Chess World Championships 1834-2004

CHESS WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: ALL THE GAMES, ALL WITH DIAGRAMS, 1834-2004, 3rd Edition. Two-Volume Set.
Author: James Gelo
McFarland & Company, Inc. (2006)
www.mcfarlandpub.com
897 pages
1375 diagrams
$45.00 for both volumes. $25.00 for one volume.

Reviewed by John Donaldson

CHESS WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS: ALL THE GAMES, ALL WITH DIAGRAMS, 1834-2004 by James H. Gelo is a record of World Championship matches from del a Bourdonnais - McDonnell 1834 to Kramnik-Leko 2004. Every game in these matches, from the early unofficial ones to both the FIDE and BrainGames events, is included with no annotations but one diagram -- 1429 games in all.

To the casual chess player the first question that is likely to come to mind is, "Why do I need this book?" Most if not all the games are available for free, certainly the ones played after WW2. No annotations means that it is hardly the sort of book one is likely to play through from cover to cover. Clearly this is a reference work of a specialized sort. If you want to find out what day a particular day a game was played, Gelo has it. Want to know how many times the Benko Gambit has been played in a World Championship Match? You can find out the answer -- zero -- by going straight to the detailed opening index.

This third edition is sixty-one pages longer than the previous one published in 1999. I was curious, were there any substantive differences between the two editions besides the new match material? To check, I went to reviews of the second edition and compared it with the 3rd edition to see if there were changes. After all, in a work like this accuracy is everything.

Taylor Kingston in his review of the 2nd edition mentioned that in his sampling of several dozen older games, "I found only four minor discrepancies. Gelo shows extra moves at the ends of the 64th McDonnell-Labourdonnais game and the first three games of the 1896-7 Lasker-Steinitz rematch." ... "While I cannot say who is exactly right here, these discrepancies seem not very serious. The spot-checking tests, though not conclusive, do indicate a very high level of accuracy in Gelo's work."

I detect no changes in Volume 3 regarding the four games mentioned above -- what appeared in the second edition might well be correct.

Kingston continues his review: "Gelo makes his one clearly wrong inclusion in this period: Lasker-Janowski 1909. It is known that this was not a title match (though their 1910 match was). Therefore it belongs no more than, say, Lasker's informal 1908 match with Abraham Speijer, and to include it perpetuates a common misperception."

This match is included again, but for only for cost reasons -- it was prohibitive to redo the typesetting. Gelo, as he indicates in the preface, clearly has been persuaded by the judgment of Edward Winter and others that Lasker-Janowski 1909 was not a title match.
Edward Winter's Chess Notes pointed out a definite error in game 14 of Lasker-Steinitz, 1896/97.

3847. Lasker s greatest blunder

On page 130 of the May 1951 Chess Review a reader, E. Gram-Larsen of Solar, Norway, wrote regarding a Lasker v Steinitz ending: "In the 14th game of the second world championship match, the following position occurred after Black's 52nd move:

"There followed 53.Rc2?? Rxc2+ 54.Kxc2 and Black resigned after White's 78th move. But if Black had played 53...Ra1+ White might have resigned as his rook on d1 is lost. It could have been Emanuel Lasker's greatest blunder.

"I have the game from Ludwig Bachmann's book Schachmeister Steinitz, Vol. 4, Ed. 1921. It was played on 29 December 1896. I thought there might be errors in the score -- there are many in other places in the book -- but, so far as I can see, the moves leading to the above position are in order."

We believe, however, that Bachmann erred by putting as White's 50th move Rd6-d1, rather than Rd6-d8, and that there was thus no blunder by Lasker at move 53.

POSITION AFTER 49...Kd4-c5