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JOSHUA ANDERSON REVIEWS TWO OLD BOOKS THAT OFTEN APPEAR IN USED BOOKSTORES
These reviews were inspired by time spent in used bookstores wondering which of those chess books from the 60s and 70s were worth a few bucks and which are not.
MODERN CHESS BRILLIANCIES by Larry Evans was republished in 1994 as part of the Great Chess Literature Series. The book was originally published in 1970.
The book begins with an interesting introduction to the history of combinations and includes the thoughts by many top players about combinations. From this, Evans presents us with 100 games that were “brilliancies” between 1958 and 1969. These games range from the famous, Botvinnik vs. Portisch (Chess Informants best game of 1968), to rare games, such as Fischer’s simultaneous victory over Celle.
Though each game comes with its own beauty and creativity, the presentation is quite similar. Each game is a tactical affair, with few games having endgames, and most ending early in the middle game. For the most part, the games have some, hardly thorough, annotations. Even the 6 games involving Evans (including one loss) are not deeply annotated. Some of the annotations are (with appropriate acknowledgement) used from other sources. For example, Paul Keres annotates almost all of Game 25, Robert Fischer game 69, and Hans Berliner game 100.
In conclusion, while the book does show some interesting games, they are generally lightly annotated and can be found elsewhere. For instance, 9 of the games are thoroughly annotated in THE MAMMOTH BOOK OF THE WORLD’S GREATEST CHESS GAMES. Perhaps a half price copy of the original would be worth a couple of dollars, but considering the accessibility of the games and the lack of penetrating analysis, it hardly seems worth the $10 or so that a used bookstore is apt to charge for the 1994 edition.
Arpad Foldeak’s CHESS OLYMPIADS, 1927-1968 was first published by Dover in the 1950s (under a slightly different title), then again in the 1960s, and finally in the 1970s. Not surprisingly, copies of these books will often show up in used bookstores, leading to the question: Is this book worth the price of a gallon of gas?
Foldek’s book is a formulaic approach to the tournaments and is as follows:
1) A brief 2 page analysis of the event, making a point to comment on the top finishing teams as well as who won individual prizes.
2) A cross table (s) with all of the team results (a single round robin through 1950 and several round robins/swiss tournaments starting in 1952).
3) Final individual results for every player on every team, with the exception of 1936 when 8 players played in each round, instead of 4.
4) Several games representing the Olympic tournament. These are in descriptive notation and tend to be tactical affairs and fairly short (the 108 move Sultan Khan – Alekhine game is a noteworthy exception), with at least one famous player, and lightly annotated (sometimes by the author sometimes by one of the players.) The last game or two is usually a partial game that highlights a tactical blunder.
The negatives of the book are not inconsequential. First, between the small print and the double columns on each page, the book is somewhat difficult to read. Second, the games chosen, while fun to look at, are rarely well annotated and don’t really teach the reader. Third, for a book of 400 pages, there really aren’t very many games with middle games and even fewer endgames.
Fortunately, there are several positives as well. The book is fun to read. The notes that are there, are well thought out and easy to follow. The best thing about this book is that it breaks down the final results for every person on each team in each Olympiad (except the much larger 1936 teams.) This information can be extremely hard to find in chess literature, when most books will just mention a team but not give specifics about them unless the team performed very well. (Please note: With internet access, olimpbase.org will provide much of the same information as the book.)
Thus, if you are interested in a broad history of the chess Olympiad, it is a fine introduction. If, however, you are looking for almost anything else from a chess book, you should probably look elsewhere.
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