Upcoming Chess Books

[Wayne Komer]

Upcoming Chess Books

December 14, 2018

A Carlsen-Caruana pre-Match book has come out and Match books are on their way.

Here is one which treats Carlsen-Karjakin like Spassky-Fischer:

The Grandmaster: Magnus Carlsen and the Match That Made Chess Great Again- Brin-Jonathan Butler

Publisher’s Blurb

A firsthand account of the dramatic 2016 World Chess Championship between Norway's Magnus Carlsen and Russia's Sergey Karjakin, which mirrored the world's geopolitical unrest and rekindled a global fascination with the sport.

The first week of November 2016, as a crowd of people swarmed outside of Manhattan’s Trump Tower to rail against the election of Donald Trump, hundreds more descended on the city’s South Street Seaport. But they weren’t there to protest. They were there to watch the World Chess Championship between Norway's Magnus Carlsen and Russia's Sergey Karjakin—what by the time it was over would be front-page news and thought by many the greatest finish in chess history.

The story lines were riveting. The championship hadn’t been hosted in New York City, the de facto world capital of the sport, in more than two decades. With both Carlsen and Karjakin just 25 years old, the tournament organizers were billing it as a battle of the millennials—the first time the championship had been waged among the generation that grew up playing chess primarily against computers. And perhaps most intriguing were all the geopolitical connections to the match. Originally from Crimea, Karjakin had recently repatriated to Russia under the direct assistance of Putin. Carlsen, meanwhile, had expressed admiration for Donald Trump, and his first move of the tournament he played with a smirk what's called a Trompowsky Attack. Then there was the Russian leader of the World Chess Federation being barred from attending due to US sanctions, and chess fanatic and Trump adviser Peter Thiel being called on to make the honorary first move in sudden death.

That the tournament required sudden death was a shock. Oddsmakers had given Carlsen, the defending champion, an 80% chance of winning. It would take everything he had to retain his title. In doing so, he would firmly make his case to be considered the greatest player chess has ever seen.

Author Brin-Jonathan Butler was granted unique access to the two-and-half-week tournament and watched every move. In The Grandmaster, he aims to do for Magnus Carlsen what Norman Mailer did for Muhammed Ali in The Fight, John McPhee did for Arthur Ashe in Levels of the Game, and David Foster Wallace did for Roger Federer in his famous New York Times Magazine profile. Butler captures one of the world’s greatest sportsmen at the height of their powers, and attempts to decipher the secret to that greatness.

About the Author

Brin-Jonathan Butler has written for Esquire, Bloomberg, ESPN Magazine, Al Jazeera, Harper’s, The Paris Review, Salon, and Vice. His first book, The Domino Diaries, was shortlisted for the PEN/ESPN Award for literary sports writing and a Boston Globe Best Book of 2015. His work has also been a notable selection in both Best American Sports and Best American Travel Writing multiple times.

Simon & Schuster
Paperback
224 pages
ISBN 9781982107185
November 2018

[John Torrie]

Sorry about the delay. For those interested in Jonathan MacDonald's book 'My Adventures In The Chess World: Jonathan Style', Jonathan can be reached at ruylopez64@gmail.com.

[Wayne Komer]

Upcoming Chess Books

December 7, 2018

This book to appear in 2019

My Best Games - Chess Lessons from my Legacy, Volume 1: 1989-1996

by Gata Kamsky (Author)

· Paperback: 315 pages
· Publisher: Thinkers Publishing
· Language: English
· ISBN-10: 9492510286
· ISBN-13: 978-9492510280
· Product Dimensions: 17 x 23.5 cm
· Shipping Weight: 503 g


About the Author

Grandmaster Gata Kamsky, five times US champion, has one of the most extraordinary career trajectories of any chess player. In 1989 he arrived in New York, at the age of 15, with his father from his home country Russia. Just two years later he became for the first time US champion. He reached the top 10 at the very young age of 16 and played a World Championship match at the age of 22, losing to the reigning World Champion Anatoli Karpov. He then decided to stop playing chess for 8 years, studying Medicine and Law. In 2004 he reappeared as a full-time player, became again a world-elite player winning many international tournaments and supporting the US team for many successes.

