Author: John Jack
Date: 17:40:28 10/16/05
Gary Lack Of Respect For Past World Champs
Garry Kasparov is one of the greatest players who ever lived, and earlier
efforts have also demonstrated that he can be a good author - if he applies
himself. This volume has also received much attention in the press, some chess
websites have treated these volumes as if they were the greatest thing to ever
happen to the chess world.
This volume is part three of a series of books. It focuses primarily on two
{former} World Champions, Tigran Petrosian and Boris Spassky. (The introduction
informs us that the authors will also be looking at the contemporaries of these
two players: Gligoric, Polugayevsky, Portisch and Stein.)
In a way, this book is important - I have a fairly large chess library, so I
naturally have many books on both of these players. However, current books on
Petrosian are hard to find, many are out of print and impossible to obtain.
Petrosian is well known for his defensive capabilities, but some of the other
qualities of his play are not understood. In the late 1950's and early 1960's,
Petrosian might have been the best blitz player in the world. He had excellent
tactics, an incredible grasp of the opening, and an uncanny knack for finding
the weakest part of an opponent's position. And on the days when he felt like
exerting himself, he could be one of the games deepest thinkers. (See his
victory over Unzicker at Hamburg, Germany; 1960. White marches his King all the
way across the board, a triumph of chess strategy, with an incredibly beautiful
finish. This volume also fails to examine this contest ... which is a terrible
shame.)
Spassky is one of the greatest players who ever lived, his ability and all-round
dynamic approach to the game has never been fully appreciated by most amateurs.
This volume is filled with his beautiful victories ... although a few of his
greatest games are missing from this particular volume.
Now down to brass tacks. The authors have fewer games in here that do not
concern the principal players of the volume, so the lack of focus has improved.
(Although there are still games that seemingly don't belong in here. Garry's
inclusion of a loss to Petrosian in 1979 has no real bearing on the life of this
great player. Kasparov almost appears to be looking for some moral justification
for his defeat ... which is really sad.)
There are still quite a few historical inaccuracies, and while the authors have
improved in this area, the pundits on the Internet clearly proved they have not
completely solved this problem, either.
This volume was supposed to be of a much higher standard in terms of analysis, a
U.S. representative of the publisher personally assured me of this, via a USPS
letter. However, I see no real change in the overall level of the analysis, I
spotted many errors just casually playing through the book - without even
putting them on the PC and running them by the computer's wizardry.
I decided - after much thought and perusal - to only deeply analyze one game in
this volume, in this way I could complete my review in a timely manner. {I
eventually plan to publish my complete analysis on my web site.}
The game that I chose was L. Stein - S. Furman; from the 37th URS Championships,
1969. (Game # 68, page # 253 - of the English edition.) On first blush, the
analysis appears to be very detailed and well done. However upon deeper
inspection the authors only updated previous analysis ... and did not do a very
good job. I found somewhere between 15-20 errors, and these range from only
minor all the way up to jaw-dropping blunders and oversights. Space would not
allow a comprehensive review or analysis here, I will confine myself to just a
few examples to make a point.
The computer likes the move 14...Qb6; however the authors quote a game where
this was played and Black lost horribly. (Smirin - Gelfand; Sverdlovsk; 1987.)
The authors make no comment on the moves of this game, but 17...Kc8?? was a
terrible mistake, any analysis engine will confirm that taking with the Bishop
was forced.
Nor is this the only failure by the annotators, I will not dabble with many of
the smaller mistakes and oversights, but save those for my web page. 17.dxc6
appears to be a routine re-capture, but White had 17.Qe8+!! winning very
rapidly. (The authors make absolutely no comment at all at this point.) Nor is
this the only time that I found an improvement, I found at least five major
improvements over the game or analysis ... many of these required no real work,
only some close scrutiny with an analysis engine.
The authors do analyze possibilities after White's 30th move ... but come to the
wrong conclusion. And there is some confusion over what move Black actually
played on his 37th move. One book - and several Internet sources - give the move
of "37...K-N5." (...King to the b4-square.) And while the majority of other
sources give 37...Kb5; as Kasparov and company do here; this still does not
entirely resolve the problem. If Black's 37th move is incorrect, then the
authors failed to do basic move verification. And if the 37th move of ...Kb5 is
what was actually played in the game - as given by MGP - this still does not
explain why the authors failed to comment on Black's 38th move ... which was
basically a DOUBLE-QUESTION mark blunder ... which White failed to notice, (or
capitalize on).
I could go on and on ... but I trust by now you get the point. If you are just
an average player looking for some interesting games, decently annotated; then
you should buy this book. However, if you are looking for high-quality analysis
of the truest caliber, then this volume does not get a passing grade.
John E Jack
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