Garry Kasparov on Modern Chess, Part Two: Kasparov vs Karpov 1975-1985 (v. 2) (Hardcover)

by Garry Kasparov (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

The history of sport has seen many great gladiatorial clashes: Ali v Frazier in boxing, McEnroe v Borg in tennis, Prost v Senna in motor racing. None however can quite compare to the intensity of the rivalry between those two great world chess champions: Garry Kasparov and Anatoly Karpov. Between 1984 and 1990 they contested an astonishing five World Championship matches consisting of 144 individual encounters. This volume concentrates on the first two of those matches.

 

 * The epic 1984/85 contest which was lasted six months before being controversially halted “without result” by the then President of FIDE Florencio Campomanes.

 

* The 1985 match when Kasparov brilliantly won the final game to take the title and become – at the age of 22 – the youngest ever world champion.

 

Great chess contests have often had resonances extending beyond the 64 squares. The Fischer v Spassky match was played during the Cold War with both champions being perceived as the finest products of their respective ideologies. The Karpov v Korchnoi battles (three matches between 1974 and 1981) were lent an edge with Karpov being a Russian hero of the pre-Glasnost era whilst Korchnoi was the disaffected dissident. The Kasparov v Karpov encounters mirrored a battle between the new Russia and old Russia with Kasparov seen as a symbol of the new ideology emerging under Gorbachev whereas Karpov was seen to represent the old regime of die-hard Communists such as Brezhnev.

 

In this volume Garry Kasparov (world champion between 1985 and 2000 and generally regarded as the greatest player ever) analyses in depth the clashes from 1984 and 1985, giving his opinions both on the political machinations surrounding the matches as well as the games themselves.

About the Author

Garry Kasparov is generally regarded as the greatest chess player ever. He was the thirteenth World Champion, holding the title between 1985 and 2000. His tournament record is second to none, featuring numerous wins in the world's major events, often by substantial margins. As well as his outstanding successes, Kasparov has constantly promoted the game; he has done more than anyone to popularise chess in modern times.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 424 pages
• Publisher: Everyman Chess; 1st edition (September 24, 2008)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1857444337
• ISBN-13: 978-1857444339
• Product Dimensions: 9.8 x 7 x 1.4 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.8 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #92,702 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

26 of 28 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Chess of the Titans, September 16, 2008

By	Wallace H. Hannum "Grand Patzer" (Menlo Park, CA USA) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This book is amazing.

I enjoyed Kasparov's "Great Predessors" series, but didn't read any of them cover-to-cover. I found his "Revolutions in the 70s" to be interesting but not very useful and definitely not entertaining. But this book is a classic that I'll be re-reading in the coming years.
This is the book many of us have been waiting for Kasparov to write for years and years. No one else could have done it like this.

Kasparov gives all the details about his games against Karpov up to -and including- the famous first two World Championship matches. He discusses not only the moves and the ideas, but what was going on behind the scenes. It is a fascinating read and I found it more entertaining than anything Kasparov has written previously.

Warning: Kasparov is famous for his variation-heavy style of annotation that can make you dizzy. He will overwhelm readers with the depth and complexity of his ideas. But if you work through as much as you can (with the help of your computer, of course) you will learn a lot about chess, and about how the greatest player of our time approached the game. This is a collection of the highest level of chess, described by the highest-caliber of player.

But there's more! The book is more than just game annotations; it also has the drama and humanity of the matches included. It is obviously the best match book written by a participant since Tal's amazing "Tal-Botvinnik 1960".

If you want a fascinating chronicle of the what is probably the greatest chess rivalry of all-time, written by probably the greatest player of all-time, then order it. This is titanic chess brought down from Mt.Olympus for us mortals to ponder and enjoy.

7 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good but not great, December 28, 2008

By	Juande (Spain) - See all my reviews

This book from my point of view is interesting but far away to be a great book of chess. I mean you will find out the kasparov's true story, at least from his point of view which I consider quite reasonable to believe, but from the side of chess or learning chess by studing games of GM it is not so great as other I have read. Kasparov writes in each game hundreds of variants but forget to explain the reason of those variants (if he does it the explanations aren't too deep) ,what things he or Karpov were thinking to play that or other move and that is the important, at least what I was looking for. This last feature make a book of chess about GM's games a great book or an ordinary one. I watched kasparov analyzing games in My Story video series by Kasparov and it pleased me the way he assessed the games and the position so much that I decided to buy a book of him talking about games played by himself; seeking for something similar but it wasn't at all like I thought. Summarizing, this is not a bad book and you will get something good to improve your chess but there are others better that this one to try for that. From other point of view it is a quite good book even an interesting one to learn the battle history between Kasparov vs Karpov such as the side of the events outside of the board as inside.

11 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Detailed analysis of the abandoned First match-duel along with the Second match with his nemesis Karpov, September 8, 2008

By	Harsha Bellur (India) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

The book covers the duels Kasparov had with Karpov starting from the pre-matches era, and then the First abandoned match and finally the Second match which crowned the youngest Champion in history. The book is a part of the ongoing series which promises to cover all the battles between Kasparov and Karpov.

The previous chess books in English namely Kasparov v/s Karpov by Mark Taimanov and Yuri Averbakh and The New World Champion by Kasparov exclusively covered the match that crowned Kasparov in detail while chess lovers were left waiting, with bated breath, for some informed analysis of the abandoned match. The wait is now over after two decades and all the First Match games are covered in detail.

Both rivals were engaged in bitter contests on board as well as off board. Kasparov in his The Unlimited Challenge and Karpov in Karpov on Karpov had their difference of opinions about their rivalry. In the Foreword of the reviewed book there is a nice episode about Karpov wanting to visit the imprisoned Kasparov to show solidarity. Kasparov says that this one gesture outweighs all past negative factors. A case of Foe turned Friend.

Generally in the past, there has been a dearth of annotations of World Championship games by the Champion himself or by the Contender. This present book is a rare exception similar to Botvinnik-Smyslov Three World Chess Championship Matches 1954, 1957, 1958 by Mikhail Botvinnik recently released by New in Chess or on a smaller scale Tal Botvinnik 1960 match by Mikhail Tal

One can relive the glorious moment of the brilliant 16th game of the 1985 WCC match where Karpov is in zugzwang from an opening that had occurred regularly for over 50 years in the Sicilian Defense and now named by some as Kasparov's Gambit (the game will find itself in any greatest games list and also clearly demonstrates that the romantic gambit era finds a place in Modern Chess) or Karpov's 'White Symphony' (as christened by Taimanov and Averbakh) wherein Karpov makes 17 moves on White squares and Kasparov deprived of the guardian of White squares namely the White Bishop can just wait and watch or when Kasparov suddenly makes a Queen sacrifice out of the blue in a position which calls for quiet maneuvering on the surface (A newspaper vividly described Kasparov as loosening his tie and capturing the Rook with a bang to add effect) and the first game of the WCC 1985 match where Karpov commits the grave error of making Queen moves in the opening at the cost of development and is punished. The book is replete with such high caliber games which can entertain as well as instruct.