Gata will share in his first volume how he became one of the world elite class players and contender for the title of World Chess Champion. Why and how he used different styles of play and will reveal how this learning process helped him to become a chess professional.

_________

Readers may be familiar with Gata Kamsky chess genius by Stephen Gordon and Timothy Taylor, Chess Digest, 1994, 196 pages

There is also:

Elista diaries: Karpov-Kamsky 1996
Anatoly Karpov and Ronald Henley
R & D Publishing
1996, 333 pages

and Norbert Heymann’s game collections 1992 and 1995 for Europa-Rochade.

[Ken MacDonald]

100 per cent Canadian and fresh from the press is Saint John chess master Jonathan MacDonald's inspirational 'My Adventures In The Chess World: Jonathan Style'. The Saint John Library has already purchased two books, and chess players from around the province who recently invested in a copy are soaking it up. Through a series of articles, games and memorabilia, Jonathan highlights his attraction to chess at the late age of 17, his developing passion, love and mastery of the game as he sought out chess adventures and fought his way up the ranks. This postmodern chess book is written without boast, has a lot of humor and a pureness and honesty of heart that is great to see in a chess book.

Where can I obtain a copy? Preferably signed.

[John Torrie]

100 per cent Canadian and fresh from the press is Saint John chess master Jonathan MacDonald's inspirational 'My Adventures In The Chess World: Jonathan Style'. The Saint John Library has already purchased two books, and chess players from around the province who recently invested in a copy are soaking it up. Through a series of articles, games and memorabilia, Jonathan highlights his attraction to chess at the late age of 17, his developing passion, love and mastery of the game as he sought out chess adventures and fought his way up the ranks. This postmodern chess book is written without boast, has a lot of humor and a pureness and honesty of heart that is great to see in a chess book.

[Gordon Ritchie]

Man vs Machine is available from Amazon for $46. Same for Timman's upcoming book on KvK. Too rich for my blood.

[Ian Findlay]

Looking forward to Game Changer. You can see some videos on chess24 website where Matthew Sadler shows what Alpha Zero would have done in the recent Carslen - Caruana match. Some really great ideas and a lot of them are quite practical. Matthew Sadler also does a great job of explaining it in human terms. Also Natasha Regan has very impressive credential in AI.

[Wayne Komer]

Upcoming Chess Books

December 1, 2018

This book to appear in 2019

Game Changer: AlphaZero’s Groundbreaking Chess Strategies and the Promise of AI

Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan

Edition : Paperback
Publication date : March 1, 2019
Number of pages : 368
Publisher : New in Chess
Weight : 500 gram
ISBN : 9789056918187
Price : About 22.50 euro

Publisher’s Blurb

It took AlphaZero only a few hours of self-learning to become the chess player that shocked the world.

The artificial intelligence system, created by DeepMind, had been fed nothing but the rules of the Royal Game when it beat the world’s strongest chess engine in a prolonged match. The selection of ten games published in December 2017 created a worldwide sensation: how was it possible to play in such a brilliant and risky style and not lose a single game against an opponent of superhuman strength?

For Game Changer, Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan investigated more than two thousand previously unpublished games by AlphaZero. They also had unparalleled access to its team of developers and were offered a unique look ‘under the bonnet’ to grasp the depth and breadth of AlphaZero’s search. Sadler and Regan reveal its thinking process and tell the story of the human motivation and the techniques that created AlphaZero.

Game Changer also presents a collection of lucidly explained chess games of astonishing quality. Both professionals and club players will improve their game by studying AlphaZero’s stunning discoveries in every field that matters: opening preparation, piece mobility, initiative, attacking techniques, long-term sacrifices and much more.

The story of AlphaZero has a wider impact. Game Changer offers intriguing insights into the opportunities and horizons of Artificial Intelligence. Not just in solving games, but in providing solutions for a wide variety of challenges in society.

With a foreword by former World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov and an introduction by DeepMind CEO Demis Hassabis.

Matthew Sadler (1974) is a Grandmaster who twice won the British Championship and was awarded an individual Gold Medal at the 1996 Olympiad. He has authored several highly acclaimed books on chess and has been writing the famous ‘Sadler on Books’ column for New In Chess magazine for many years.

