Capablanca game book recommendation?

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notmtwain
chess_cat_1000 wrote:

I admire Capablanca's style of play and tend to play similar openings, and thus get similar positions, that he did. 

So I ask: what is the best instructive Capablanca game book?

Cheers with beers and fears of a Himilayan pants monster eaten your fudge cake to every one that answers.

How could you admire his style and know enough to play similar openings and get similar positions if you don't already know his games?

Rsava

Have you looked at Capablanca x3?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Capablanca-x3-Career-Fundamentals-Primer/dp/1781943966

CKLG
Capablanca's Hundred Best Games of Chess is the best collection, and Capablanca's Best Chess Endings: 60 Complete Games focus on the endgames with analysis but still gives the full game to show how to reach that ending.
GWTR

Reinfeld's book on Capa is well-written and fun (much better than the Golombek book IMHO - although I really dig Golombek's book on Lasker!).  Just wish my copy was in AN.

 

Capablanca Move by Move looks interesting.  (I have only skimmed it.)

BonTheCat

Those three books were written by Capablanca. He may not be the best at explaining his own ideas (it was all very effortless for him). If you read only English, the books recommended by CKLG, Golombek's 'Capablanca's Best Games of Chess' and Chernev's 'Capablanca's Best Chess Endings' are good choices. There's also Hooper and Brandreth's 'The Unknown Capablanca', which includes lesser known games by him (208 games, but quite a number of them are off-hand and consultation games and from simultaneous displays - still good for us mere mortals!). However if you can read Spanish there are two more, Panov's 'Capablanca' (70 games) and Ståhlberg's 'Partidas Clasicas de Capablanca' (105 games). In my view, the annotations by Panov and Ståhlberg are more thorough and of higher quality than those of Golombek and Chernev.

A word of caution as regards 'Capablanca Move by Move'. Cyrus Lakwadala is enormously productive and has been criticized for sloppy work.

BonTheCat

If you're looking to improve your middlegame, I'd recommend Ludek Pachman's 'Complete Chess Strategy' in three volumes (you can probably find second-hand copies of it). It's not typically full games (although he does sometimes quote the full game without annotations up to the point of the diagram), but based around middle-game positions. In my view, it's one of the best manuals on the middle-game. Pachman is a very good at verbally explaining concepts in a lucid and succinct way without going overboard on variations, and often giving several examples of each concept. Also, it's worth looking for a book Rubinstein's games (Hans Kmoch's 'Rubinstein's Chess Masterpieces' is a good one in English. 100 well-annotated games.) Rubinstein's mostly known for having been a brilliant endgame player, but he played many fabulous middle-games as well. His style was very clearcut and classical, with a very subtle understanding of chess. (I suggest you take a look at the game Rubinstein vs Capablanca from San Sebastian 1911 to get an inkling of what I mean).

kindaspongey

https://www.newinchess.com/media/wysiwyg/product_pdf/7128.pdf

kindaspongey

The link is to a sample from Capablanca Move by Move.

dave_westwood

Chernev's "Capablanca's Best Chess Endings 60 complete games" Emphasis on endgame analysis.

kindaspongey

A Chernev sample can be seen at

http://store.doverpublications.com/0486242498.html?gclid=EAIaIQobChMIzfq0o5uW3gIVg9lkCh2iwA0LEAQYASABEgL-OfD_BwE

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