100 Master Games of Modern Chess [Paperback]

Savelii Grigor'Evich Tartakover (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback: 171 pages
• Publisher: Dover Pubns (August 1975)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0486203174
• ISBN-13: 978-0486203171
• Product Dimensions: 8.4 x 5.3 x 0.6 inches
• Shipping Weight: 8 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,699,121 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Great sequel to 500 Master Games of Chess, April 12, 2001

By 

M. H. Smith "chessmansmith" (Seattle, WA United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: 100 Master Games of Modern Chess (Paperback)

This book, which is clearly a sequel to "500 Master Games of Chess" by the same authors, continues in the same fashion and examines great games from the 1930's through the 1950's. As in the earlier work, the games are sorted first by opening variation, and then in chronological order within each variation.

In this way, these two books can be used as excellent reference material when one is attempting to learn a new opening. It is highly instructive to quickly review how the masters of the past interpreted your pet line before you plunge into more modern theory. (such as Modern Chess Openings or Nunn's Chess Openings).

It is also instructive to note some of the early traps and pitfalls that the masters had to traverse - they did not have the benefit of today; knowing many of these traps in advance. They were blazing new trails and would sometimes trip on one of these pitfalls. It is very instructive to see how these errors were actually punished by the opponent, we don't get to see that side of the picture in most of the modern books.

As with all Dover books, this one is a great value for the money. It is currently out of print. If you find one in a used bookstore - grab it and run! (after paying for it, of course).

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars A bit disappointing, January 27, 2003

By A Customer

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: 100 Master Games of Modern Chess (Paperback)

I tracked this book down and bought it, and as much as I love the big book, 500 Master Games of Chess, I found this shorter supplement a disappointment. It's not that it's not as good as the first one; it's just that it isn't really necessary if you have the big one. The problem is that the authors did not really bring the opening canon up to date. The original work suffered from a lack of many modern openings: the Pirc, Modern, King's Indian, many variations of the Sicilian, etc. The new one does not remedy this shortfall, although I assumed it would, because it was written in the '50s. Instead, it basically adds new games that were played in the old openings. The games and annotations are of equal instructive quality to the "500 Games" book, but, again, it seems that an opportunity was missed....