200 open games (Hardcover)

~ David Ionovich Bronshtein (Author)

Editorial Reviews

Product Description

Russian grandmaster offers a wealth of his finest games, presented in full with numerous illustrative diagrams. Lively, frequently amusing commentary emphasizes ideas behind moves, shows how 1P-K4—P-K4 imposes its patterns on subsequent game. Chess classic displays one of the game’s most fertile, inventive minds at work and a host of the brilliant and provocative games that resulted. 207 black-and-white illustrations. Index.
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

Language Notes

Text: English, Russian (translation)

Product Details

• Hardcover: 240 pages
• Publisher: Batsford (1974)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0713404108
• ISBN-13: 978-0713404104
• Average Customer Review: 3.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #7,778,669 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great book on the Open Game!, February 19, 1998

By A Customer

This review is from: 200 Open Games (Chess) (Paperback)

David Bronstein is one of the most colorful chess writers. This book is written in an odd style but is informative and fun! He covers almost every opening that contains (1. e4 e5): "The Open Game". The book is not burdened with analysis instead Bronstein gives a more subjective view of the players objectives. This is a "must have" for a king pawn player!

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars mixing ideas and recollections from his past, February 10, 2008

By	Gilles Benson (Beauvais, France) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: 200 Open Games (Chess) (Paperback)

the main feature about this book is not the fact that it is written about open games; it must be said that it is not a treatise on openings; the author reviews his old open games set according to opening and gives some advice about those openings but without any deep analysis; he just points to the main turning points of every game and adds recollections of the said games; let say that he played some of these games before 1950 and he wrote the book in the seventies; one game sticks up in my memory: the one with Keres holding the black pieces in Amsterdam (1956) during the candidate tournament: Bronstein says that going over that particuliar game 15 years later, he could not understand why he had let the game go the way it had (leadind to his ultimate defeat and eviction from the world championship cycle yet again...), and then after lengthy thougth he had the joy and pain to remember his train of thought during the game. Today, your computer may feed you with incredible lines of analysis but this cannot help you about your game; Bronstein shows how things went in his games; some went well and some did not because one cannot win every encounter even against weaker opposition because somehow weird things may happen on the chessboard...; he played a incredible amount of different openings but one can feel his love for e4-e5 in this book together with his unique attitude towards chess; a great book indeed written by a great mind.

6 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars his personal impressions are pretty interesting, September 21, 2001

By	Jon Strohbehn "Strawlegs" (portland or) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

This review is from: 200 Open Games (Chess) (Paperback)

Bronstein gives the scores of 200 of his open games - pretty much his entire practice, win, loss, and draw, including gm draws. With each, he gives a paragraph or two of what he finds of interest - a maneuver, a combination, a tournement situation, personalities, or whatever. there's not a lot of analysis, but there are a lot of ideas to be picked up. More than anything else, the book seems to be about personal attitude. I don't play open games any more, but I haven't been able to give up my copy.