Best chess book ever.
I used up 2 copies, to the point where they completely fell apart.
500 Master Games of Chess
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Nov 20, 2012
0
#3
It's a great collection of games BUT the large # of games precludes almost any detailed analysis AND a lot of the opening praxis/theory is hopelessly outdated, (this book was first published in 1952) so if you want to play any openings this book has got you interested in you'd better check out the Game Explorer, any other DBs you have access to and MCO-15 or some other opening manual written in the last decade or two
On the other hand, it's a good learning manual on what mistakes to avoid in many openings and you may get to punish opponents who don't know that what they're playing was refuted several decades or more ago.
As far as learning strategy and tactics goes I'd be reading something by Nimzovitch, Euwe, Pachman or Romanovsky to name but a few great writers on middlegames, strategical and/or tactical play. You can also learn a lot from the Chess Mentor here, which I'm currently trying to do!
Nov 20, 2012
0
#4
Good post, Chris. I agree that old games are great fun to play through. Tarrasch's 300 Chess Games is easily in my top 3.
Nov 20, 2012
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#5
I wouldn't use this book as an opening reference. And while the games are not heavily notated the notes are extremely useful for what they are...an overview of what the plan is and why.
At this point (1650 FIDE) I'd rather play through 500 lightly annotated games than spending the same amount of time to play through 50 heavily annotated games.
Don't get me wrong, I also play over other games that are much more detailed in their notes. For example, I have Kasparov on Kasparov which I enjoy, and I have the Edition Olms book by Karpov on his best games.
As for openings, I have tons of extremely detailed opening books. I am going through John Watson's 4th Edition of Play the French. I also have been reading a few books on the King's Indian, including Svetozar Gligoric's book on the Mar del Plata variation and Minev's awesome little booklet of all of Najdorf's games in the KID...
But my top goal right now is to get through 500 Master Games of Chess and Capablanca Move by Move which are the two main books I'm reading.
Once that's done I'll start working on some more detailed game collections.
Once I've made it through perhaps 1,500-2,000 games (will take probably 18 months) then I'll start working diligently on endgames.
I also plan on taking other advice of Heisman's and using MCO to go through each of my tournament games after I play them to determine where I varied from book lines and in that way work on improving my openings.
Lastly, each day I do 10-15 minutes of tactics puzzles to stay somewhat sharp tactically.
I have really been enjoying this book lately.
I have been taking Dan Heisman's advice about playing over hundreds of annotated games in order to improve and I know that this book made a big impression on Fischer so I decided to give it a read.
I'm about 20 games in (almost done with the Giuoco Piano section) and so far I am really enjoying it.
I like the fact that since the games are older it's not your modern "check out the novelty on move 23" theory-laden GM game. So there's no "distraction" regarding the openings. Just a nice look at timeless subjects such as strategy and tactics.