CHESS TOURNAMENTS

Organized to commemorate the 50th anniversary of the signing of the United Nations' charter in San Francisco in 1945, the tournament combined playing strength and diversity in an unprecedented fashion.

The roaster of stars spanned generations, crossed political and economic boundaries, and included the women's World Champion, Xie Jun of China, and history's strongest African American chess player, Grandmaster Maurice Ashley of New York. Whether young or old, man or woman, communist or capitalist, there was someone for everyone.

These chmapions from the former Soviet Union, China, England, Germany, Norway, Switzerland and the United States vied for supremacy for two grueling weeks. They produced some of the finest fighting chess ever witnessed in this country, and their analysis of the games fill these pages. It was only fitting that such a competitive event was ultimately won by the greatest fighter of them all, Viktor Korchnoi. Learn More

In May 1997, World Chess Champion Garry Kasparov, regarded by many as the greatest player of all time, came to New York to face his most unusual and challenging opponent yet. Deep Blue, a supercomputer developed by a team of IBM Scientists in a project started ten years earlier, was capable of calculating 200 million chess positions per second and was incapable of tiring, losing heart or making an oversight. Six games would be played for over $1 million in prize money.

This book tells the full story of this historic encounter, from the personalities, hype and controversies to the debates over computer intelligence and the future of chess. Every game is analyzed in detail and the earlier 1989 and 1996 matches between the two contestants are reviewed.

Man versus Machine: kasparov vs. Deep Blue is the definitive on-the-scene report that every chess enthusiast must read.

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A classic book showing all the games that had been played in World Championship matches between 1948 and 1972. Part I of the book details in biographical-style some information going on during each individual match. Part II gives the lightly-annotated games that occurred during the matches/tournaments that determined the World Championship Learn More

Since the year 1886, there have been world championships in chess. The world champion was nearly always determined in a duel. Whoever wanted to climb the throne, he had to defeat the reigning king.

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There are names of towns and cities, which have special resonance for chess players. Towns like Hastings, Wijk aan Zee, Karlsbad, Tilburg or Bugojno may well be small, but they just happen to be the names of great chess tournaments. Of course these major tournaments also took place in the great cities of the world.

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The Interzonal tournaments, played at Leningrad and Petropolis (Brazil), in preparation for the 1975 World Chess Championship, exemplified all that is best in contemporary chess. From over 300 games - with their fighting spirit, inspired technique and flashes of brilliance - there amerged the Soviet Grandmasters Karpov, Korchnoi, Pulaayevsky, the American Robert Byrne, the Brazilian Mecking and he Hungarian Portisch, to join ex-world champions Spassky and Petrosian for Fischer's world title.

In addition to covering all of the games in both tournaments (and in the play-off in Portoroz), this book includes annotations by over 20 to-level grandmasters, including Korchnoi, Karpov, Meckling, Pulagayevsky, Hubner, Larsen, Taimanov, Bronstein, Keres and Smyslov. Complete with 269 diagrams and 35 photographs this is an outstanding tournament book of timeless value. Learn More

The Biennial Chess Olympiad is the official World Team Championship and rivals the individual World Championship as the premier event in the chess calendar. The 1974 Olympiad, which took place at Nice on the French Riviera, had a record entry of 74 national teams. The Soviet Union once again captured the gold medal, the USA, without Fischer, made their best result for eight years to win the bronze medal behind Yugoslavia in second place.

This book covers the story of the Olympiad with 130 annotated games, nearly half of them annotated by Grandmasters, complete tables of team performances in both the preliminary and the final groups, tables of every individual result of every player and the results of all past Olympiads. Learn More

All 210 games from the greatest tournament since World War II. Smyslov, Bronstein, Keres, Reshevsky, Petrosian, 10 others; perceptive annotations by Bronstein.

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The GM's side of his 1978 World Championship Match with Karpov. All thirty-two games are here with most being annotated. Included are the ESP battles, scandals, and fights that make it a classic. Learn More

This much-await clash between two giants of the chess world attracted vast interest among all chess players.

Garry Kasparov, the 20-year old Grandmaster from Baku, is already the second highest ranked player in the world and has won several top tournaments including the Soviet Championship. 52 year old Victor Korchnoi was a Grandmaster before Kasparov was even born and already had played two matches for the world title.

