SMART CHIP FROM ST. PETERSBURG
Author: Genna Sosonko
NIC (2006)
www.newinchess.com
197 pages
$23.95

Reviewed by John Donaldson

The twelve chapters in SMART CHIP FROM ST. PETERSBURG examine a wide range of individuals from the blitz master Genrikh Chepukaitis to the rock solid Ratmir Kholmov. I particularly enjoyed the chapter on Ludek Pachman. The Czechoslovakian GM, later exiled to West Germany, was a fire breathing communist in his younger years but later became the right hand man for the German Christian Social Union. Young leftists from the West found they met a most formidable opponent when they wished to debate the works of Marx and Engels with Pachman! For a Western reader it helps to have somebody such as Sosonko (like Pachman, a fellow refugee from behind the Iron Curtain) put things in perspective.
 
SMART CHIP FROM ST. PETERSBURG not only offers the reader twelve well-crafted tales, but also a number of crisp black and white photos from the past, most of which had never appeared before their publication in New in Chess magazine. Readers of that publication will be familiar with all the stories in this book, except for those of Genna Adonis and Stairway of Life.
 
This book is recommended to anyone who is not a NIC subscriber, or to those who are but would like to have all the stories in one place in a nicely produced book.

Click to buy (or get more information about) SMART CHIP FROM ST. PETERSBURG

Click to buy (or get more information about) THE RELIABLE PAST (by Sosonko) - $22.95

Click to buy (or get more information about) RUSSIAN SILHOUETTES (by Sosonko) - $20.95