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[Note that Jon Speelman also looks at the content of the article in video format, here embedded at the end of the article.]
After 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
Master Class Vol.2: Mihail Tal
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.
