The Sorcerer’s Apprentice wins Guardian’s Chess Book of the Year Award

The revised and expanded version of the classic The Sorcerer’s Apprentice by David Bronstein and Tom Fürstenberg has won the fourth Guardian Chess Book of the Year Award. According to the British daily it’s an “unusual, personal, inspirational and endearing work that deserves a place on every chess player’s bookshelf”. Read more

Video: presentation new book on Fischer

Last Tuesday, in the Max Euwe Centre in Amsterdam, publisher Hanon W. Russell and author Karsten Müller officially presented their brand new book on Fischer: Bobby Fischer – The Career and Complete Games of the American World Chess Champion. ChessVibes was there to film the presentation and ask the author a few questions. Read more

Kasparov wins Book of the Year Award

“The book can be read on several levels – as a dramatic story, or as providing insights into opening theory, or as great games enhanced by deep analytical annotations. Kasparov succeeds triumphantly in illuminating every aspect of this historic struggle. He is establishing as formidable a reputation as an author, as he did as a player.” The English Chess Federation’s 2009 Book of the Year Award went to Kasparov vs Karpov 1975-85. Read more

Review: Chess Strategy for Club Players

In my previous review, I praised Bobby Fischer’s compact use of language. This time, I want to show that good chess writing doesn’t have to be compact – the book I’m reviewing today is everything but compact, but it’s also very good. IM Herman Grooten, a well-known Dutch chess trainer and author of chess books, has finally collected his training material and put his ideas (partly published in Dutch already) into one book, Chess Strategy for Club Players, published by New in Chess. The result is one of the most detailed and well-explained books for serious (club) players.
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Review: Two Classics

Peter told me last week he had been to a concert called The Beatles vs. The Stones. Tastes differ, but still … as a Beatles fan I can’t help feeling tempted to start a discussion with Stones fans sometimes, just for fun. Do they really think Sticky Fingers is better than Sgt. Pepper? Read more

Review: Botvinnik – Smyslov 1954, 1957, 1958

I wouldn’t have expected a book on a few World Championship matches of more than 50 years ago to reach the no. 1 spot in the New in Chess bestseller’s list, but that’s what happened last month. Then I discovered it contains a lot more than that. Botvinnik-Smyslov, Three World Chess Championship Matches, is a compilation of Mikhail Botvinnik’s writings on his matches against Vassily Smyslov, and it does not only contain his game analysis, but also his ’secret’ notebooks with his opening preparations and ‘novelties’ for the matches. This is exciting stuff indeed. Read more

Review: Play 1.b3!

It doesn’t happen often that a chess author makes me laugh, but Ilya Odessky is one of them. But that’s not all. Many reviews of his new book Play 1.b3!, published by New in Chess, are also extremely funny. The point is, most reviewers assume Odessky wrote an opening book, which only reveals they haven’t even read the book. This book is not about a chess opening at all. If I had to classify it, I’d say it was perhaps a postmodern novel. Read more

Charles Hertan wins ChessCafe Book of the Year Award

Since the year 2000, ChessCafe, famous for its book reviews, holds a voters competition for the award of ‘ChessCafe.com Book of the Year’. In the past, big chess authors such as John Nunn and John Watson have won the award. Now, little-known FM Charles Hertan has won it for the year 2008, ahead of Lars Bo Hansen and… Garry Kasparov. Read more

Review: Kasparov – How his predecessors misled him about chess

Every chess player grows up learning combinations that work. As a kid, you learn to ’spot the combo’ quickly and you’re told that you will profit from this knowledge ever after. There’s hundreds of books that are written according to this method. But in real life, sadly,¬†combinations¬†often do not work at all.¬†Where are the books written about this phenomenon?¬†Now, we have one. Read more

Review: Questions of Modern Chess Theory

Sometimes the best books get the worst treatment. It took more than 25 years before an edition of Mikhail Bulgakov’s great novel The Master and Margarita was first published. But this is nothing compared to the 52(!) years it took before Questions of Modern Chess Theory by Isaac Lipnitsky was translated into English. It is now published in a modern edition by Quality Chess. Without exaggeration it’s fair to say that Western chess would have looked totally different, had this book been available earlier. Read more

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