A few chestnuts more

by Jonathan Speelman
5/15/2022 – Unashamed ultra-violence. Jon Speelman continues to share findings from his bookshelf, and today explores Irving Chernev’s “The 1000 best short games of chess”, a collection of miniatures first published in 1957. Speelman adds notes to selected games from the collection of thud and blunder.
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Thud and blunder

[Note that Jon Speelman also looks at the content of the article in video format, here embedded at the end of the article.]

Irving ChernevAfter A fistful of chestnuts a fortnight ago, it was fairly inevitable — even though I’m not personally greatly enamoured of occidental cinematographic pasta — that we’d move on to A few chestnuts more.

With this in mind, I moved to the right along my bookshelf, away from Euwe and Kramer and Suetin, and then my eye happened to travel up a shelf to where I found Irving Chernev’s The 1000 best short games of chess.

After verifying that 1000(!) is not a misprint, it was obvious that this collection, first published in 1957, would be bigger on quantity than quality. But scanning through (looking at the pictures — or diagrams if you want to be technical) I did find lots of enjoyable games, if a paucity of credible variations before the violent dénouements, and I’m looking at a few of these today, all from the first 150 of the 1000.

Before that, a small moment from the recent tournament in Bucharest, which vividly highlights in a microcosm the relationship between material and activity on the chessboard.

 

A strong player should see immediately that White should retreat Bd3 and that dxe3 then would be close to suicidal (in fact, it’s utterly fatal). But I’m interested, partly from a teaching perspective, in how strong a player needs to be for this to be obvious? Rapport’s clever reply of ...e5-4 then diffused the position immediately.

We move on to Chernev’s mega-collection of thud and blunder. I’ve given the game numbers in the book, in case anybody has a copy, and added some notes as well.

 

Select an entry from the list to switch between games

On this DVD Dorian Rogozenco, Mihail Marin, Oliver Reeh and Karsten Müller present the 8. World Chess Champion in video lessons: his openings, his understanding of chess strategy, his artful endgame play, and finally his immortal combinations.

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Jonathan Speelman, born in 1956, studied mathematics but became a professional chess player in 1977. He was a member of the English Olympic team from 1980–2006 and three times British Champion. He played twice in Candidates Tournaments, reaching the semi-final in 1989. He twice seconded a World Championship challenger: Nigel Short and then Viswanathan Anand against Garry Kasparov in London 1993 and New York 1995.