Chess books by C.J.S. Purdy

Does anyone own any chess books by C.J.S. Purdy?

If so, what do you have and what do you think of them?

Thanks :-)

I own Purdy's "C.J.S. Purdy's Fine Art of Chess Annotation and Other Thoughts."

Don't be fooled by the pompous title. The annotation is far below today's standards. How can it be otherwise if he crams 100 (one hundred) games into a thin 152-page book? As to the level of annotations themselves, it often goes like this:

"13. cb5 Nb5 14.Nb5 Rb5 15.d4 Qc8! 16. dc5 dc5! 17.Kh2 Rd8 18.Qc1 Nd4 White must choose between giving Black a strong passed pawn or a Tarrasch Knight"

(p.23)

Excuse me? You call this "fine annotation"???

Enough said, I should keep my blood pressure low at my age.

Let this excerpt from Purdy's "C.J.S. Purdy's Fine Art of Chess Annotation and Other Thoughts" speak for itself.

That does speak for itself

As Miles would say, "utter crap."

"O ko! This is white man's magic." WTF??

I totally disagree. I think Purdy does an excellent job of explaining key concepts and encourages the reader to find some of his own thoughts.  If you want deep notes there is nothing more "serious" than anything by Robert Huebner but they are almost impossible to play through. Purdy's comments tend to be instructive and based on older principles. His Search for Chess Perfection has notes and also axioms which are very helpful. Even Fischer considered him one of the best chess writers.

Based on the book I own, the "job of explaining key concepts", as you call it,  simply isn't there. The book appears to be what we would call today a "database dump", with a few meaningless comments thrown in here and there.

I am ready to accept your argument if backed up by solid evidence, perhaps some quotes from his work....

Now let me show you what I expect from a well-annotated book, and it is not "deep notes" by any means:

The above is a fragment from John Nunn's "Understanding Chess Move by Move."

Now here is a fragment of Euwe's "Chess Master vs. Chess Amateur":

No deep line analysis in the above two examples, but there is a comment after every move, and the comments are meaningful.

The book of purdy's that you mention is a recent collection of various games he annotated in his magaqzine. Clearly is can not be a "database" dump since he died before databases existed. I will check for some comments that seem to satisfy you concerns about the level of annotation though i am not sure i will be able to upload such as you have.

Nunn's book is a very detailed book of annotations which perhaps seems to be what you prefer as EVERY move has a note. The Euwe/Meiden book  is an excellent book and does a great job of explaining concepts and I think is one of the more under rated books out there.

Crazychessplaya--I am assuming you were looking at CJS Purdy's Fine Art of Annotation and other thoughts Vol 1 (there are four volumes)--here are some things I found interesting:

Page 52 on the famous Reti-Alekhine game " The average player would avoid this because it leads to  a tempo losing exchange. When Alekhine defied a rule, the rule sually lost; but in this case he admitted the move was dubious."

On the same pages after the 19th move the note about Alekhine erroneoously declaring a 3x repetition and how the correct way to do so is very useful.

Page 67 (Averbakh-Byrne,D) " White's formation is rather weak, for if the backward pawns move he has 'hanging' pawns; and thanks to the extra tempo [note tempo was a key theme that Purdy discussed quite extensively], Black is well enough situated to prove them more weak than strong"--the rest of the note is also very interesting as he comments on Donald Byrne's genius.

One last one (page 79)--Petrosian-Portisch " Apparently Petrosian was impressed with the positions Botvinnik obtained with this in their world championship match. Against the move is the weakening of White's b4 square. In favor is the prevention of ...b5 and consequent hope of cramping Black somewhat..."

These are just random samples. As you can see Purdy uses words to describe positions and themes. Also he makes the reader think. No there are not reams of variations but there is lots of knowledge passed along in his notes. I like his writing very much and find them a joy to read.

You are misjudging and mischaracterizing Purdy by using the wrong book.

He wrote some very fine articles for his time and place, usually written as magazine columns. Consider that he was writing in New Zealand and Australia, which in the 1950s was not the hub of the chess universe (no offense intended). Consider that he was writing for a club-level audience, not for Alekhine and Botvinnik. Consider that he was not a professional chess player, more like magazine publisher for a layman audience. You may as well compare Pandolfini to Kasparov. 

He basically tried all his life to develop chess players in the Australasian region at a time when chess wasn't even popular in the US!

