SmyslovFan, I'm glad you included Mihail Marin's book in the list. There are a few romanian authors with good books but unfortunately are not suitable for my level yet. Looking forward to advance and enjoy the books of Suba, Marin or Gheorghiu.

Back on topic, great games can be found on kingcrusher's channel

My favorites so far are

 Botvinnik vs Capablanca AVRO 1938

Morphy Opera game

13 year old Bobby Fischer vs Donald Byrne 1956  [game of the century]

Kasparov vs Topalov 1999 [Kasparov Immortal Game]

But I have not looked at all the games and I am not the one who will decide....

I think we can come up with a great list with links to every game.

Or maybe we can make something more interisting, we will annonate by ourselves, move by move. We can work in teams (strong+weak player). Let me know what do you think

They would have to be on a website due to copywright issues.  We sure couldn't copy out of a book and paste here.  

Keyser  The games are already annotated very well--we could not do as well and besides the purpose is to make a list for all interested with website links...

Re games in a book but not on website--we could ask author of book for permission to use...

This topic is basically subjective. It depends on someones tastes when it comes to best game collections. Morphy liked the Labourd.-Macd. match annotiations, Fischer the Zurich 1953, Karpov the 1959 Candidates, Nakamura and Short liked the M60MG, Smyslov and Kasparov liked Alekhines Book, Kramnik liked Smyslovs book, Korchnoi liked laskers books and Speelman made a book on best games of 1970-1980's and the lists goes on.All seemed to go for one goal Teaching by playing through master games. For me chess understanding became simple to understand when i studied capablancas book 'My chess Career" and " Capablancas last lectures"

I'm glad this topic was raised and this thread created because I've often wondered the same myself.

I count us lucky to be able to benefit from many accomplished chess players with years of experience and glean what insight may be found from the advice they generously share here with other members.

So, I figured I could help save us all some time backtracking, rescrolling and "hunting down" the games posted here in the various posts by compiling all the suggestions of individual annotated games in one centralized guide in list format.

So far, it's just a "bare-essence" 15 pages including the recommended game collections after the individual games for additional study.

Some of these will need to have the links added as well as a consensus on what the "Main Instructive Ideas" are to add to the game description on the list, but I figured it's better to just release it "as-is" even if it's in the "rough and ready" version 1.1 so those of us who want to...

can print out the pages and fill in the details on our own with our own notes and own ideas kind of like a workbook.

And, since these are the games of grandmasters and masters along with annotations in some cases by themselves and in others, for the most part by other grandmasters and masters,

I decided to call this guide Grandmaster Mastermind.

This of course alludes to the "invisible third party" of a 'mastermind' at work with the synnergy from combining the talents and insights of all included in the group.

If you'd like to access it as a handy reference or for your own independent study as a guide and workbook, here is where you can download it directly...

Direct Download:

http://TheKillerCopywriter.com/chess/gm1/GM1.pdf

I hope you enjoy its use and that it proves helpful to you (and me) as a learning tool.

-learningthemoves

Not a bad idea actually, possibly within a group, for a study, 

As for the game: my pick would be,

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1111195

learning the moves--What you have done is just close to exactly what I have had in mind!  Very nice!  I would refer all who read this--to check out what you have done so far! 

I would still want to pick out the best 20 or so games but it would be possible to pick 20 games and then have an additional list?

Thanks much for the work you have done!

I did that, now I just need a strong player to tell me where I went wrong! All annotations are as I see the move, so ignorant of later plans. I guess the themes here are pawn sacrifice for development and kingside attack (e.g. the knight manouvre to push the f pawn.

Thanks for the encouragement Ponz! 

Yes, of course, so far, it is really just a compiled list of what was suggested so far in the thread with a brief introduction to cover the purpose of it, who has had a part in it, who it is for, what it can do for you based on what masters suggest gets results and plenty of space to make your own notes, big "takeaways" and "aha moment ideas" from each game so you always have them handy to look over until you are confident you "know" the games and their instructive ideas.

Yes, sure, picking out the best 20 is a great idea and we can always add more and an additional list.

I noticed the first link in the pdf is a link to the Bernstein-Meises Game 1904 instead of the Opera game, but the idea is to add the link to each game we can find.

Once we can come to a consensus on what the "Best 20 Games" are and what the main instructive lessons from each are, we can just add them in there. 

Check out this collection. I don't know many of the games but the compiler gives a theme for each.

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chesscollection?cid=1000119

Great work Scottrf! You provided annotations on every move and that game was a thriller because if he didn't keep checking the king until checkmate, his king was sitting trapped there in the corner behind his pawn shield with a rook down there on the 1st rank just waiting to take the last defending rook for a good old fashioned backrank checkmate.

^^Yes, that's a great list of the 44 themed games from Chernev's Most Instructive...Cool stuff

I recommend "Understanding Chess Move by Move", by John Nunn.  It is a kind of modern version of Logical Chess by Chernev.  These are all modern games chosen for their instructive value.  The book is divided into sections for the opening, middlegame and ending, with each game emphasizing one particular idea.  I rather liked game 12, Rotsgov-Lanka where a dangerous attack is defended against successfully.

The game given by Scottrf was great!

And fredm73 remember we are going to pick the best 20 so try and pick the best from that list.

I would say it would be nice to have about 40 games before we try to reduce to about 20  [20 is not written in gold]  The one game I am sure we should include is the Morphy Opera game...

Any opinions on the top 3-5 games that "for sure" we should include?

Emanuel Berg vs Maxim Vachier-Legrave

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ye1SxuedkZ4

Chess possibilities!

Has this been suggested?

Polish Immortal: Glinksberg vs Miguel Najdorf Warsaw, 1928

Attack!! Black attacks and checkmates White's castled King sacrifcing all 4 minor pieces

Here it says White player is named Glucksberg and that the game is from 1929

http://www.chessgames.com/perl/chessgame?gid=1100774

The question is too broad for a good answer. Specific games usually deal with specific concrete issues.

For instance, to learn how to attack the uncastled king, take a look at Steinitz-von Bardeleben, the Evergreen Game (Anderssen-Dufresne), Keres-Kotov 1950, or Tal-Portisch (game 2) 1966.

You can find excellent annotations to the first two in The Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games.Keres-Kotov can be found in Paul Keres: The Quest for Perfection or The Art of Attack in Chess by Vukovic. Tal-Portisch is covered in The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal by Tal.

A more recent game on the same theme is Carlsen-Nakamura Amber Rapid:

Interesting and nicely annotated game.

Black's 28...h6 seems to be the end of the contest; your alternative of 28...Nxf6 etc. is better and keeps some hope alive.

We do have to worry about copywrite if the game is only annotated in a book. But, I think we could get permission from the author is many cases.