Customer Reviews

Capablanca: A Compendium of Games, Notes, Articles, Correspondence, Illustrations and Other Rare Archival Materials on the Cuban Chess Genius José Raúl Capablanca, 1888–1942

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Winter has researched an enormous amount of material on Capablanca, and documented his sources thoroughly. He has a commendable distaste for unsubstantiated anecdotes. It includes both significant biographical material as well as many fine games not usually found in the main game collections (which are highly recommended by the way), and often with Capa's own notes.

Winter has also unearthed some very interesting game annotations by Capa, including the Lasker-Schlechter match, a famous Spielmann loss to Tarrasch, a Janowski brilliancy, etc. There are also fascinating reports by Capa on tournaments such as his greatest victory, New York 1927, and the Chess Olympiad in Buenos Aires, 1939, where Capa made the best score on top board.

The chapters on his World Championship negotiations and matches with both Lasker and Alekhine make fascinating reading.

There also clear B&W photos of Capa at all stages of life.

This book is basically a biography via the subject's own writings and papers. Winter does, in fact, include plenty of his own (excellent) prose, but the meat of the book is Capablanca's own writing, much of it new to me, and I've read quite a bit on Capa through the years.

Especially interesting are Capa's thoughts on contemporary players and his early game annotations when he was writing for various chess magazines early in his career. For example, he annotated every game of the epic Lasker-Schlechter match, and they are all included here.

Although Capa is infamous for writing less than virtually any other World Champion, he still penned quite a number of articles, all of them of interest, and all, or nearly all, of which are collected here.

Winter is known for being a stickler about documentation, so you will not find a lot of unfounded gossip or apochryphal stories or legend here. This is a refreshing dfference from the large majority of chess biographies, including other books on Capa. Capablanca's career is full of enough true mindboggling stories to need to make anything up.

This book is a splendid achievement by Winter, and I had a difficult time putting it down. I plan on going back to it again and again as a reference, and, of course, to play over the games which Capablanca had annotated.

As a big fan of details and facts, Winter is always for me. He`s the best chess historian by far, and this may be his best book to date. Even if you`re not a serious Capablanca fan, this book will keep you entertained with those little special events that make life so interesting (like including a section of an article by Sergei Prokofiev about his playing in a simul against Capbablanca). I also didn`t know until reading the Capablanca writings from articles included in this book that the World Champion really did have a nice sense of humour. Engrossing, filled with facts, all attributions in order... but by no means is it dry. Quite the contrary, this will also touch on your emotions.

Certainly one of the best books I`ve ever seen.

BRILLIANT. WELL WORTH THE MONEY. IT HAS HELPED ME TO IMPROVE MY CHESS ENORMOUSLY.