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Moscow Marathon is the definitive account of the 1984-1985 World Chess Championship between Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov.

Billed as the "match of the century", it became a unique test of endurance and ended in chaos and controversy. The book is aimed at the reader with an interest in chess and combines detailed scrutiny of the games with an eye-witness account of the proceedings in Moscow.

No other record of the match has this combination of careful research and constant, on-the-spot reporting. Learn More

Notes by Grekov and a host of great annotators including Lasker, Alekhine, Tartakower, Rabinovich, Burn, Grunfeld, Grigoriev, Levenfish, Romanovsky, Sozin, a.o., A tournament book worthy of this great event, which was one of Alekhine's finest performances. Easily one of the best tournament books ever published in English with a cornucopia of great games from the golden age of hypermodern chess.

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Five is the number of World Championship matches that Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov contested from 1984 to 1990.

Yasser Seirawan deeply analyzes each of the 24 games of the 1990 World Chess Championship . played in New York and Lyon. France. He answers all of the big questions, who was belligerent, who blew it and why.

The final section gives all 158 tournament games played by Kasparov and Karpov, arguably the two best chess players who have ever lived. The games appear by opening, a far more useful arrangement for the chess student than the ordinary chronological presentation. Learn More

English descriptive notation. Good notes to the games. An Alekhine victory ahead of Fine, Eliskases, Vidmar, among others.

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Dr. Tarrasch and augmented by notes of many other famous players such as Alekhine, Lasker, Marco, Bernstein, Reinfeld. An extremely good tournament book for one of the greatest chess tournaments all time. Lasker just beat out Capablanca, followed by Alekhine, Tarrasch, Marshall and other greats of the day.

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In 1938, a major controversy existing in the international chess world. Alexander Alekhine had recently regained the title of World Champion by convincingly defeating Max Euwe in a rematch for the title. The question remained as to which grandmaster should have the privilege of challenging Alekhine for the next title match. Various players citing excellent results in recent tournaments made claim to be the next challenger. But who was the second best player in the world?

In order to help settle this dispute, a Dutch radio company, Allgemeese Vereningun Radio-Omroep (A.V.R.0.) organized a tournament exclusively of the eight strongest players in the world at the time, with the belief that the winner of the tournament, if not Alekhine himself, would earn the right to the next World Chess Championship.

This book describes, in detail, that tournament, the circumstances that lead up to it, the participants and their games, as well as the results of the legendary, but under-appreciated tournament. Learn More

Notes by Maroczy, Charousek, & other contemporary masters with editing and additional commentary by John Owen. Chigorin & Charousek tied for first followed by Pillsbury, Schlechter/Janowsky, Winawer/Walbrodt, Tarrasch, Albin/Maroczy, Marco, Noa, & Popiel. Includes the Chigorin-Charousek tie-breaking match. Photos & career records of the contestants.

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The Hastings Christmas Congress is the longest traditional of international chess tournaments in which the world's leading players competed. During the pre-war period of 1932-1939, the Annual Hastings tournament was the strongest event on the chess calendar, pitting Britains finest players against a galaxy of chess stars from across the globe.

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At Buffalo 1901 Pillsbury won ahead of Delmar, Napier, Howell, Marshall, and Karpinski in a double-round event. At Buffalo 1894 Showalter edged Pillsbury out by half a point, followed by Albin and Farnsworth also in a double-round format. Both tournaments are previously unpublished.

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Starting in 1920 and running through to the early 1990s, when the political break-up of the USSR meant the end of the competition, the prestigious Soviet Championships were truly representative events with all of the top Soviet players participating. Because of the enormous State support for the game in the old USSR, these Championships were usually gladiatorial, all-play-all contests lasting weeks, and the Grandmasters represented the elite of World Chess. Alekhine, Botvinnik, Keres, Bronstein, Tal, Petrosian, Korchnoi, Geller, Stein, Spassky, Karpov, and Kasparov were all winners at least once, and the tournaments have gone down in legend for the quality and creative inspiration of the gam Learn More

Notes to all the games plus two photos, bibliography, openings index, and tournament records of the contestants.

