FYI: Korchnoi's 80th birthday edition (2011) has Black and White in one volume, with 10 extra games.
http://www.amazon.com/dp/3283010196
Korchnoi - Best Games With White and Black
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I mentioned I was working through Korchnoi's games on another thread and promised a brief review. Here it is....
The books are published by "Progress in Chess". They are extremely well produced. Binding, paper, font. A joy to read.
I want to give my own impression. What is true of Korchnoi may be true of other great players and I leave it to better players to differentiate....
During the cold war era the Korchoi V Karpov fixture seemed to be a replay of the Fischer V Spassky match. As it turned out Spassky has usually been regarded as a gentleman and I'm not aware of anything really bad about Karpov. There is an anecdote of Korchnoi that came my way. Korchnoi played in a simultaneous in my region. A clubmate of mine beat him. The GM didn't acknowledge defeat of offer a handshake. He just moved on...He also accused another player of moving twice - perhaps an opportunity to demonstrate his ability to set up a position from the beginning - and also showed the local player he hadn't cheated..
I decided to play through his games because I play the English and French...
There are fifty games in each volumes. I played through two from each volume every week. A typical Korchnoi games involves a main stream opening with some original twist - a combination of classic chess plus an element of poker. He is content to win a pawn or get a small edge. His games are not usually pretty and often involve him out calculating his opponent in the middlegame and trading down to a winning endgame. The major area of tension seems to typically be in the centre/queenside. He does give a few kingside attacks - but I get the impression that they result from a positional collapse of his opponent and the resultant win seems an inevitability and not the most difficult aspect of the game. The hard bit is calculating the tense central aspect prior to this...
He is quite liberal with question marks and criticises himself as much as his opponent. He regards himself as historically tactically strong but positionally not so good. He has worked hard at studying the opening and considers himself an endgame expert- especially rook and pawn endings.
He is quite happy playing the man rather than the board. On one instance he describes how as white he played the French exchange against Vaganian whom had a bad record in this variation. He makes interesting observations about other players. He criticises Short adoption of the Tartakower as being a little unadventurous.. He praises Bronstein for being the one soviet player of standing for not signing a document condemning him.
My lasting impression of Korchnoi is a fighting calculator rather than as an artist. A hardworker and despite observations about his conduct, within the realm of chess, an extremely honest supplier of question marks to both himself and his opponent.