Petrosian Books

[Wayne Komer]

An interesting thread from the past started with the question from Peter McKillop to Larry Bevand in a July 11, 2011 ChessTalk:

Do you still have those two books on Petrosian’s career that I was drooling over at the 1993 Canadian Open?

The answer was that they were

The Games of Tigran Petrosian Volume 1 1942-1965

and

The Games of Tigran Petrosian Volume 2 1966-1983

and they just had been reprinted by Sam Sloan's ISHI press

Another thread (Feb. 19,2013) discussed possible copyright violations by Sam Sloan and his Ishi Press.

For me, I was most interested in the apparent quality of the two Eduard Shekhtman volumes and whether they were the definitive compilation of Petrosian games and, of course, getting them.

Well, coming to the present, the two volumes in the Pergammon 1991 edition came up for auction on Saturday, June 22 at the respected Klittich-Pfankuch Auction House in Braunschweig. The pair went for 200 euro, which is $276 today.

Ah, if I only had bought several sets in 1991 and kept them… But then, I have similarly agonized about buying stock shares in Apple twenty years ago!
+++++++++++++++

See Katalog zur 64.Auktion Item 940

http://www.klittich-pfankuch.de/

For the books’ long-term value, there is a contemporary review by Edward Winter at:

http://www.chesshistory.com/winter/extra/petrosian.html

[Emil Smilovici]

Re: Petrosian Books

200 euro is actually quite reasonable for the pair (1991 ed.) – if in good shape.
The ISHI press books can be found for about Can $ 60 – brand new. An issue might be the quality (graphics) of the product. See some excerpts available on the web. At least 4-5 of the largest online book selling companies in the world and in the US are selling these Petrosian books and even promote(d) them on their front page. I thought to buy them but – as E. Winter mentions – a small percentage of the games are with notes by Petrosian (less than 10%) and most have no notes at all. His very positive review was made in 1991, long before the era of the databases …
A fellow chess master (rated 2200+ CFC) in Ottawa who owned the books (1991 Pergamon) told me once that he was disappointed by the scarcity of the annotated games.

Some “best of Petrosian”:
CLARKE P.H. TIGRAN PETROSIAN - Master of Defence
KEENE Raymond Petrosian vs. The Elite
PETROSIAN Tigran Petrosian's Legacy (by Petrosian but not a collection of his games)
VASILIEV Vik Tigran Petrosian His Life and Games
Garry Kasparov on My Great Predecessors, Part 3 (includes Petrosian and Spassky)

Unfortunately Petrosian did not write books on his World Championship matches – although there is a Botvinnik – Petrosian 1963 (edited by Igor Botvinnik)

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

Re: Petrosian Books

Unfortunately Petrosian did not write books

Seems he was busy editing others stuff. He was an editor of several chess publications (Chess Moscow and 64). His autobiography was not finished too, and only published after his death.

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Petrosian Books

Missing Petrosian Miniature

Every few months I see a reference to these books. The latest actually comes from the past.

In NIC 1999/2 the editor writes:

While leafing through old issues of Shakhmatny Bulletin in search of something total different we stumbled upon the game Tigran Petrosian-Alexander Bangiev, Moscow tt 1974.

Much to our surprise this game was not stored in our computer. Hadn’t all Petrosian games been entered? A quick look in Shekhtman’s two-tome games collection revealed that there too the game was missing as in fact was the entire tournament the game was played in!

(snip)

(We contacted) Albert Kapengut at his home in Minsk and he instantly provided the necessary information:

“You are absolutely correct regarding the games of Tigran Petrosian. In 1974 the Team Championship of the Spartak Sports Society among the Republics was held in Moscow. On board one, first place with 5.5 points out of 7 was shared by Naum Rashkovsky and myself and Tigran took only third place with 5 points. Moreover, he lost with White in crushing style in 20-odd moves to Rashkovsky.

Immediately after the Championship he (it is rumoured) requested that this game should not be published in Shakhmatny Bulletin, later he altogether excluded this tournament from his list of appearances, and Shekhtman explained to me that he did not include the tournament, so as to fulfill his wishes.

(snip)

An interesting case of manipulating history, which got even more interesting when Ken Neat, who translated Shekhtman’s books, informed us of the following “Out of curiosity I looked in the weekly newspaper 64 for any mention of the Spartak Team Championship. In issue 1974 No. 34 I found a brief report by Efim Nuz where, not surprisingly (Petrosian was editor-in-chief), there is no mention of the Petrosian-Rashkovsky game, or indeed of Rashkovsky. All that it says about Petrosian is that after his game with Bangiev (which ended in a draw), he found a brilliant win in the train on his way home.”
+++++++++

Well, that was fourteen years ago. I was able to find both games mentioned above online but no others from the Spartak event.