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Grandmaster Ray Keene, chess impresario, broadcaster and writer, has been responsible for organising more world championship matches outside the USSR than any other person in the history of official contests. In 1986 he brought Kasparov and Karpov together and in 1993 Kasparov and Short. Finally, in 2000, after a five year gap with no world title match, Keene raised 2 million dollars to persuade Kasparov to defend his title in London against the rising Russian star Vladimir Kramnik. To almost universal surprise Kramnik toppled Kasparov after his 15 year reign and won with relative ease. He became World Champion without losing a single game, a feat not accomplished since Capablanca defeated Lasker in 1921. Learn More

One of the greatest books ever written about a world championship match. Take a trip with the Magician from Riga as he invites you to share his thoughts and feelings as he does battle for the world title.

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A first-rate tournament book for a strong US Championship in which Reshevsky just edged out Fine by 1/2 point. Kashdan was third followed by Pinkus, Simonson, Denker, Kupchik, Bernstein, Polland, Reinfeld, Shainswit, Adams, Seidman, Green, Hanauer, Woliston, and Littman. Notes to most of the games are from contemporary sources, and Fritz 7 checked many of the critical positions.

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In this account of his victory at the 1929 Carlsbad Tournament, Nimzovich offers a captivating retrospective of his triumph over some of the best of his contemporaries: Capablanca, Spielmann, Bogolyubov, Tartakower, Samisch, and others. A tart analysis of Carlsbad's 30 best games.

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Finally this complex and great tournament appears just about one hundred years after it occurred. Schlechter won by a slight margin in a very complicated series of qualifying sections. Gillam worked hard with a dedicated band of helpers to track down all the known games, graced in most cases with notes, of that era.

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An English translation of this original famous tournament book in German by George Marco and Carl Schlechter. This edition has the advantage of enhancements such as the addition of 15 photos of many of the players along with corrections and additional analysis using the new, very strong program, Rybka.

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San Luis 2005 is the most celebrated chess tournament of the decade. Bulgarian Grandmaster Veselin Topalov triumphed and proved that he is a worthy successor to World Champions such as Bobby Fischer and Garry Kasparov. In this ambitious work, Gershon and Nor analyze all the games from the tournament, but there is no danger of the reader drowning in masses of variations, as the authors clearly explain the ideas behind the moves.

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Two world champions, in a class by themselves. The profound Russian World Champion Vladimir Kramnik, who had defeated the seemingly invincible Kasparov to take the "classical" world title in 2000. The brilliant Bulgarian Challenger Veselin Topalov, ranked No. 1 in the world, winner of the FIDE title in 2005. The immovable object versus the irresistible force.

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Elista Diaries is the classic first-hand account of one of the most intensely fought World Chess Championship matches seen for decades. The World Champion and his chief trainer deeply annotate all of the games from the 1996 World Championship Match.

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Reuben Fine was both one of the world's strongest grandmasters of chess and one of the world's leading authorities on psychoanalysis. In this book, he combines the two disciplines. This Fischer-Spassky book is really three books in one.

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This is the official tournament book, available for the first time in English in algebraic notation. It was written by Emanuel Lasker. He annotated all 175 games in the clear, instructive style that would become his trademark.

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This volume concentrates on the first two of those matches. The epic 1984/85 contest which was lasted six months before being controversially halted "without result" by the then President of FIDE Florencio Campomanes. The 1985 match when Kasparov brilliantly won the final game to take the title and become - at the age of 22 - the youngest ever world champion. Great chess contests have often had resonances extending beyond the 64 squares. The Fischer v Spassky match was played during the Cold War with both champions being perceived as the finest products of their respective ideologies. Learn More

This volume concentrates on the first two of those matches. The epic 1984/85 contest which was lasted six months before being controversially halted "without result" by the then President of FIDE Florencio Campomanes. The 1985 match when Kasparov brilliantly won the final game to take the title and become - at the age of 22 - the youngest ever world champion. Great chess contests have often had resonances extending beyond the 64 squares. The Fischer v Spassky match was played during the Cold War with both champions being perceived as the finest products of their respective ideologies. Learn More

In 1972, an epic chess match took place in Iceland between representatives of the two great super-powers of the world: Bobby vs. Boris. Boris was backed by the Mighty Soviet Union, with late night phone calls coming from his handlers in Moscow, telling him what his next move should be.

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