Amos Burn: A Chess Biography [Hardcover]

Richard Forster (Author), Victor Korchnoi (Foreword)

Book Description

Publication Date: July 2004

This enormous and definitive work on the Englishman Amos Burn assembles and analyzes all extant games and provides a thorough biography of the famous chess master of the 19th and early 20th centuries. It chronicles in exceptional detail the broader picture of chess development throughout that era. Burn was active for a long time, winning victories over such masters as Blackburne, Marshall, Steinitz (his mentor), Alekhine, and Zukertort. He was a fighting player who relished tactical battles against his more romantic rivals but was also one of the world’s best defensive players. He made a number of valuable discoveries in such openings as the Queen’s Gambit Declined and the Ruy López, and even today his name remains associated with a variation of the French Defense.

Burn’s life is painstakingly traced from his birth on the last day of 1848 to his death of a stroke at age 76. The great international tournaments in which he took part are paid particular attention, with extensive quotation of notes by Burn himself and his contemporaries. Where necessary, old analysis is corrected and supplemented. Meticulous research has been undertaken in newspapers and periodicals from various countries where Burn played and traveled, including the United States, with the result that many forgotten games have been unearthed. Precise citations of primary sources are given in all cases.

The book features approximately 800 games played by Burn, almost all of them annotated, about 850 chess diagrams, and about 200 photographs, indices of openings, annotators, games, players, and general subjects. An appendix describes missing evidence, uncertain games, and further research possibilities. Another appendix lists corrections to game scores published elsewhere and a third gives Burn’s complete tournament and match record.

Editorial Reviews

About the Author

Richard Forster is a computer scientist at Zurich University. He holds the International Master chess title, is the chess correspondent of the Neue Zürcher Zeitung and contributes articles on chess history to various international periodicals.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 972 pages
• Publisher: Mcfarland & Co Inc Pub (July 2004)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 078641717X
• ISBN-13: 978-0786417179
• Product Dimensions: 11.1 x 8.6 x 2.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 5.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (7 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #475,899 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

19 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars chess career in depth, August 21, 2004

By 

Walter Hart (Burra Creek, Australia) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Amos Burn: A Chess Biography (Hardcover)

These days Amos Burn is remembered as a somewhat dour and obscure player who was famous for losing a couple of brevities to more famous players like Frank Marshall. Burn had a defensive/positional approach to chess and was by all reports quite reserved and taciturn. So what incentive would there be to catalogue his chess career in such great detail. The secret with this book is that it brings Burn to life within the context of his times and historical setting (1870s to 1920s). The players, the tournaments, the controversies are analysed in at times great detail, and are overall very interesting and holds the reader's attention throughout. The various elements (games, notes, pictures, tournament tables, and background details) are superbly presented to enable the reader to drop in and out (you will not be able to digest the material in one sitting) without getting lost in the enormous detail. This is a desert island book par excellence and will provide interesting reading for years. The closest comparison is the excellent book on Alekhine by Skinner and Verhoeven (same publishers). If you think that it is the biggest chess book on the planet, the Burn book is in fact bigger. It is not just the size, but that it takes chess biography/game collections to a higher level. I thought that this would be impossible as the Alekhine book is a masterpiece (it's only weakness is the absence of photos - has only one - the Burn book has hundreds). The games are a comprehensive collection, as unlike Alekhine, Burn did not tend to play a lot of simultaneous and blindfold games, with the inevitable variablity in quality. The games therefore are uniformly good, but not quite reaching Alekhine's genius (both highs and lows). The annotations are outstanding, both compemtorary and brought up to date by Forster (who is a strong player himself). Any serious student of chess will be richly rewarded. Although quite expensive, the book contains enormous value and will definately become a classic. It has the expected excellent McFarland touch (quality paper, library quality binding, high quality layout and general presentation, etc) and despite its size (over 950 pages)is unlikely to fall apart. I believe that this book sets a new challenge for chess authors and is quite likely to be the best book of its type ever written. Even Edward Winter, one of the supreme chess authors, has in a recent review admitted that this is the book that he would have liked to have written. I cannot wait for Forster to turn his mind to Lasker or indeed any of the other world champions who richly deserve this treatment. Buy this book, you will not regret it.
Walter Hart, Burra Creek, Australia

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Quite Possibly, the Best Chess Biography Ever Written, October 1, 2005

By 

Avital Pilpel "classics_lover" (New York, NY United States) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

Amazon Verified Purchase

This review is from: Amos Burn: A Chess Biography (Hardcover)

Why? Let me count the ways...

The heart of the book is Burn's games. It is hard to see how Forster's treatment of them could be improved. First, he unearthed over 900 of Burn's games; only about 500 of those appear in databases or other books. Second, his annotations are marvelous. All annotations by the players, or by a contemporary chess columnist, are given. These include comments by many of the leading lights of the time (in particular Steinitz). In addition--and what is crucial--Forster, an IM, analyzed the games himself (with the help of a computer) and often adds excellent annotations of his own, or corrects errors in the contemporary annotations.Hundreds of the games are annotated, many of them in great depth. Third, the indexes: There are indexes of all the games based on the openings and opponents' names, as is customary, but in addition games are arranged in a seperate index according to the chess themes they exemplify. It includes entries such as "stubborn defense"; "instructive games"; "rook endings"; "positional sacrifices"; "Bishops of opposite color"; etc., etc. For those looking to improve by seeing how Burn handles certain types of positions--the #1 reason people buy collections of master games in the first place--this is invaluable.

Apart form the games, this book's biographical section is excellent. Just about every fact known about Burn--birth, death, family, work, travel, chess tournaments participation, club memberships, relations with other players, etc.--is given. Here, too, Forster "goes the extra mile": for example, for every tournament Burn participated in, he gives us not only his results and opponents, but the complete crosstable (when available); he not only tells us when Burn played in the Liverpool chess club, but what exact positions he held, the text of some of his speeches (or speeches in his honor) given at the club, and so on.

Finally, there is production value. The book is HUGE--over 900 folio pages on high-grade paper--in excellent, hard-cover blue velvet covering, with a gold-embossed title, and includes numerous rare photographs. "They don't make 'em like that anymore", as a cursory glance at the endless stream of thin soft-cover books on your local bookstore's "chess" section will show.

At $75, it's a bargain.

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars An amazing biography of Amos Burn as well as the chess that was played at that time, September 19, 2007

By 

Jim Rickman (Sudbury, MA USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Amos Burn: A Chess Biography (Hardcover)

Truly a magnificent undertaking by Richard Forster who not only provides a detailed study of Amos Burn's chess career but also a truly enlightening history of chess as it was played at that time and the chess players who played it. If you want to learn more about chess and the chess players of the second half of the 19th century, here is the book for you. This book also provides a standard by which all other chess biographies and games collections should model themselves after. I would give this book 50 stars if I could.