Customer Reviews

107 Great Chess Battles, 1939-1945 (Dover Books on Chess)

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

Buy this book before going on to Alekhine's massive collection of games from 1908-1937. If Alekhine's rather imperious style of annotation doesn't exasperate you, you can buy everything he ever wrote without impunity. This book is cheap and worth the money. (A rare Dover chess book written in algebraic notation.)

Dover produces fine books. As for me I don't mind descriptive notation which turns off a lot of potential customers. But here they have the best efforts of a World Champion and it is in algebraic notation, and has clear diagrams. Some of the games fall short of top drawer play, hence I deducted 1 star, but otherwise this is excellent chess and fine commentary by Alekhine. There is also a tribute to his old Nemesis Capablanca. Altogether a must for any player's library

Though this book has a few chess gems to be enjoyed by everyone, this book isn't for the mere beginner. Sometimes it isn't even for the average player. Alekhine's annotations are thorough, for the most part, but are often tinged with either mocking condescension or complete blase. He tacitly assumes that certain tactical or strategic ideas are obvious, and therefore fails from time to time in teaching the reader anything. The games are often interesting, though, again, not for the player interested in only an occasional game. This is a relatively good book if you have enough experience and can study it deeply, but if you are looking for a book of instruction, look elsewhere.

What I love about this book is it shows Alekhine in a more modern era, how he analyzed more of the modern openings that were starting to emerge. His annotations are always great, and at this price, get it!

Unless you collect chess books, I don't feel that this book is a must. The book has two pros: price and nice collection of games (Most of the games in the book were NOT played by Alekhine).

But in my view, it's biggest con is depthless and lip-deep analysis. Don't buy this book if you are looking to understand Alekhine's thought process or looking for some instructional material.

Alekhine's sparse comments certainly help, but your should have a pretty good chess knowledge in order to get the most out of this book.

Overall good book, Alekhine gives his comments on these 107 games played during his time. He does a great job at revealing the players way of thinking and the hows and whys of each move. However, the title of this book is very misleading, potential buyers are led to beleive that Alekhine actually playes all 107 games. He only plays 30! If you want purely games of Alekhine, spend your money on something else