11th GERMAN CHESS ASSOCIATION CONGRESS: COLOGNE 1898
Author: Vlastimil Fiala
Moravian Chess (1997)
http://www.moravian-chess.cz
264 pages (hardcover)
33 Euros

THE FIRST CONGRESS OF THE CENTRAL ASSOCIATON OF CZECH CHESSPLAYERS: PRAGUE 1905
Author: Vlastimil Fiala
Moravian Chess (2006)
http://www.moravian-chess.cz
158 pages (hardcover)
25 Euros

Reviewed by Jeremy Silman

Chess book addiction is surprisingly common. When you take into account that there are more books on chess than on all other sports and games combined, you get an idea as to how a chess book "infestation" can fill up your house and leave you with hard choices like, "What's more important, my wife or my books?" (Not an easy choice!), and "All my rooms are filled up with chess books. Perhaps it's time for a bigger house?"

Due to this spatial problem, a collector of chess books usually has to decide on his areas of chess interest. If you don't play, but enjoy following chess news and reading about the lives and games of famous players, you would likely eschew opening books and concentrate on chess history, some choice chess magazines, and game collections. If you love studying openings and endgames, you would be wise to fill up your bookcases with books on these topics.

Personally, I mix a practical library (openings, middlegame, endgames, and game collections) with my chess fetishes (famous tournaments, history, and a few choice magazines runs, bound for easy reference).

With this in mind, the reader should decide whether or not tournament books are on his chess wish list. If they are, you must then ask a simple question: Do you only want well known, very strong events, or are you also interested in more esoteric contests?

If you are looking for tournament books that cover strong events in a very expansive way, then 11th GERMAN CHESS ASSOCIATION CONGRESS: COLOGNE 1898 will be right up your alley. The main event was filled with legends, and featured Amos Burn's greatest victory (11.5 out of 15), a full point ahead of Charousek, Chigorin, and Steinitz. Players that trailed them were Schlechter and Showalter (9 points), Berger (8), Janowsky (7.5), with Popiel, Schilffers, Gottschall, Albin, Heinrichsen, Fritz (computers weren't very good back then), and Schallopp filling out the field.

However, a strong tournament doesn't guarantee a great book. With 11th GERMAN CHESS ASSOCIATION CONGRESS: COLOGNE 1898, Fiala took a promising spine (great players and interesting games) and turned it into something magnificent. Here's what you get:

* A general discussion of the event (over eleven pages) and a final crosstable.

* A detailed round by round, blow by blow account featuring that round's results, introductory prose, a lead-in to many of the games, the scores of every game, and deep annotations to most of them! This allows you to follow the tournament in its proper order, as if you were there. You feel its energy, and the player's emotions as they battled for chess glory.

This alone would have been enough to justify the price, but Fiala didn't stop there! He follows with:

* Wonderful full-page glossy photos of every player (except Cohn and Heinrichsen).

* Biographical material of each contestant. This includes personal material, details of his chess history, a tournament and match record, and sample games.

Here's a sample of the personal life of Arved Heinrichsen:

"Arved Heinrichsen was born on 23 November 1876 in Vilno in Poland as the son of German parents. After attending the junior school he entered the Gymnasium secondary school in the town of Riga. After a short stay in St Petersburg he left in 1896 for Berlin to study there at the faculty of Medicine.
"In the summer semester of 1898 he continued in his studies at the university in Kiel, but in late summer he began to suffer from health problems. In September 1898 his Berlin doctor diagnosed the beginning of tuberculosis. The parents sent him, at the doctor's recommendation, to Helouan in Egypt but there he contracted malaria, which undermined his physical strength still more. He spent the rest of his life in summer in his native town, in winter in the sunny south, but without any hope of overcoming his tuberculosis, a fatal disease in those days. He died in the later summer of 1900 in the circle of his family."

Poor Heinrichsen was not a lucky guy! He died at twenty-six, and I was left wondering how the beginnings of his battle with TB influenced his final (poor) result in Cologne. I must admit that I didn't know anything about Heinrichsen before reading this book, and I'm happy to have been introduced to him.

The end of the book has crosstables, games, and brief discussions of the other events at the Chess Congress.

Fiala's 11th GERMAN CHESS ASSOCIATION CONGRESS: COLOGNE 1898 is a great tournament book! I'm not a huge collector of this genre of chess book, but I'm very happy to own this one along with other classics like the Piatigorsky events and Bronstein's ZURICH 1953.

Where 11th GERMAN CHESS ASSOCIATION CONGRESS: COLOGNE 1898 is a book that any chess fan can great a great deal of enjoyment from, THE FIRST CONGRESS OF THE CENTRAL ASSOCIATON OF CZECH CHESSPLAYERS: PRAGUE 1905 is far more esoteric.

Here the players are far weaker than those seen at Cologne 1898, since only Czechs participated. The biggest names, Duras, Treybal, Prokes, and Hromadka are likely unknowns to many chess fans that aren't conversant with chess history.

The book goes over the history of the Czech Chess Association and covers two full tournaments (with round by round information, crosstables, and games -- many with nice annotations) from the 1905 Prague Chess Congress.

I enjoyed reading about the players and what went into making this congress a reality. It's clear that everyone felt a lot of pride in Czech chess at that time, and this event was clearly a labor of love.

As nice as THE FIRST CONGRESS OF THE CENTRAL ASSOCIATON OF CZECH CHESSPLAYERS: PRAGUE 1905 is, I'm left wondering about its audience. Clearly, Czech fans of chess will find it interesting, and serious chess historians might also be delighted with it. But it's not something that most chess book aficionados will be itching to pick up.

Though my chess shop doesn't carry these two excellent books, you can order them on-line at: http://www.moravian-chess.cz

Check out the Moravian Chess site!

Books from Moravian Chess that the chess shop on JeremySlman.com DOES carry:

COMPLETE GAMES OF ALEKHINE VOLUME 1 1892-1921

COMPLETE GAMES OF ALEKHINE VOLUME II 1921-1924

These two books on Alekhine are favorites of mine. Aside from all his games, they have stories and very personal information about this chess legend that doesn't appear anywhere else. Each book sells for $39.99

BOTVINNIK'S BEST GAMES VOLUME 1 (1925-41) BY Botvinnik

BOTVINNIK'S BEST GAMES VOLUME 3 BY Botvinnik