsheviks as a detective, his trip to the Urals as a Comintern translator, as well as just how he emigrated.

His character development is considered beginning with a detailed examination of his childhood, based on memoirs of his classmates. Voronkov then considers Alekhine’s transition from shy boy to dandy (and even the role played in that by his erstwhile friend José Capablanca), as well as how our protagonist gained the mental toughness of a world champion, and his chess philosophy. Some details make you admire him, others make you pity him, still others cast him in an unfavorable light...

Chess-wise, Voronkov presents over 50 games and fragments with original commentary by Alekhine and his opponents, most of which has not been published in books before. These include eleven completely unknown Alekhine games as well as ten game scores of other players with light commentary by Alekhine from the first Soviet Championship in 1920, found in Alexander Kotov’s archive.

In many cases, Alekhine’s earliest annotations are compared with his later ones to the same games, often leading to surprising conclusions. In particular, Voronkov highlights brilliant variations shown in Alekhine’s analysis that were supposedly found during play but which were actually discovered by the champion only years later when he republished his games. This led to Alekhine radically changing his assessments of positions in his writings as the years passed. We also see how Kotov had a habit of taking Alekhine’s commentary and presenting it as his own.

This book is illustrated by over 170 photos and other visuals, many published for the first time.

Who is the greatest chess player of all time, the GOAT? Who is in the top ten? Let the debate ensue!

How do you measure greatness? Is Morphy "greater" than Carlsen? Can such judgements be made, and do they mean anything?

This fascinating topic is tackled head on in The Greatest by prolific chess author Cyrus Lakdawala. Avoiding presentism with carefully established criteria, Lakdawala considers "pure strength factors", such as dominance over peers, longevity, and tournament wins, as well as other categories such as: Who was most ahead of their time? Who advanced chess theory most?

All these factors are discussed at length alongside 80 fully annotated and instructive games from every era to back up the author’s arguments. A fascinating read on a fascinating topic.

Cyrus Lakdawala is an International Master, a former National Open and American Open Champion, and six-time State Champion. He has been teaching chess for over 40 years, and coaches top US juniors.

Hikaru is a five-time US chess champion, ranked as high as second in the world with a stratospheric peak rating of 2816, the 10th highest of all time. He is also a top chess streamer with over a million followers across social media, consistently on the list of the five wealthiest gamers in the world. Nakamura has represented the US in 5 Olympiads, earning a team Gold and two Bronze medals.

“Naka’s” chess style is confrontational. He thrives on aggression, confrontation and complications, making him one of the most entertaining players in the world. In 72 fully annotated games, this book covers Hikaru’s most exciting and instructive battles against many of the world's top players. Opponents include world champions Carlsen, Kramnik, Anand, and Ding Liren, leading US rivals Caruana, So and Shankland, as well as other world-class players such as Short, Nepo, Gelfand, Karjakin, Topalov, and Kamsky.

Chess endings have an immediacy lacking in chess endgame or chess problems: endings are not theoretical or composed, but actual board positions, the point in every game when the superfluous falls away, leaving only the essential. José Raúl Capablanca (1888–1942) had no need for isolated artistic theory or compositions — he composed and created chess art as he played. All of his genius — intuitive, tactical, strategic, logical — all of his art shines clearest in his endings, as he himself was proud to declare, advising others to study them carefully. "In order to improve your game," he said, "you must study the endgame before anything else; for whereas the endings can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middle game and the opening must be studied in relation to the endgame."

The best way to follow Capablanca's advice is through this — the only book devoted to his great endings, 60 complete games emphasizing the grand finale but annotated throughout.

Irving Chernev communicates in his notes the mystery and wonder as well as the delight in discovering again and again the original, fertile mind of chess's greatest born player. "Virtuoso," "exquisite," "profound," "inspired," "elegant," and "fiendish ingenuity" describe match and tournament games and endings against Alekhine, Steiner, Marshall, Nimzowitsch, Lasker, Réti, and others, the best in the contemporary chess world. Capablanca's eleventh game in the 1901 Cuban championship (which he won, aged 12) "surpasses any accomplishment by such other prodigies as Morphy, Reshevsky, and Fischer." From age 12 through the last game in the book (nearly four decades later against Reshevsky at Nottingham, 1936), Capablanca fashions endgames in tense tournament atmosphere that seem like delicate, precise instruments dreamt at leisure.

Here then is the essence of Capablanca, analyzed for the instruction of players and the pleasure of chess connoisseurs. Included are indexes of openings, themes in the endings, and opponents, as well as a bibliography and record of tournament and match play. Capablanca: for players, the epitome of the endgame; for readers, a classic chess study.

Este libro de Zenón Franco sobre las partidas de Robert James Fischer, con el sistema “Jugada a jugada”, es ideal tanto para aprender como para enseñar.

Contiene 60 partidas comentadas más 10 extractos de partida; como es habitual, se plantean ejercicios y también preguntas tomando el lugar del lector.

Franco trata siempre de incluir el punto de vista práctico, ya que no jugamos contra computadoras, sino contra seres humanos que, como nosotros, cometen fallos, se cansan, etc.