Natasha Regan is a Women’s International Master from England who achieved a degree in mathematics from Cambridge University. Matthew Sadler and Natasha Regan won the English Chess Federation 2016 Book of the Award for their book Chess for Life.

https://www.newinchess.com/game-changer

[Wayne Komer]

Upcoming Chess Books

December 1, 2018

Practical Endgame Studies

Author: Afek, Yochanan

Title: Practical Chess Beauty

The book brings several hundreds of Yochanan Afek's studies divided by themes, with author's solution and word comments. On average, one study = one full page.

IM Yochanan Afek is one of the best endgame study composers of recent decades. His work is close to practical chess and most of the studies begin from the positions that could arise in a practical game. Name index at the end. Afek's studies are also popular because their solutions are original and often very surprising. You can look at some of them in a book sample on publisher pages. 2 pictures. Further information about the book and a sample are available at

http://www.qualitychess.co.uk/produc...yochanan_afek/

Place of publication:Glasgow
Publisher: Quality Chess
Year of publication: 2018
Edition:1st edition
Pages: 464p. 1,020 grams
Binding:Hardcover
Language: English + Figurine notation
Diagrams: many
Book size: Large 8vo (23-25 cm)
Price: About 33 euro

+++++++++++

Two other well-known books by Afek are:

1) Invisible chess moves

Yochanan Afek and Emmanuel Neiman

240 pages

New in Chess, 2011

2) Extreme chess tactics

Yochanan Afek: edited by Graham Burgess

143 pages

Gambit, 2017

[Wayne Komer]

Upcoming Chess Books

August 31, 2018

The Trompowsky Attack

There are far more books on this opening than I would have thought. These so far:

1. The Trompowsky Attack: Move By Move
Lakdawala, Cyrus /Everyman/ 2014

2. Playing the Trompowsky
Pert, Richard / Quality Chess / 2013

3. Starting out: the Trompowsky attack
Palliser, Richard / Gloucester / 2009

4. Queen's gambits : Trompowsky & Torre ; Tactics in the chess opening
Nijboer, Friso / New In Chess / 2006

5. Dealing with d4 deviations : fighting the Trompowsky, Torre, Blackmar-Diemer, Stonewall, Colle and other problem openings
Cox, John / Gloucester Publ / 2005

6. The Trompowsky
Davies, Nigel / Gloucester / 2005

7. Winning with the Trompowsky
Wells, Peter / Batsford / 2003

8. The Trompowsky
Gallagher, Joe / Chess Press / 1998

9. Secrets of the Trompovsky
Hodgson, Julian / Hodgson Enterprises / 1997-...

10. Trends in the Trompovsky ; Vol. 4
Buckley, Graeme / Trends Publications / 1997

11. The Trompowsky attack Bg5 / Andrew Soltis
Soltis, Andrew /Chess Digest/ 1995

To these add this:

Play the Trompowsky Attack
Kryakvin, Dmitry/ Chess Stars Ltd/ 2018


And from its publisher:

The Brazilian Chess Champion Octavio Trompowsky (1897-1984) lived in Rio de Janeiro, where he invented his favourite 2.Bg5. He played the move at the Olympiad as well. It is said that one of his opponents took down his spectacles and tried to clear the lenses in order to better understand what was happening on the board.

Thanks to Magnus Carlsen, 2.Bg5 has earned popularity again. The world champion posed problems in the Trompowsky to such opening experts as Vladimir Kramnik and Sergey Karjakin. He even employed the bishop sortie in the world title match against Karjakin.

The early attack on the black knight limits Black's choices in the opening, as it does rule out the Nimzo, the Grünfeld and the King's Indian, which all require deep theoretical knowledge from White. The Trompowsky allows you to play fresh, creative and complex positions and is an interesting choice for all club players who want to surprise their opponents.

The author bases his recommendations on his own tournament practice, with stern tests at a grandmaster level.

[Wayne Komer]

Upcoming Chess Books

August 4, 2018

We have given details of upcoming chess books we are looking forward to.

Unfortunately, when one falls short, it is our duty to write of its shortcomings.