[Event "Spartak tt"]
[Site "Moscow"]
[Date "1974.??.??"]
[EventDate "1974.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Petrosian"]
[Black "Nukhim Rashkovsky"]
[ECO "E97"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]
[PlyCount "34"]

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.Be2 O-O 6.Nf3 e5 7.O-O Nc6 8.d5 Ne7 9.b4 Nh5 10.Nd2 Nf4 11.Bf3 f5 12.a4 g5 13.exf5 Nxf5 14.g3 Nh3+ 15.Kg2 Qd7 16.Ba3 Nd4 17.Be4 Nxf2 0-1

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1641497
http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1714672
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nukhim_Rashkovsky

[Emil Smilovici]

Re: Petrosian Books

Missing Petrosian Miniature


[Event "Spartak tt"]
[Site "Moscow"]
[Date "1974.??.??"]
[EventDate "1974.??.??"]
[Round "?"]
[Result "0-1"]
[White "Petrosian"]
[Black "Nukhim Rashkovsky"]
[ECO "E97"]
[WhiteElo "?"]
[BlackElo "?"]
[PlyCount "34"]

1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.Be2 O-O 6.Nf3 e5 7.O-O Nc6 8.d5 Ne7 9.b4 Nh5 10.Nd2 Nf4 11.Bf3 f5 12.a4 g5 13.exf5 Nxf5 14.g3 Nh3+ 15.Kg2 Qd7 16.Ba3 Nd4 17.Be4 Nxf2 0-1

Looks like Rashkovsky ... Nuked Him!

[Dan Scoones]

Re: Petrosian Books

Some “best of Petrosian”:
CLARKE P.H. TIGRAN PETROSIAN - Master of Defence
KEENE Raymond Petrosian vs. The Elite
PETROSIAN Tigran Petrosian's Legacy (by Petrosian but not a collection of his games)
VASILIEV Vik Tigran Petrosian His Life and Games
Garry Kasparov on My Great Predecessors, Part 3 (includes Petrosian and Spassky)

Petrosian's own collection of his best games was published in Moscow in the mid-to-late 1980s under the title Стратегия Надёжности (The Strategy of Reliability).

A question for anyone who owns the Shekhtman books: are the annotated games in those books the same ones that appeared in Стратегия Надёжности?

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Petrosian Books

Dan, I thought answering your question would be a cinch. It took longer than I thought but I rather enjoyed reviewing Petrosian’s career!

Volume 1 1942-1965

There are 1089 games. The annotated ones are:

(69) Petrosian-Sorokin Slav 1946
(105) Dunayev-Petrosian, Sicilian 1946
(126) Petrosian-Bondarevsky, Catalan 1947
(151) Petrosian-Veresov, NimzoIndian 1947
(179) Petrosian-Pogrebyssky, Grunfeld 1949
(195) Petrosian-Lilienthal, Four Knights 1949
(197) Kholmov-Petrosian, French 1949
(208) Petrosian-Lyublinsky, Queen’s Pawn 1949
(232) Petrosian-Tolush, Queen’s Gambit 1950
(246) Keres-Petrosian, French 1950
(247) Petrosian-Bondarevsky, Dutch 1950
(287) Lipnitsky-Petrosian, Hungarian 1951
(290) Petrosian-Smyslov, Slav 1951
(291) Simagin-Petrosian, Queen’s Gambit 1951
(328) Petrosian-Vaitonis, Queen’s Gambit 1952
(332) Petrosian-Golombek, Queen’s Pawn 1952
(333) Pilnik-Petrosian, Sicilian 1952
(335) Wade-Petrosian, Sicilian 1952

There are also games with Pachman, Barcza, Szabo and Stoltz from the Stockholm Interzonal 1952. There follow these annotated games:
1953:Milev, Troianescu, Euwe, Gligoric
1954:Nezhmedtdinov, Bisguier (notes by Levenfish), Suetin
1955:Taimanov, Horowitz, Sliwa, Donner
1956:Bronstein, Pilnik, Filip, Keres, Simagin, Polugayevsky
1957:Tolush, Trifunovic, Karaklajic, Pirc, Sefc
1958:Suetin, Bannik, Tolush, Kozma
1959:Yukhtman, Lutikov, Krogius, Nezhmetdinov, Averbakh, Matanovic, Fischer (notes by Simagin), Gligoric
1960:Suetin, Taimanov, Gufeld, Barendregt, Stahlberg, Pfeiffer, Golz
1961:Smyslov, Gufeld, Bannik, Pachman, Najdorf
1962:Schweber, Tal, Fischer (notes by Boleslavsky)
1963:Botvnnik – 6 World Championship games with notes by Petrosian and Suetin; Gligoric, Benko
1964:Bouwmeester (notes by Euwe), Taimanov
1965:Filip, Schmid

I make that about 77 annotated games in the first volume.
++++++++

Volume 2 1966-1983

There are a total of 1062 games given.

