Customer Reviews

Modern Ideas in Chess

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

 

 

"Modern ideas in Chess" is a very short book - too short, I think, but I include it in my "Best Chess books" list. Far from being just a technical or tactical book (you have hundreds like these), it demonstrates the changing concepts of chess. As I see it, it's one of the most important books for advanced players (only!!) who want to understand the development of the game from the mid. 19th century to the early 20th. century. Why did Capablanca ignored Morphy's move in a certain position? How did Dr. Lasker (probably the best chess player ever) succeed to hold the world champion title for more than 20 years? What ideas came with the "Hyper modern" masters, like Nimzovich, Alekhine, Breyer and Reti himself? What was the typical American style, that Reti observed? These questions and much more are answered in the book. I repeat myself and warn that the book is only for advanced, who's libraries are full of theory and technical books of the game, and want to learn more about the history of the chess thought.

Richard Reti - one of the leaders of the hypermodern school of chess which rose to prominence in the 1920's - was a formidable over the board grandmaster as shown by his victories at the splendid tournaments of Kaschau 1918, Gothenburg 1920 and Teplitz Schonau 1922. His victims included Capablanca, Alekhine and Nimzowitsch, while his elegant destruction of Bogolyubov deservedly won the beauty prize at New York 1924. Reti was an adept at blindfold chess in which he rivalled Alekhine in the number and strength of his opposition,a lucidly brilliant composer of endgame studies but above all an artist fascinated by the creative forces and energies lying beneath the surface of the chessboard battle. Golombek wrote " Reti became a great and vital writer on the game --for the first time in the history of books on chess a writer capable of a genuine historical survey of the evolution of chess ideas and also of a colourful and poetic picture of the state of contemporary chess had made his appearance." As Reti himself wrote "in the idea of chess and the development of the chess mind we have a picture of the intellectual struggle of mankind."