Best chess masters biographies?

If you're willing to pay for annotations, you can find numerous sites. It's only fair to pay for these annotations considering the hard work the grandmasters go through to add value to the raw game score. 

Agree 100 %, and I am very willing to pay.

What I need are the links or downloadable ebooks...

I have been working with Karpov collected games 1961-1974, I don't know if there are later editions. Karpov makes some annotations also Levy, Mckay and others. What I like about this is you see him mature rapidly 1968 he makes master very soon after that Grandmaster and World Champion. The beauty is you get the feeling of his strenght at the time he would have faced Fischer.

For annotated recent games :

• Chesspublishing.com
• Chess Informant
• Baburin's Chess Today

For old games in electronic format, have a look at e-books :

• Everyman's e-books
• Forward Chess
• Kindle editions of Gambit's and Russell Enterprise's books (look for game collections)

ChessPublishing, CI and ChessToday materials are available as .pgn files.

Yeah, I realized that right after I posted.  Thanks.

Fantastic links to e-reader books ! Thank you very much hicetnunc.

Thanks to you all, I have been able to download thousands of games, and with the e-books on the 2 websites below, I now have enough to keep me reading annotated games for twenty years at least

• Everyman's e-books
• Forward Chess

Thanks globstup! hicenunc, rigamagican and epo!

72 San Antonio, 1979 Montreal (Tal co-author) and London 1980 are good, Leningrad Interzonal 73 the cover is almost gone. Karpov, Korchnoi co-winners and disappointment for an  ill Tal.(the 3 Kortchnoi-Karpov matches are interesting along with Kasparov matches make 20 years of world championship matches. ( Informants 1-80 with great analyzes)

thanks for the e-book and pgn sites!

this is the best link line ever...

Wittniet, thank you. Philidor is such an interesting person, successful musician, and successful chess player... It seems the book was never translated into any other language than Italian (i love Italian by the way), since 1994 when it was published. Or am I wrong ? I would very much like to read it.

"I Was Tortured in the Pasadena Jailhouse!" by Bobby Fischer.  Excellent glimpse into the mind of everyone's favorite schizo woodpusher. American hasn't had such a loon since Paul Morphy was yelling on the streets of New Orleans. 

:) thanks !

There have been a number of noteworthy chess biographies published since this thread went dormant, I decided to revive the thread.

A number of books come to mind, first off Tim Harding's Joseph Henry Blackburne: A Chess Biography and Ignaz Kolisch: The Life and Chess Career, by Fabrizio Zavatarelli both published by McFarland. And just released and on my want list H.E. Bird: A Chess Biography with 1,198 Games by Hans Renette also published by Mcfarland.

That sounds interesting, Lasker1900!

One of my favorite books is Timman's The Art of Chess Analysis.