Customer Reviews

From London to Elista: The Inside Story of the World Chess Championship Matches that Vladimir Kramnik Won Against Garry Kasparov, Peter Leko, and Veselin Topalov

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
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First I want to clarify and say that this book deserves its good reputation, and its high selling volume since it first came out is justified. One can enjoy penetrating into thinking process of the skilled chess professionals who had been interviewed from the Kramnik camp, as well as read excripts from the other GMs cited from different sources.
Sheer amount of psychology involved into pre-game preparation is puzzling, and drive one to continuously read it. Concreatly, I was more interested into reading details of pre-game preparation process and post-mortem reactions, than of analysis of the games played. Fortunatelly, analysis material of the games is significantly lighter that that of the "San Luis 2005" book, but still it wouldnt mind if some more textual explanation had been added into it, especially at late opening phase mortals nowdays are hard to grasp.
From historical perspective this is the book to have on your chess shelf to cover world championship matches starting from 2000 and leading to final unification match in 2006.
Recommended.

If you are a typical chess amateur like me who loves to read chess books more for the anecdotes, and sort of wishes that the games and analysis would somehow automatically permeate through to my consciousness, then you will love this book.

The stories and accounts are fascinating, Ilya Luvitov in particular asks some very sharp and direct questions and this brings out the best of Bareev. And snippets in between from thoughts of Kramnik and Lautier and the occassional quip from an Kasparov interview keep making the book more colorful.

The games are full of diagrams and there is both sufficient text commentary that you dont need to setup a board and also there is enough analysis to keep one busy if one did get the pieces out !

A book not to be missed, unique amongst all chess books in the way it captures the very heart of the human element of competitive endeavour.

This book covers, in perhaps unprecedented depth, Kramnik's matches starting with Kasparov and through to Leko and Topalov. The standout is the commentary by Bareev who was present as one of Kramnik's seconds for the first two matches, and brings fantastic insights into the whole gamut of playing a world championship match (including the need for a good cook). The at times complex material is done with a lot of humour. For example, in commenting on what the players could have learned from previous world championship matches it is suggested that the great Petrosian did not know how to handle positions with an isolated pawn (versus Spassky in 1969)! Another example at Kasparov's expense is what is referred to as the 'blunder of the century'. In terms of excellent match books, I can only compare this with Kasparov's excellent two volumes on his matches with Karpov and Tal's book on his first match with Botvinnik (often rated as one of the best chess works ever written). The games are very well explained, as is the background to the battle and selection of opening, and represents a book that you will return to often, and learn more each time. This includes the large number of fighting draws (especially in the matches with Kasparov and of course with Leko) which are made very interesting and entertaining. While written for strong players, I believe that everyone can draw value from this work as you can skim the surface or do a deep dive into each game as you want. The book is very well bound and presented by New in Chess (just like their fantastic magazine) and deserves a place in any keen player's library who wants to know more about modern chess.

After I have seen this book I must say that it is a "must" that anyone should have. It is shameful that somebody that wants to become the undisputed world champion, tries to win it by means that do not belong to the sport. To accuse someone and to have no proof at all of anything, it is only show of seomone who is not capable of getting anything via normal ways.
Definitely Kramnik won "EVERY SINGLE POINT" on the chess board. I have seen the San Luis 2005 book, and I would say, that yes it might have some points in which Topalov could have worked on his own before computers were well developed. But, to try to win a WCC match by no sportive means. That's something else!. NO EXCUSE for that!!!
I really like the book!

From London to Elista: The Inside Story of the World Chess Championship Matches That Vladimir Kramnik Won Against Garry Kasparov, Peter Leko and Vesilin Topalov I found the book to read easily and the material with analysis is very strong.