A Review by Olimpiu G. Urcan on Patreon:


The blurb of Ulrich Geilmann's newly released The Indian Chessmaster Malik Mir Sultan Khan: His Life and His Games (Joachim Beyer Verlag, 2018) states:

"This book traces the exceptional life of this chess master, as far as the narrow sources allow." But, despite this promise and the deceivingly academic-sounding title, that's not what this 216-page book offers. In a postscript on page 215, Geilmann explained:

How to tell the story of a chess comet that lights up only briefly before disappearing in the fog of time?

You can take the easy way by just sticking to the player's life data based on the existing sources.

This can be done quickly, soberly and eloquently. But does this do justice to the human being behind Sultan Khan, to his motives and characteristics? Do you really get to know his personality? Well, I seriously doubt it.

That's why I took a different approach by telling the story from its end, so to speak. Sultan Khan accompanies his master on the way back to India. A fictional British passenger comes into contact with him by accident, and is fascinated by the Indian's background. He begins to ask more and more questions, thus penetrating more and more into the life story of the chess genius - and even a little bit into his psyche, too.

Thus, a bizarre fictionalized account is found on pages 9-46, meant as a summary of Sultan Khan's life and career. Of course, it's nothing of the sort. It gets worse: most of the illustrations and newspaper cuttings given there are lifted without credit from a substantial Chess Notes article on Sultan Khan (to which I've contributed a number of items over time).

Pages 52-207 contain "a collection of annotated games," 183 in total, which the author called "an almost complete selection from the available sources." The games are given without sources, without complete details even when they are known (exact date, venue, occasion, full name of opponents) and without diagrams. They are accompanied by terse ChessBase-style annotations, many with anachronistic opening-related notes. The game section is followed by a collection of slipshod crosstables on pages 208-214 and, unsurprisingly, the book closes without a list of sources or a bibliography and without a game index or a general index.

The author's ignis fatuusis evident: meticulous, ground-breaking biographical or historical writing, well-anchored in reliable primary sources and aiming to excavate fresh archival material after years of difficult research, is far from easy. It's infinitely harder than fantasizing about being a 1930s British patrician, compiling a below-average database dump, casually misusing other people's work and getting an Indian grandmaster to pen a chichi foreword. That, a thing which Sahib Geilmann is yet to learn, is "the easy way."

[Ian Findlay]

Jonathan Schaeffer of Thornhill was an active player (and organizer) when he was a teenager. In the CFC's July 1975 Annual List he was the 8th top Junior in Canada, rated 2029.

Yes and I remember Danny Gottlieb telling me he had such a great time at a party because he and Jonathon got to analyse chess all night! Jonathon's one tip was put your queen on c2 (or c7), a tip that GM Finegold often says in his lectures! I also remember a brilliant game he played against Peter Avery, where he nicely spun a mating net around Mr. Avery's king. Memories!

[Wayne Komer]

Upcoming Chess Books

July 31, 2018

There are a number of books with “"all”" the games of Alexander Alekhine. Among them

1) Alexander Alekhine’'s Chess Games, 1902-1946
by Leonard M. Skinner and Robert G. P. Ver
2543 games, 824 pages
McFarland 1998

2) Complete games of Alekhine. Volume 1: 1892-1921 +
Volume 2: 1921-1924 + Volume 3: 1925-1927
by Fiala, Vlastimil / Kalendovsky, Jan
188 + 464 + 496 pages
Moravian Chess 1992-1998

3) Polnoe sobranie partiy s avtorskimi
kommentariami. Tom 1-4: 1905-20, 1921-25, 1926-
31, 1931-46
by Alexander Aljechin
(Full Collection of Games with Author
Annotations). The set of four books contains all
available Alekhine games with his own annotations
= 550 games
336 + 360 + 352 + 472 pages
Russian Chess House 2009-2017

________

Now, the third collection (above) is being made available in English with the appearance of the first volume.

Alexander Alekhine
Complete Games Collection with His Own Annotations
Volume 1: 1905-1920
344 pages
Russian Chess House 2018

“The first Russian world champion Alexander Alekhine went down in history not only as a winner of many tournaments and matches, but also as the creator of hundreds of masterpieces of chess creativity.

He is also rightfully considered one of the most prominent analysts of all time. Alekhine's comments are distinguished by depth and objectivity, a clear statement of the prisoners in the position of the ideas.

