Resources for Botvinnik-style play

Hi all!

I would like to start learning a bit from the masters!  The style of play I am starting to get most interested in is slow positional play, with the potential for dominating attacks later on. For this I am adopting a repertoire based on caro-kann/french and slav/QGD structures. As white I am currently experimenting with London/Colle (/-Zukertort) type systems.

For these reasons I figured Botvinnik's games may be a good place to start learning a bit about these structures and get ideas on how they are played. (Also if you think my opening choices are rubbish for this kind of play, please enlighten me)

SO: Do you have any recommendations on resources for example for annotated Botvinnik games? (or other ideas on how to learn a bit more in this direction?)

Ideas I am currently considering are:

Chess Secrets: The Giants of Strategy: Learn from Kramnik, Karpov, Petrosian, Capablanca and Nimzowitsch (Neil MacDonald, Everyman Chess)

Chess Secrets: Giants of Innovation: Learn from Steinitz, Lasker, Botvinnik, Korchnoi and Ivanchuk (Craig Pritchett, Everyman Chess)

or Chernev's most instructive games ever played or Capablancas endings (doesn't "exactly" fit the bill, I know, but I don't know anything else)

Not sure. Something I also quite enjoy are chess-mentor style interactive lessons, if you happen to know any good ones here on chess.com or elsewhere.

BUT: There is one caveat. I don't want to study or work hard. It has to be reasonably accessible and for pure enjoyment. At my level chess games are still 90% decided by blunders, tactics or basic endgames. I am just getting increasingly curious about how grandmasters handle this type of play/positions, and maybe I even learn a thing or two.

So if a book, it has to be possible to read it without a chess board, i.e. many diagrams and not just pages of variations. 

Any advice or recommendation would be greatly appreciated! 

Thanks @timonypumba ! Yussupov is a great shout, didn't know he played these systems a lot. Will definitely check him out. You happen to know of any nice resource? (other than database and doing  work myself... )

You might consider Botvinnik's "100 Selected Games" for a great insight into his play. Also his book on his three matches against Smyslov.

@timonypumba thanks! youtube videos is a good idea. The problem is I still can't decide yet which defences to go for, because I still don't know enough about the resulting middle games...

@OldPatzerMike Thanks for the pointers! I actually saw the books on amazon, problem was there is no current reprint, so they are still in descriptive notation etc. etc. Might still be the best idea to bite the bullet and go over the games in a database while reading the annotations in the book though.

One Hundred Selected Games is an excellent book.  I believe you are right though.  There was only the one descriptive notation edition.

Botvinnik's great, but as verylate points out, depending on your current level, it may be hard going at first (and if you really want to make some improvement, you do need to put some spadework in). I would suggest you go one step back in time, and look at Capablanca and Rubinstein. Your suggestion of Irving Chernev's 'Capablanca's Best Endings' (far better than Harry Golombek's book on Capablanca - Golombek was a very careless annotator) is not at all bad one, and add to that Hans Kmoch's 'Rubinstein's Chess Masterpieces: 100 Selected Games'. 'The Most Instructive Games Ever Played' by Chernev is also a very good choice.

You mention that 'Capablanca's Best Endings' may not exactly fit the bill, but I think you're wrong. Studying endgame play is an excellent way of acquiring good positional feeling (Capablanca himself recommended it), because everything is pared down to essentials.

One of the greatest chess books of all time is Tal-Botvinnik 1960. Many, many grandmasters list it in their top 5 or top 10 lists. Therefore if you have an interest in Botvinnik and his games I would highly recommend it. Don't be turned off by the fact that it is written from Tal's perspective - he is a great writer, and you can be sure that he can offer plenty of insight into his opponent's play style over the course of 21 world championship games.

That said - I just reread your initial post and noticed the " I don't want to study or work hard" caveat. My book recommendation still stands, but please be aware that there is no such thing as a good chess book that doesn't require work to get through it. Many people have 50 chess books on their shelves and have never really sat down and worked through any of them; this is not the way to improve at the game.

Thank you a lot guys! I might stick with Capablanca's best endings and Tal-vs-Botvinnik and Botvinnik's one hundred selected games. Looking forward to it!

Moravian Chess has a FIVE VOLUME set of all the Great Man's annotate dgames, PLUS his autobiography and essays AND all his unannotated games.  It also has a two-volume Smyslov set.  Alls even are worth getting; but if you are a Botvinnik fan, you know what to do first!

Botvinnik Move by Move

https://www.newinchess.com/media/wysiwyg/product_pdf/7297.pdf

Where can I find all his writings on chess in one place?

Added to my own list of Books-To-Get - looks very instructive.

Yes, looks instructive.