Now look at some of his collected columns in "CJS Purdy: His life, his games, and his writings". Or look at some of the columns collected in "Purdy on the Endgame". They are not Nimzowitsch. But they are enlightening for some, and they communicate his love for chess.

Afte his best articles were collected in a few popular books, some publishers wanted to collect his lesser known articles. For the sake of completeness you might say, some publishers slapped together some of his "annotated games" into the series you mentioned above. But that was not his title, that was not his selection, that was not his idea, and that was NOT HIS BOOK. It's somebody else's publishing venture. 

For all those reasons, the book you mentioned is not the best example of his writing.

And it's a bit unfair for you to aim your rant and spittle at a man who loved chess, and wanted to express that love. Nowadays with Fritz trainers and Rybka engines, any two-bit amateur can inflate a twenty move game into pages of ignorance. At his time and from his place in the world, it was hard enough to find good games, much less support a family with a chess magazine, as he tried.

So please. Take your blood pressure medication and spare us the "wisdom" of your hate-filled and ignorant review. 

 Bravo! Well said. Purdy is my chess guru.

stwils

This is a reasonable response, save for the personal attack at the end. Now that you yourself admitted that the book I criticize (quite deservedly, I believe) is "not his title, that was not his selection, that was not his idea, and that was NOT HIS BOOK", what makes you think I am after Purdy personally? Was I wrong to expose the scam? Should those who exploit Purdy be somehow protected? I have no axe to grind against the man, I simply want to warn others of this particular work. I've purchased the book on the basis of four 5-star amazon.com reviews, which is totally unwarranted. I was responding to a question, i.e.:

"Does anyone own any chess books by C.J.S. Purdy?

If so, what do you have and what do you think of them?"

I answered the question truthfully, and it seems that you are in agreement with my assessment - this is not a good book. So why the personal attack?

My favorite Purdy books are Guide to Good Chess and The Search for Chess Perfection.

stwils

Wasn't the whole point that this book was not written by him?

Most books "by" Purdy are really a compilation of articles and games written by him in the Australian magazine (which he owned and published)." How Purdy Won", and the "Guide to Good Chess" were actually written by him, as stand alone books Also his books on the 1935,37 and 72 World Championships were written by him.

These other books are Purdy's writings but compiled and edited by others. The notes,comments and annotations are all done BY Purdy. The style of Purdy's writing is the same whether it be from books written by him or the compilation of his writings.

I still think the book that was criticized is a good book with interesting notes and comments. Purdy was not like Nunn in that he used lots of variations and comments, but when he did comment on something it was well worth paying attention to.

Purdy died in 1979, and the book in question was first published in 1992. Some of the articles included in the book were published in Chess World as early as 1948... My feeling is that Purdy would probably want to change a lot of his original annotations, if he was to authorize a reprint in 1992. In this sense cofresi is correct, stating that this is not his [Purdy's] book... 

I don't know Crazychessplaya personally. So my comments cannot be aimed at him personally, just as his review was not aimed at Purdy personally. 

______

There. You see? Others can play the same game. 

I am not going to judge you on a basis of a few Internet postings, cofresi. I find the idea quite absurd. And I am against the concept of generalization, whereby one takes a statement or a quotation and tries to offer a judgement on a person as a whole.

I do believe that works such as books should be subjected to close scrutiny and criticizm, without the critic being accused of being ignorant and hate-filled towards the author. No author writes evenly - some books will be better than others, even coming from the same author. It is not wrong or wicked to criticize the poorer works.

I have Volumes 1-3 of the "Fine Art of Annotation" series and I am so far underwhelmed by the annotations.  And having or not having Fritz has nothing to do with the skill of an annotator.  Chernev, Euwe and Alekhine were all SUPERB annotators who did not have chess engines.

I really enjoy the articles in the Purdy books that are excerpted from his magazine.  I find these to be very educational.  His annotations are to me not as good as the three I mentioned above.  Botvinnik and Keres and Tal were also exceptional annotators who knew how to use variations, and prose. (and all three did not have a chess engine)

I applaud Purdy for his ability to keep a good chess magazine afloat, but I think his annotation abilities are not up to par with others that I have mentioned in this post.

Thanks guys for all your info. Based on the above, I think I will go ahead and get his Guide to Good Chess and vol.1 of the Fine Art of Annotation.

Cheers!