1966: Spassky – two games annotated by other authors; Reshevsky, Portisch, Ivkov, Donner, Unzicker, Larsen, Najdorf, Fischer and eight more from the 2nd Piatigorsky Cup; Johansson, Larsen (notes by Boleslavsky)
1967:Bronstein, Gheorghiu (notes by Simagin), Donner
1968:Estrin(notes by Suetin), Morelos Castro (notes by Boleslavsky), Kottnauer(notes by Boleslavsky), Bobotsov(Kholmov), Uhlmann (Boleslavsky), Larsen
1969:Spassky – 3 WCC extensively annotated games followed by “How I Lost the Match”; Savon, Lutikov
1970:Polugayevsky (Zaitsev), Fischer (Match of the Century)-two games, Hort, Pomar
1971:Hubner Match (Zaitsev and Tal), Korchnoi, Fischer, Buenos Aires – Game 2,Spassky, Parma (Kholmov)
1972:Tal (Suetin), Gligorich(Yudovich), Keres, Larsen
1973:Marovic, Langeweg, Tal, Gligoric
1974:Portisch – 3 games of the match, Korchnoi (Kholmov), Browne (Razuvayev), Visier (Shekhtman)
1975:Gligorich (Razuvayev), Karpov (Zaitsev) – 3 games of the match, Ljubojevic (Zaitsev), Bohm, Belyavsky (Zaitsev), Gulko (Gufeld)- Gulko resigning on the 95th move after three days play
1976:Larsen, Tal, Rashkovsky (Kholmov) in the 44th USSR Championship
1977:Balashov (Tukmakov), Grigorian
1978:Portisch (at Lone Pine), Gulko
1979:Vukic, Smejkal
1980:Andersson
1981:Torre, Kasparov (with a long (stormy?) discussion at the Press Conference after the game)
1982:Tukmakov, Psakhis (Vladimirov) and noted in passing, though not annotated, a 104-move draw against Jonathan Mestel at Las Palmas.
1983:None

So, I make that 79 fully annotated games in the second volume. The percentage then for the two volumes is 156 out of 2151 or 7.25%.

Of the Moscow Spartakiad, April 1974, there was only an unannotated game against Balashov, which Petrosian won.

[Dan Scoones]

Re: Petrosian Books

Dan, I thought answering your question would be a cinch. It took longer than I thought but I rather enjoyed reviewing Petrosian’s career!

Wayne,
Thank you for doing this. Yes -- these are the annotated games from The Strategy of Reliability (as I suspected they would be!)
Dan

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Petrosian Books

Petrosian Books

December 1, 2015

David DeLucia is probably the premier chess book collector. I am sure he keeps a spreadsheet of every book sale so that knows almost exactly the present worth of every collectable book.

He recently put the two Petrosian books by E. Shekhtman up for auction on eBay at US $150 + US $72 for international shipping. There were no bidders.

At the present rate of exchange that US $222 is CAN $ 296.

DeLucia’s comments on the books, “In my opinion, the best work on Petrosian.”

[Egidijus Zeromskis]

Re: Petrosian Books

He recently put the two Petrosian books by E. Shekhtman up for auction on eBay at US $150 + US $72 for international shipping. There were no bidders.

At the present rate of exchange that US $222 is CAN $ 296.

Some sources sell these books for ~25-40 each with shipping costs ~15. So what was so special of D.DeLucia copies?

[Wayne Komer]

Re: Petrosian Books

Petrosian Books

December 1, 2015

The books generally available now are the unauthorized 2012 reprints by Sam Sloan/Ishi Press.

The DeLucia volumes are the first editions of 1991.

The differences in the two editions are small but to some collectors the former is very desirable and the latter is not.

A book’s value is subjective and open to opinion. I own the reprints but would replace them in a moment with the originals if I could get them.

[Peter McKillop]

Re: Petrosian Books

What is the quality of the diagrams and text like in the Sloan volumes?