Esta obra no es una biografía, pero se incluyen algunas anécdotas no muy conocidas de sus torneos en Argentina

Isaak Lipnitsky (1923–1959) was a leading Ukrainian chess player of the early 1950s as well as a celebrated chess theoretician and journalist, whose textbook Questions of Modern Chess Theory became an internationally recognized classic. Born in Kiev shortly after the establishment of Soviet control over Ukraine, he achieved a career-best result of second equal in the 1950 Soviet Championship, half a point behind the winner Paul Keres, during which he defeated Petrosian, Smyslov, and Geller. He also played in the finals of the 1951 and 1952 Soviet Championships, as well as winning the Ukrainian Championship in 1949 and 1956, and the Kiev Championship in 1956. According to the Chessmetrics website Lipnitsky was ranked no. 12 in the world between September and December 1950 with a peak rating of 2700 and a best TPR of 2729 recorded in the 1950 Soviet Championship.

In the words of Grandmaster Kevin Spraggett: “As a player Lipnitsky was well trained in strategy and tactics, capable of playing all types of positions equally well. However, what he really liked doing was playing complicated positions, a trait that many of the finest Ukraine masters seemed to have inherited.”

Lipnitsky’s fascinating biography with original research by the authors takes us from his childhood in a poor Jewish family, through to his membership of the Kiev children’s chess club at the Pioneer Palace under the tutelage of the great coach Alexander Konstantinopolsky, who nurtured David Bronstein’s talent at the same time. It introduces the reader to the origins of the Soviet Chess School in Kiev, which was one of the USSR’s greatest talent mills. Lipnitsky’s World War Two service as an intelligence officer is discussed, as is what is known of his wife and daughter and his eventual full-time chess career.

Lipnitsky died at the tragically young age of 35 from a terminal disease that curtailed his tournament performances in his final years. His tragedy was not confined to that, however. His paternal grandparents and aunts were murdered by the Nazi occupiers during the War, and his daughter later died in a psychiatric hospital. 

Kyiv-based Candidate Masters and chess historians Mykola Fuzik (born in 1957) and Alexei Radchenko (1947-2013) spent several years researching Isaak Lipnitsky’s biography, which was first published in Ukraine in 2018. This book provides instructional analysis of 63 of his best games, mostly annotated by Lipnitsky and his contemporaries, supported by computer corrections. Opponents include Tal, Petrosian, Smyslov, Botvinnik, Bronstein, Keres, Geller, Averbakh and Taimanov among other names. It also contains a highly original article he wrote on attack along the a1-h8 diagonal, as well as a number of interesting photographs of the protagonist and his family.

Edición en castellano que mejora la edición de 2006 en inglés y cubre el hueco sobre uno de los más grandes jugadores de la historia del ajedrez. Según chessmetrics.com fue el mejor jugador mundial durante 5 años y solo el estallido de la primera guerra mundial le impidió luchar contra Lasker por la corona.

Está hecho con el formato «jugada a jugada», referido a que tiene continuas preguntas y ejercicios, (aunque no todas las jugadas están comentadas, sería superfluo). Esta modalidad sirve tanto para entrenar y aprender como para enseñar.

The book of a strong tournament is more than just a games collection. When its participants are the world's strongest players . . . the tournament as a whole represents a step forward in the development of chess creativity. We may take as examples of such tournaments the events at Hastings 1895, St. Petersburg 1914, New York 1924, Moscow 1935, and Groningen 1946. Beyond doubt, Zurich-Neuhausen 1953 deserves a place among them.

David Bronstein ventured this evaluation of Zurich 1953 just three years after the event, in the preface to the first Russian edition of this book. Since that time the 210 games of the legendary tournament have only grown in stature. Most knowledgeable chess players now rate it the greatest tournament since World War II, and possibly the greatest tournament of all time.

In the 1920s Jim Marfia, a talented amateur player, became determined to provide an authoritative English translation of Bronstein's book, a task which occupied him for several years. The complete record of the famous Zurich International Chess Tournament, 1953, is available in English for the first time.

Held to determine a challenger for then World Champion Botvinnik, Zurich 1953 attracted fifteen of the strongest players in the world: Smyslov; Geller; Boleslavsky; Bronstein; Najdorf; Szabo; Keres; Kotov; Gligoric; Reshevsky; Taimanov; Euwe; Petrosian; Averbakh; and Stahlberg.

Almost all the games were hotly contested, and many are masterpieces of the first rank. To mention Euwe-Smylov (round 3), Taimanov-Najdorf (round 4, winner of a brilliancy prize), and Keres-Reshevsky (round 11, one of the most reproduced and analyzed games in chess), is just to touch the tip of the iceberg; there are literally dozens of memorable, innovative games in this volume, including a substantial portion by the author, one of the game's greatest players, who finished tied for second with Keres and Reshevsky, behind the winner Smyslov.

