“Understanding Chess. My System, My Games, My Life” by William Lombardy © 2011; limp cover; 312 pages; 119 annotated games; 37 games by other players. Hundreds of anecdotes and stories. THE CHESS BOOK OF THE YEAR! $60.00 post paid Order from: William Lombardy 12 Stuyvesant Oval #6B New York, NY 16009 Highly recommended by James [...]

Help stamp out ignorance. Send your used books to prison! Send me all kinds of books, not crime stories. I will send them to jail birds. Send chess magazines: “New in Chess”, foreign languages, NOT “Chess Life”. The rate of recidivism of inmates who played chess in prison is 10%. The rate of recidivism of [...]

Book review by James Schroeder The Art of Bisguier Volume Two One Hundred Selected Games 1961 – 2003 © 2008; 267 pp.; figurine algebraic The introduction by Berry is atrocious. He is incredibly egotistic and stupid and not qualified to make any comment about master play, much less grandmaster play. He is especially insulting by [...]

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 champion after Fischer [...]

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 [...]

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 risky but [...]

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 book and [...]

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 July 10, 1884 in [...]

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 [...]