In this edition, for the first time, all the games of Alekhine with author's notes are collected. Many of them now can be found only in old magazines, some have not been published before. The editorial notes take into account the achievements of modern computer analysis.”
_________

I have no idea what the phrase "the prisoners in the position of the ideas"” in the blurb above means.

[Wayne Komer]

Upcoming Chess Books

July 13, 2018


Author: Timman, Jan

Title: The Longest Game: The Five Kasparov - Karpov Matches for the World Chess

Pre-order, expected in Winter 2018/19.

From the cover: On September 10, 1984, Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov appeared on the stage of the Hall of Columns in Moscow for the first game of their match for the World Chess Championship. In the next six years they would play five matches for the highest title and create one of the fiercest rivalries in sports history. The matches lasted a staggering total of 14 months, and the ‘two K’s’ played 5540 moves in 144 games.

The first match became front page news worldwide when after five months FIDE President Florencio Campomanes stepped in to stop the match citing exhaustion of both participants. A new match was staged and having learned valuable lessons, 22-year-old Garry Kasparov became the youngest World Chess Champion in history.

His win was not only hailed as a triumph of imaginative attacking chess, but also as a political victory. The representative of ‘perestroika’ had beaten the old champion, a symbol of Soviet stagnation. Kasparov defended his title in three more matches, all of them full of drama. Karpov remained a formidable opponent and the overall score was only 73-71 in Kasparov’s favour.

In The Longest Game Jan Timman returns to the Kasparov-Karpov matches. He chronicles the many twists and turns of this fascinating saga, including his behind-the scenes impressions, and takes a fresh look at the games.

Further information about the book are available at newinchess.com

Place of publication: Alkmaar
Publisher: New in Chess
Year of publication: 2018
Edition:1st edition
Pages: ca 304p
Binding:Paperback
Language: English + Figurine notation
Diagrams: many
Book size: Large 8vo (23-25 cm)

_________

Jan Timman is a former World Championship Candidate who rose to the number two spot of the FIDE world rankings. He is the author of highly acclaimed books such as Curacao 1962 and The Art of the Endgame. His best-selling Timman’s Titans won the 2017 English Chess Federation Book of the Year Award.

https://www.newinchess.com/the-longest-game

_________

The contests were: 1984 in Moscow (48 games),
1985 Moscow (24 games), 1986 London/Leningrad (24 games), 1987 Seville (24 games) and 1990 NYC/Lyon (24 games).

Garry Kasparov wrote about them in three books:

Garry Kasparov on modern chess; Part 2: Kasparov vs Karpov: 1975 – 1985, including the 1^stand 2^nd matches, Gloucester, 2008

Part 3: Kasparov vs Karpov: 1986-1987, Gloucester, 2009

Part 4: Kasparov vs Karpov: 1988-2009, Gloucester, 2010

(There are Everyman editions of these works too)

It will be good to have the matches complete in one volume!

[Wayne Komer]

Upcoming Chess Books

July 9, 2018

Sultan Khan

In 2014 on ChessTalk, a thread was started entitled, "“I want to start a drive to get Mir Sultan Khan awarded the GM title posthumously".”

https://forum.chesstalk.com/forum/ch...e-posthumously

The two most accessible books for those who want to see his history and his games are:

Mir Sultan Khan
By Richard N. Coles
BCM Quarterly, No. 10
1965
92 pages

There is also a 2^ndrevised edition with 144 pages published in 1977.

Kometa Sultan-Chana
By Anatolij Macukevic
Ripol Klassik
2003
254 pages

Now, to join these is the new paperback:

The Indian Chessmaster Malik Mir Sultan Khan. His Life and His Games
By Ulrich Geilmann
Beyer
2018
220 pages

The accompanying blurb:

Chess and life biography and 183 well annotated games of Sultan Khan. Career record. Mir Sultan Khan, 1905-1966, was one of the world's best players around 1930. He was British champion in 1929, 1930 and 1932, played in three Olympiads. He won, for example, against Capablanca, Rubinstein and Flohr. His short career ended in 1933 when he had to return to India. 2 pictures. In English + figurine notation