Advanced players will want this book for the games alone. Beginning and intermediate players, concerned more immediately with instruction, will find David Bronstein's annotations not only perceptive and thorough, but also a veritable textbook on how to play the middle game.

Here are 62 masterly demonstrations of the basic strategies of winning at chess, compiled and annotated by one of the game's most admired and respected writers. Each game offers a classic example of a fundamental problem and its best resolution, described and diagrammed in the clearest possible manner for players of every level of skill.

As Irving Chernev observes in the Introduction, "Who will doubt the tremendous power exerted by a Rook posted on the seventh rank after seeing Capablanca's delightfully clear-cut demonstration in Game No. 1 against Tartakower? And who will not learn a great deal about the art of handling Rook and Pawn endings (the most important endings in chess) after playing through Tarrasch's game against Thorold?"

Chernev's lively and illuminating notes on each game reveal precisely how Capablanca, Tarrasch, and other masters — Fischer, Alekhine, Lasker, and Petrosian among them — turn theory into practice as they attack and maneuver to control the board. Readers will find their techniques improving with each lesson as Irving Chernev dissects winning strategies, comments on alternate tactics, and marvels at the finesse of winning play, noting at the end of his Introduction: "I might just as well have called this collection The Most Beautiful Games of Chess Ever Played."

Think Like Ivanchuk is a celebration of a true chess genius. This book is a collection of Vasyl Ivanchuk's best games, a chess biography and a highly entertaining training manual all in one.

Vasyl Ivanchuk, a super-grandmaster from Ukraine, was born in 1969 and was the best player in the world in the 1990s behind World Champion Garry Kasparov. He has won the Olympiad, the super-tournaments in Linares and Wijk aan Zee, and many, many other events. He is an incredibly versatile player and has employed almost every possible opening variation known to chess.

Grandmaster Viktor Moskalenko has known his compatriot since childhood, has been his second and sparring partner, and understands his style like no other. Moskalenko has selected Ivanchuk's most fascinating games against world champions and top grandmasters and has derived more than 500 training positions from them. The exercises are fun, engaging, and presented in a way that any chess player can understand.

This collection of Ivanchuk's best artistic ideas will make you think like Ivanchuk and reach new heights in chess. Welcome to Planet Ivanchuk!

Viktor Moskalenko (1960) is one of the leading chess instructors of our time. The Ukrainian Grandmaster has authored numerous inspiring opening manuals such as Trompowsky Attack & London System, An Attacking Repertoire for White with 1.d4, The Fully-Fledged French, The Wonderful Winawer, and The Fabulous Budapest Gambit.

Paul Morphy might well be the most brilliant and enigmatic chess champion of all time. He burst onto the scene in 1857 as a 20-year-old and dominated the chess world for two short years, convincingly defeating all the strongest players. After conquering the European chess scene, Morphy was universally recognised as the greatest player of all time. But at the age of 22 he suddenly and permanently retired from serious competition.

Morphy's greatness shone so brightly that 75 years later he was still considered the greatest by world champions Lasker and Capablanca. He is still revered for his brilliant combinations and other contributions to chess. Bobby Fischer called him 'perhaps the most accurate player who ever lived'. Garry Kasparov regarded him as 'the prototype of the strong 20th century grandmaster' and 'the forefather of modern chess'.

There are many important biographies and game collections about Morphy. Award-winning chess author Charles Hertan brings us something new - a comprehensive modern biography that delves deep into his fascinating history, unearthing new information about Morphy's origins, intertwined with an in-depth exploration of Morphy's games, often overturning over 160 years of previous analysis.

Hertan uses his experience as a professional psychotherapist to shed new light on Morphy's tragic mental deterioration. The author also examines the state of chess before Morphy, wading into the current debate about the role of the great masters Howard Staunton and Adolf Anderssen in chess history, and whether Morphy's time should rightly be called the 'Romantic Era'.

The Real Paul Morphy brings you everything you need to know about Paul Morphy's life, chess and legacy in a single volume.

Viswanathan Anand is undoubtedly one of the World's greatest ever chess players. He first shot to fame in his youth, when he enthralled the chess public with his results and his amazing speed of play. He became India's first ever grandmaster, at the age of eighteen. He has won five World Championships, and was the undisputed World Champion from 2007 to 2013. He's been the World number one ranked player and one of the very few to break the 2800 rating barrier. His renowned versatility has help him to become successful in all forms of the game: tournament play, match play, knockout and rapidplay.

In this book, Grandmaster Zenón Franco examines in detail Anand's chess career to date. He selects and studies his favourite Anand games, and demonstrates clearly how we can all improve our chess by learning from Anand's play.

Move by Move provides an ideal platform to study chess. By continually challenging the reader to answer probing questions throughout the book, the Move by Move format greatly encourages the learning and practising of vital skills just as much as the traditional assimilation of knowledge. Carefully selected questions and answers are designed to keep you actively involved and allow you to monitor your progress as you learn. This is an excellent way to improve your chess skills and knowledge.

– Learn from the games of a chess legend 

– Important ideas absorbed by continued practice 

– Utilizes an ideal approach to chess study