Customer Reviews

Alexander Alekhine's Chess Games, 1902-1946 : 2543 Games of the Former World Champion, Many Annotated by Alekhine, with 1868 Diagrams, Fully Indexed

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This book is truly a marvelous book to have in my library. I have been collecting chess books since 1969 and despite having almost 500 chess books not much comes close. This book most clearly resembles the excellent two volume book on Rubinstein by John Donalson and Nicolay Minev. As big as a phone book this book does not easily fit on all bookshelves. The only caveat is that there could have been more anotated games. One example is that all the games from NY 1924 should have been annotated as Alekhine himself annotated all the games from the tournment and all of his games from that tournment should have been annnotated.

This book is everything Amazon's desription says. And it's a very solid hard-cover job, with excellent layout and printing. Some interesting biography bits prefacing each chapter were new even to a die-hard Alekhinbe fan like me.
Finally a book that does him justice. One could only wish that *all* the games were annotated, à la "Chess Stars" series (I have all four Tal volumes), but it's really hard to complain about a fine book like this.

This huge book is of a great value to the chess enthusiast and a must for the Alekhine admirer. It is really an exhaustive investigation work and better yet, with Alekhine's own annotations on games! We must be grateful to the authors on this fine work and to the publishers for the high quality edition...

This book compiles all known games played by Alexander Alekhine over his career. It includes many (MANY) games from Simultaneous displays, as Alekhine did so many of these exhibitions all over the world, throughout his career. It also includes every 'serious' tournament game, and all of Alekhine's match games, along with many consultation and blindfold games. This is not a biography, although there are light biographical sketches periodically, and also information on his travels between each new destination.

As with every McFarland Chess book I own, the physical quality is quite high -- hardcover, very well bound.

There is a lot to like -- I'd consider it the only book on Alekhine's games anyone would need, but for two slight drawbacks:

First, not every serious game is annotated. This is not a really serious problem, because the games which are not annotated are generally annotated elsewhere. For example, none of the Alekhine/ Capablanca match games are annotated, despite the fact that Alekhine annotated most of his wins and some of the draws for his best games collection. It's hard to fathom why they were not included here. This makes it less all inclusive than it would otherwise be.

Second, all the annotations are Alekhine's. This is a minor issue, since his notes are generally accurate and good. Still, notes by other players would be nice, especially in the way it was done in Forster's epic biography of Amos Burn (in my opinion, the book by which all other Chess biographies should be measured). Forster commonly included notes by several players of the day within individual games, and he often added his own notes, or annotated a game fully himself where no other notes were available.

Another slight demerit to this book are a regrettable number of typos. I have not noticed any in the prose of the book, but I have noticed a few in the game notes, just going from a random sample of games.

That said, this is a great work. I wish it had been more of a true biography/ games collection, but that would have made the book absolutely huge, and a truly monumental work, as Alekhine lived, as the saying goes, in 'interesting times'.

This is a wonderful book in any Chess lover's collection, and is a true desert island book.

Alekhine was not just World Champion, he was important for the development of Chess itself. He thought in terms of what it meant to unbalance the position. Alekhine took this concept and forced it into his games. Whether he was on the hunt with his own attack, or desperately defending he relished positions in which he could take some advantage he had and use it to the maximum. That he greatly favored being the attacker is obvious. This book is the most complete collection of his games in existence and will reward your study many times over. Not for the beginner, it is very expensive but worth every penny

This book is excellent! It is expensive but worth every penny! It would have been nice if it included some rare photos but this is very minor. Even if you own other works of Alekhine's this is still a good book to have because of it's completeness. The publisher has other chess books of this quality on chess masters such as Capablanca, Marshall, Steinitz and Reshevsky.