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The Candidates' Tournament of 1959 was one of the most dramatic and exciting of all tournaments, launching the flamboyant Grandmaster Mikhail Tal on his road to become the youngest-ever World Champion. Keres played possibly the best chess of his career at this event, restraining his natural attacking flair in the service of a more universal style, able to turn out finely honed strategic campaigns and subtle endgames. His three(!) victories over Tal in this tournament must have made him believe he could take the champion's crown, if he finished first... It was also notable for the arrival on the world's stage of Bobby Fischer, already twice USA champion and World Championship Candidate at 15 years of age. Several of his contests from this tournament appeared in his magisterialc ollection of 'Memorable Games', including an extraordinary game with four queens on the board against future Champion Petrosian, who was for once tempted out of his legendary caution into a rich and strange chess environment. In fact, it can be said that Fischer's games decided the tournament, because of his lop-sided scores against the two top-finishing players, and his near-miss in the penultimate round against Tal. Other players included the former Champion Smyslov, who brushed Tal aside in the very first game of the tournament; and Gligori, the Yugoslav Champion, fresh from his great result at the Interzonal, who handed Smyslov the shortest defeat of the Russian's career in front of an appreciative home crowd. Benkö, the recent emigré, riding the wave of his fine performance in the qualifying tournament at Portoroz, and Ólafsson, the quiet Icelandic wizard, added to the drama with their frequent excursions into time trouble... This collection of games is undoubtedly one of the finest of modern times, claims the author in his introduction from 1960. This claim still stands after nearly 50 years, and many of the games have been printed since in collections of brilliancies, best games and instructional books. The book has been set in this enhanced digital edition by David Regis. Diagrams have been added before many critical points in the games, so that readers wishing to test their skills against the best in the world from that time can use this volume as a puzzle book. Golombek's innovative index of middlegame and endgame themes makes this overlooked book a real manual of practical chessplay.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Fascinating coverage of a historic tournament,
By
This review is from: 4th Candidates' Tournament, 1959 Bled-Zagreb-Belgrade September 7th - October 29th (Paperback)
Harry Golombek was a chief arbiter and London Times chess correspondent, and in this recently reprinted book of the 1959 Candidates tournament he covers every round in an enjoyable anecdotal way. Sprinkled amongst the pages are personal observations and conversations in and around the games; Fischer calling the Russians chickens for not playing the Sicilian against him. Smyslov's wonderful compliment to Keres over his unique understanding of the Ruy Lopez, the Benkö-Tal sunglasses incident, and loads more.
It's not just the games and the players, but also the surroundings and the unique atomosphere created by the Yugoslav chess fans and the various places this event visited during its two months. On the 50th anniversary of this amazing tournament, this reprint of Harry Golombek's book is a treasure trove of details about the post-War grandmasters fighting it out for the right to challenge the World Chess Champion to a match. The games too are annotated in Golombek's tradement lucid style, sprinkled with fascinating personal observations of the players. Some of the games have gone down in history: Tal's first win against Smyslov, Fischer's win against Smyslov and Gligoric; many fascinating combinations and precise endgames. Even 50 years later some of the not so well known games still retain a freshness and breathlessness today - for instance Keres fantastic win against Smyslov from round 2 is exceptional, yet relatively unknown. For the chess fan interested in the players of the fifties and sixties, this is a wonderful archive of the 1959 Candidates Tournament.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
3.5 out of 5 stars (2 customer reviews) 8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Candidates Chess Tournament with sparse annotations,
By experienced player - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: 4th Candidates' Tournament, 1959 Bled-Zagreb-Belgrade September 7th - October 29th (Paperback)
I am a class A player in the USA. First the good news: Unlike most of the books by publisher Hardinge- Simpole this chess book is written in algebraic notation ! The tournament games between Mikhail Tal, Paul Keres, Tigran Petrosian, Vassily Smyslov, Svetozar Gligorich, Bobby Fischer, Fridrik Olaffson and Pal Benko are of the standard one would expect from a Candidates Tournament (although one wishes that Fischer had prepared a more varied repertoire against the Caro-Kann). So why only three stars? The annotations by Grandmaster Emeritus Harry Golombek are too sparse. The chess games themselves are readily available on most large databases of chess games so rating this book must be based largely on the annotations.
One wonders why the publisher updated this book into algebraic notation instead of translating the tournament book from German written by world class grandmaster Svetozar Gligorich and grandmaster Ragozin which has more extensive annotations. 3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Impressive except for the sparse annotations,
By mianfei - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: 4th Candidates' Tournament, 1959 Bled-Zagreb-Belgrade September 7th - October 29th (Paperback)
Although books on the previous three Candidates' Tournaments had long been available, I was for a long time never able to obtain a book discussing the Candidates Tournament of 1959 that saw 22-year-old Mikhail Tal rise from relative obscurity to challenge and (briefly) overcome longtime World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik.
The tournament was, in terms of results, very unusual for a World championship cycle. The number of so-called "grandmaster draws" was very low for most of the tournament and there were an amazing number of wins with the Black pieces: Keres in fact suffered all his losses playing White. Some have though this reflects a poor standard of play because too many bad mistakes were made, but if one reads through "4th Candidates' Tournament, 1959", one will see that in fact there was a good deal of extremely impressive chess played. More than that, not all of it was of the aggressive tactical variety: there were a number of outstanding endgames - most famously the one with which Keres beat Tal and tried to overthrow him for the right to challenge Botvinnik, but also in such games as Keres' win over Smyslov in the second round and the two later games between Smyslov and Fischer where the endings were beautifully won by Black. Then there are such combinative games as Petrosian's mating attack against Keres in the fourth round, where he sacrificed a rook and then his queen for an unexpected mate in the second session, and Tal's unusual win over Fischer where he completely tied up the future champion. More surprising and equally interesting is the way in which the two tailenders, Benkö and Ólafsson, consistently got into time trouble to the point of losing several games on time when they were not in dreadful positions. There are also some fascinating notes about what the players did on the journeys from Bled to Zagreb to Belgrade - and funnily of how they missed a train in the process! The basic problem with the layout of "4th Candidates' Tournament, 1959" that forces me to deduct a star from my rating is the poor annotation. Only a fairly small number of critical moves are annotated, and the use of such marks as "!" for a good move and "?" for a bad move is not done nearly as frequently as it should be. Indeed, there are many cases where one does not see where the winner went right and the loser went wrong at all: there should be as few as possible of these. Still, for that major problem, "4th Candidates' Tournament, 1959" is a very good read that looks at a tournament hihgly neglected in chess history and was perhaps better than some have thought. |
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