Wisdom of the Champions

Submitted by avishka on Fri, 06/26/2009 at 4:56am.

It is always fascinating to read what the world champions have to say about their clashes with other strong players and about chess in general. Last year, Russell Enterprises published two classic tournament books, using figurine algebraic notation. In "St. Petersburg 1909" the world champion Emanuel Lasker comments on all the games of the event, in which he shared first place with Akiba Rubinstein. Alexander Alekhine's "New York 1924" has been hailed as one of the best tournament books. It was another triumph for Lasker, in which he finished ahead of Jose Raul Capablanca and Alekhine. The book is valuable for its deep verbal annotations with variations left to a minimum. There is no attempt to improve on the analysis in the two books, presenting them as they were written. In his monumental five-volume work "My Great Predecessors," Garry Kasparov revisited the lives of the world champions and their contemporaries, using computers to analyze their games.

New In Chess recently published Mikhail Botvinnik's work "Botvinnik-Smyslov, Three World Chess Championship matches: 1954, 1957, 1958." It is not only a great historical document, presenting 69 deeply annotated games between two giants, but it also reveals the secret notes Botvinnik made in preparation for the matches played in 1957 and 1958. The contest in 1954 ended with a 12-12 tie, but at one point, with eight consecutive decisive games, it resembled a slugfest. Smyslov won the world title in 1957, defeating Botvinnik 12½-9½. The former world champion Max Euwe was impressed: "Smyslov plays moves that everybody plays. The only difference being: he wins with them." The 1958 rematch went to Botvinnik. The patriarch of Soviet chess won 12½-10½. Smyslov later explained it this way: "I treated the match lightly, and I am also not one of those players such as Fischer or Kasparov who pursue their goals in chess fanatically."

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