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."
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.
Written by a young Grand Master, this introduction to chess strategy is aimed primarily at players for whom a game plan is utterly enigmatic. By isolating the basic elements and illustrating them through a selection of Master and Grand Master games, Simple Chess breaks down the mystique of strategy into plain, easy-to-understand ideas — only a knowledge of basic chess terminology is assumed.
More than a lesson in chess fundamentals, this book illustrates an increasingly prevalent and successful style of play — a method that begins by slowly accumulating small but permanent advantages, saving the outright attack for later in the game. Newly converted into the current algebraic chess notation, this edition of Simple Chess offers a strategic weapon for players at every level of expertise.