World Chess Championship: Botvinnik to Kasparov: Soviet Domination and the Rise of Fischer (Hardinge Simpole chess classics) [Paperback]

The history of the World Chess Championship continues in this volume with the epic struggles between Botvinnik, Bronstein, Smyslov, Tal and Petrosian, via the brief but spectacular advent of Bobby Fischer, and on to the modern superstars Karpov and Kasparov. All games from the matches are annotated and this book with its companion volume, World Chess Championship: Steinitz to Alekhine forms a valuable addition to the library of any chess enthusiast who wishes to possess a complete collection of games played at the very highest level. All matches bar one in this book were played out between Soviet citizens, so the account here also serves as an anthology and exemplar of Soviet chess at its zenith. Bob Wade, twice British champion and for decades chief junior coach of the British Chess Federation, was one of the driving forces behind the explosion of chess in England which led to three team silver medals in the chess Olympiads of 1984, 1986 and 1988 and to a British player, Nigel Short, challenging for the world title in 1993. Wade won the International Master title in his own right, and would doubtless have obtained a Grandmaster title under modern title stipulations. He is also a noted chess author and has been awarded the OBE for services to chess. Andrew Whiteley is an International Master who has won second prize in the British Championship and represented the British Chess Federation in the Chess Olympiad. Raymond Keene is a British Chess Champion,and the first British Player to achieve a FIDE (World Chess Federation) Grandmaster norm. He was awarded the OBE for services to chess in 1985. He is Chess Correspondent of The Times,The Sunday Times,The Spectator, and The International Herald Tribune. He is a prolific author of chess books, several of which are classics of the genre. He has organised three World Chess Championships.

This book is a collectible. Despite being a chronicle of some of the highest quality of Soviet Chess, it marks the progression from the mid-century champions (such as Botvinnik and Smyslov) to the current greats, Karpov and Kasparov. Tal and Petrosian are covered, as is the advent of Bobby Fischer, thus with one exception, all the matches in this book are played out between Soviet citizens. The annotation is excellent, and the skill and experience of all three writers, not just in the matter of writing chess but in terms of actual play, shines through. Wade, Whiteley and Keene are British champions of considerable note themselves, and the zeal with which they handle their subject is stimulating.

As a child, I was deeply fascinated by chess, and indeed am still quite interested in reading about the game even though I have never gone so far as to join a chess club (the nearest one to me I found distinctly expensive). However, I have always had distinctly different tastes in the field of chess books from most readers thereof, preferring my chess books highly detailed and providing information on specific games or detailed opening variations rather than the simple basics provided in most of the few chess books I was (and am) able to find in local bookshops. (At one point there was a decent chess bookshop in Nicholson Street, but it closed down a long time ago after I bought a single book from it).

It was fortunate for me that the State Library of Victoria had one of the largest collections of chess books in the world, and as a child I could seldom cease to read from it. After finding [[ASIN: a book on the 1978 Karpov-Korchnoi match]], I became extremely curious to examine the whole history of World Championship matches, even though I was told extremely quickly from reading the book that title matches rarely represented the highest quality chess because of the extreme pressure and resultant blunders.

During my youth, I would visit the State Library as often as my father could take me, which generally meant almost every weekend, and I would read from the Anderson Chess Collection for almost my entire hours in the library. The book which occupied most of my time there was almost always either "World Chess Championship: Botvinnik to Kasparov" or Max Euwe's Fischer and His Predecessors, but more often this one. The attraction of "World Chess Championship: Botvinnik to Kasparov" was its ability to provide much more general detail on actual matches, including games which in the ordinary course of events would be neglected for the most obvious of reasons (such as their brevity or the poor quality of play that I already said seeped into title matches).

What really surprised me when I read "World Chess Championship: Botvinnik to Kasparov" was the extent to which I was fascinated by the numerous epic struggles that took place in the title matches covered by this book. Such epic struggles were, in fact, as much a feature of players not renowned for that type of game (like Tal) as they were of players thus renowned (like Petrosian). Although most collections of chess games focus upon those games won as a result of short or relatively short tactical battles, these games, and even more some from the 1978 Karpov-Korchnoi match, have given me a very definite taste for long and complex struggles (though not as a rule those that were nothing more than endless manoeuvring) rather than the kind of tactical game generally favoured in collections of chess games. My reading of "World Chess Championship: Botvinnik to Kasparov" gave me a remarkably accurate knowledge of many of these games (especially the seventeenth game of the 1961 match that remains the longest decisive game in a title match, and Karpov's great wins in the sixth and especially the ninth game of the 1984 match with Kasparov) and gave me endless hours of entertainment.

However, even in those days I recognised that "World Chess Championship: Botvinnik to Kasparov" could only serve a relatively limited purpose and that far too many of the games were very poorly annotated. This was especially true of the matches before Karpov emerged on the scene: in these cases the reader is consistently left with a sense of simply not knowing where the loser went wrong or that a relatively long drawn game had very few or no difficult moves by either player - something I always had grave doubts about from reading a very small number of other sources on games from World Championship matches. Moreover, with age and a reduction in the amount of time I spend reading about chess, I have only grown more sceptical that the descriptions of crucial moves in various World Championship games really are seriously accurate. In a few cases, more modern or deeper analysis has found errors that were not noted in "World Chess Championship: Botvinnik to Kasparov", such as with the second Reshevsky-Keres game in the 1948 title match.

Also, I would say that the style of annotation used, whilst it does seriously allow for more games to be published, is very ineffective at explaining the important points of individual games. In more detailed tournament or match books it is normal for space to be devoted to discussing important moves and analysing alteratives, and the absence of this except from the Kasparov-Karpov matches (of which the first two are covered in much greater depth than anything pre-Karpov) leaves a blank that I have grown to notice more with age.

Thus, even though it was for a long time my most important reading, I cannot unequivocally recommend "World Chess Championship: Botvinnik to Kasparov". If you are a serious collector like I imagine myself, you should look as hard as possible for books on individual matches instead.

› Go to Amazon.com to see all 3 reviews  4.3 out of 5 stars