Robert Fischer, March 9, 1943, Chicago, Illinois - January 17, 2008, Reykjavik, Iceland. A tormented genius who won the 1957 US Open, Cleveland, Ohio; USA Championships 1957/58, 1958/59, 1959/60, 1960/61, 1962/63, 1963/64, 1965/66, 1966/67. Won the World Championship Match in 1972 from Boris Spassky: W7 L3 D11. FIDE declared Anatoly Karpov world […]

The Life and Games of Carlos Torre
by Gabriel Velasco; Russell Enterprises; published 2000; 301 pp; limp cover; excellent printing and diagrams.
More than 103 games in figurine algebraic notation but too many are poorly played and/or horrible exhibition games.
Born November 23, 1904 in Merida, Yucatan province, Mexico, his family moved to New Orleans when he was […]

Counter Gambits by T.D. Harding; Dover © 1979; Price $9.00
What a delight! 220 PACKED pages. Includes 18 page chapter written 2001. Superb format: long-algebraic, bold type for game moves; short-algebraic, light type for analysis. Perfect diagrams.
There are three types of gambits by Black: those which are theoretically sound, those which are […]

Chess Master vs. Chess Amateur
by Max Euwe and Walter Meiden
Dover price $10. Please order from me - MINIMUM ORDER $20. See Dover list with reviews HERE.
Mostly a good book but Euwe made the worst possible mistake, saying 1 PK4 PQ4; 2 PxP PQB3?; 3 PxP NxP is playable, when it is actually […]

The 1948 World Championship Tournament was reported in CHESS by Harry Golombek, who implied that Paul Keres was forced to lose four games in a row to Botvinnik. Keres wrote a book called Sto Partii which was published in three volumes, but he did not mention the 1948 Tournament. William Lombardy reviewed Golombek’s […]

2001 Chess Oddities by Alex Dunne © 2003
“No part of this work may be reproduced or transmitted by any means.” THANK GOD! This is the worst collection of trash I have ever seen! There are HUNDREDS of mistakes. “Paul Morphy died of a stroke while taking a hot bath.” On […]

Several Masters are playing a consultation game. Kasparaov says: “The weak point in our opponent’s position is g7, therefore we should play R-g1.” Direct attack. Spassky says: “yes, we should attack g7 but let’s play N-d4 first, then we can attack g7 with N-e6 or N-f5, either before or aftter R-g1.” Combination. Karpov says: “Those […]

Book Review: Bobby Fischer’s Conquest of the World Chess Championship by Reuben Fine
“The psychology and tactics of the title match”
David McKay Co, November 1973
Review by James Schroeder published in 1974
For several years one of the best analysts in the world, Fine degenerated rapidly after he quit playing chess in 1952. In this book the […]

Soviet Chess 1917 - 1991 by Andrew Soltis, 2000, McFarland and Company
Soltis is notorious for writing the worst researched books in history. This has so many factual errors it is worthless. It is very poorly written and abounds with inane comments such as “The tragedy of Spassky’s brief reign was that it came […]

New York 1936: The First Modern United States Chess Championship by John Hilbert and Peter Lahde
review by James Schroeder
In 1985 I discovered that the John White Dept. of the Cleveland Public Library had a box containing the original game scores of the 1936 U.S. Chess Championship Tournament. So I hand-copied all of them and […]