11 of 16 people found the following review helpful:
2.0 out of 5 stars
Spielmann deserved a better book than this., June 12, 2006
This review is from: Rudolph Spielmann Master of Invention (Masters (Everyman Chess)) (Paperback)
There appears to be a movement gaining ground nowadays in the chess publishing world, that all books published on the game must be _instructional_ books: actually directed, whatever their putative topics, toward the more mundane goal of improving the readers' practical level of play and gaining him more ELO points. Biography, history, the philosophical aspects of the game, compositional artistry, general enjoyment --in short, everything peripheral to the game that an earlier and more literate era would have referred to as "chess culture" can be bowdlerized, scrambled, or jettisoned outright by an author and his database in the pursuit of elusive ELO gain.
There is not much chess culture in "Rudolph Spielmann Master of Invention". People expecting a biographical games collection of Spielmann, like the 3-volume Spence collection of Spielmann 30 years ago, or a biography-plus-games collection of the sort that has become very trendy in recent years (Pope on Pillsbury, Hilbert on Napier for example, or even Ehn on Spielmann in German)will be sorely disappointed.
McDonald's research and narrative gifts do not seem to extend to history, nor to biographical narrative. The volume includes a patchy and incomplete biographical "essay" with much of the usual suspect anecdotal material, lucid analysis of a small group of games McDonald considers to be Spielmann's best (here the author, as an undeniably gifted instructor and coach, does his finest work, though even these games are ripped loose from most of their biographical and historical moorings), and various chapters with some games, many game fragments frustratingly bereft of their openings, and numerous single problem-like positions organized on instructional thematic grounds so that the student can assimilate what McDonald feels to be the essential elements of Spielmann's play and incorporate these features into his own games.
Now it is perfectly possible to write a very good biographical games collection with almost no delving into history, biography, or similar, at all. Andy Soltis proves this in his excellent (if apologetically titled for the instructional audience) "Why Lasker Matters". But what McDonald has given us is a hodge-podge of a book that really should not have seen the light of day at all in its current form. The reader wishing to be instructed can find any number of books to instruct him in whatever aspects of his game that need polishing, and these dedicated manuals will do the job better than twisting a historical figure into a pretzel for the purpose. On the other hand, the reader wanting a good (or even a coherent) biographical collection of Spielmann will have to keep waiting, because this title definitely is not it.
Only the small chapter of Spielmann's "best games" presented for their own sake earns this book two stars. Without it the marking would have been still lower.
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4 of 9 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
analysis of chess play of a master known for his sacrifices and combinations, May 2, 2006
This review is from: Rudolph Spielmann Master of Invention (Masters (Everyman Chess)) (Paperback)
Born in 1883, Spielmann was among the top world-class chess players in the early part of the 1900s. Although he never held the top position for long nor achieved the legendary status of Lasker, Alekhine, or Capablanca, in most matches he held his own with them, losing by narrow margins. Spielmann made a mark historically and is studied by competitive and ambitious chess players of each generation for his sacrifices or combinations which in his own words were not always "necessarily sound but [leave] your opponent dazed and confused." This tactic can be seen in half of Spielmann's recorded games; whereas by comparison it was employed by other chess masters in only every fifth or sixth game. McDonald--chess coach as well as player on the international circuit--analyzes in detail many of Spielmann's games against top opponents focusing on his use of particular pieces in the kinds of sacrifices and combinations that distinguished his characteristic, formidable style of play.
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