Customer Reviews

Timman's Selected Games: Chess the Adventurous Way

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I've read all of Timman's books over the years, and I've thoroughly enjoyed all of them.

Last summer, I showed a couple of boxes of chess books to a close friend of mine, rated 2400. Though he had actually borrowed this book 2 years ago, he carefully perused all my books
over a couple of months while staying at my place.

Without exaggeration, when it came time to sell most of these to the local dealers, he quietly repeated over the course of a week that I should read this particular book. He didn't bother mentioning any of the others, and I have quite a few good books.

He stated that Timman's analysis was outstanding. We both agreed how rare this is (in combination with being interesting) in chess literature. Of the four best authors, Dvoretsky et al., Speelman, Nunn, and Timman, Timman is clearly the best.

I found the work to be thorough and Timman is the only author that I can tolerate with any opening (his reputation for playing just about any opening is famous).

The earlier work, The Art of Chess Analysis, is readable by lower rated players, contrary to what some of the reviews claim.

This work is even more readable by a huge range of players.

I think it is a fallacy in chess to worry about books being too difficult for certain strengths of players--willpower and persistence are the correct criteria. One of John Nunn's more denser books was studied along with three others by a friend of mine who jumped from 2050 to 2300 as an adult within a year.

Timman's book has superior analysis to ALL of the books in the first half of the 20th century (Alekhine, etc.) and you'll enjoy his opening analysis to boot!