Customer Reviews

Leonid Stein: Master of Risk Strategy

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I am an A-class club player, USCF 1850. I really enjoyed reading this book. Stein is definitely one of the best chess players of all-time. Unfortunately he passed away before he reached his real potential and prime which would have been a serious contender for the World Championship. The book has a concise biography of him which is interesting and provides us a human side of a chess player rather than just games and scores. The games are well annotated and they mostly emphasize the ideas behind moves rather that just a maze of variations. I identify with Stein's style because he took calculated risks and created problems for his opponents hard to solve over the board. That means some of his moves may not be sound and may be refuted later at post-mortem analysis but try refuting them under pressure! This is chess! Like real life situations a lot of psychology is involved.

If you like to be exposed to Stein's genuinely unique style and explore this great player, read this book. It is fun and educational. One of the real good chess books I read along the lines of Life and Games of Michail Tal and My 60 Memorable Games by Fischer.

This is a great book about a brilliant grandmaster. The annotations and stories provided by E. Gufeld are not very long or extremely detailed, but strike at the core of the critical positions and just following the games on a chess board will help you a great deal. I'm a 1700-ish FIDE player and I feel my opening knowledge and tactics evolved by reading this book from cover to cover.

About GM Leonid Stein, a master of attack and combinations who died tragically before reaching the peak of his game, perhaps I should quote Viktor Korchnoi after a world championship game of his: "Karpov read somewhere that Bishop is stronger than a Knight; in Leonid Stein's hands, not his!"

This is a great collection of some of the most important games in Stein's career. The commentaries are excellent. Highly recommended.