Garry Kasparov on Modern Chess and other Kasparov annotated game books

These books get great reviews

Are the annotations all his, or does he blend in multiple sources of commentary to build out a very very well annotated game?

Does he use annotations from the masters themselves?

Let's say I wanted to study Fischer.

Would it make more sense to just read Fischer's own book, or would Kasparov's book include everything Fischer said AND what Kasparov(and others) think as well?

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If you want to study Fischer, i would recommend My 60 most memorable games. It's a classic book, Kasparov's books are more complicated, a lot of variations.

My two cents on this issue: Obviously, these books are great, but I've always personally preferred when the players themselves annotate their own games. Kasparov uses analysis by the players themselves, by other annotators and his own analysis. However, for obvious reasons, he has to be rather briefer in his annotations and in his selection of games. Also, most of the work of gathering and compiling the annotations from various sources has probably been done by Dmitry Plisetsky (not that this would be anything unusual, Karpov has done the same, and so did Max Euwe), otherwise he wouldn't have been credited on the flyleaf. As noblestone says, if you want to study a particular player, you're probably better off choosing their own published game collections. Fischer did 60 of his own games in 'My 60 Memorable Games'. If you buy Botvinnik's game collection (now expanded to a whopping six volumes to include all his games, but worth every single penny/cent/centavo/kopek), you get the nearly 350 games originally selected and annotated specifically by Botvinnik (for the Russian language version of his 'Analytical and Critical Works' published in English by Moravia Publishing as 'Botvinnik's Best Games of Chess in three volumes) plus all the other games he ever annotated in depth in magazines and other books, plus numerous articles and writings by him. Botvinnik was an extremely diligent and honest annotator, who regularly updated his analysis. Also his games are a fantastic schooling for learning positional play. The same goes for Mikhail Tal's 'My Life and Games' - a splendid collection of fighting, tactical chess, also with very forthright annotations.

What do you get in Kasparov's books, however, is a (not always terribly accurate) history of chess world champions and their nearest rivals (such as Pillsbury, Rubinstein, Bent Larsen, Korchnoi etc.), and you get everything in one set of books. Then you have his other series, 'Kasparov on Modern Chess' and 'Kasparov on Kasparov', which also are very worthwhile.

Spongey will eventually provide a review.

Thanks that’s exactly the info I needed.

I wasn’t aware of those Botvinnik books either.

im reading through game collections of most of the world champions in chronological order and want the best sources. It’s taken me over a year to get through Morphy , Steinitz,  Lasker,  and Capablanca game collections.

fischer 60 memorable games and Tal life and games , and Tal vs Botvinnik, are sitting on my shelf waiting for me to finish Alekhine’s book.

btwn Alekhine and Fischer though should be Botvinnik. I have his 100games book but the ones you mentioned sound better

is it this ?

https://www.newinchess.com/en_US/catalog/product/view/_ignore_category/1/id/2123/s/botvinnik-best-games-volumes-1-2-3/

Yes.  The linked books are Botvinnik's 3 volume games collection.

Thanks

ill try to track down copies of those

Yes, that's the one. They've expanded the set with another three volumes which contain all his other games (the games annotated in the first three are just given as a game header with a reference the relevant volume), which include a great many that he annotated for periodicals but weren't included in the first three volumes, in addition to a great number of articles that the wrote for chess periodicals. In my view, Botvinnik's is probably the best annotator of his own games that ever lived (the competition is obviously fierce, such as Alekhine, Tartakower, Keres, Tal etc.). His style is generally dry and very serious, but he imparts a lot of chess knowledge, and most importantly, he's extremely honest - if he made an oversight, he doesn't gloss over it (like Karpov, for instance, who just waves it away by a brief remark, like 'Tiredness' or something like that). He openly admits the error and explains what he had missed.

Sorry I’m confused, can’t find volumes 4-6.

They're called 'Botvinnik's Complete Games (19XX-19XX) and Selected Writings' parts 1, 2 and 3.

Sometimes a great PLAYER is not a great WRITER. Kasparov's annotations are out-of-this-world......and - being a resident of this world - I often don't understand what he's going on about in his 16 move line dumps. In my experience (which is, admittedly, limited) Kasparov gives you a lot of chess without many words to help you make sense of it; if you're already a master, you have the skillset necessary to interpret these long lines without much help from Kaspy. But I just stare into the void and wonder why I've gone 20 ply away from the game position for a 3 word explanation.

I read volume 1 of my great predecessors and it was a LOT of work.

Alekhine annotated tons of games and needed nobodies help, but Steinitz was too busy writing an opening book when he should have been annotating his games for everyone to see examples of his principles.

Anyway, Kasparov is tough. Probably better for me to come back to his stuff if/when I’m stronger and can visualize all those lines without losing site of the actual game I’m trying to read.

Thanks BonTheCat

wow expensive books. Hardcover though

Yes, they're expensive, and unfortunately the production quality isn't what you would expect for that price (apart from the hard covers). The print quality looks like an ink printer on draft quality. However, I can live with that. It's excellent material.

You're absolutely right about Kasparov. You're better off with his first book, 'Test of Time'. It's still complex, but he wrote it before the computer era, so the variations are much more germane to the games (this is the problem now, authors just don't know when to stop when it comes variations anymore, thanks to the computers).

That's generally why I recommend older books, and books about players from previous generations - the games tend to be much more clear-cut (they manage to implement the ideas and strategies without being thwarted). The quality of the analysis is still top notch (for us, most certainly), but they also focus much more on verbal explanations. I said earlier that Max Euwe had helpers for his books, but in general he checked the material thoroughly himself (that is to say, most of his books are great reads).

This is what computers do even to one of the greatest (if not the greatest) players of all time. They just don't know when to stop anymore. Bent Larsen used to say 'Long analysis, wrong analysis'. What he meant was that along the way, there are so many possibilities, that most of time, there's no point in burdening the reader with so much detail.

I seriously think that most players, until you reach an extremely high level, are better off with the old-fashioned that were written long before computers got strong. We have so much to learn from them.

That’s why I’m reading annotated master game books in chronological order starting with Morphy. 

I’d like to get up to Fischer and Karpov so I’ll need to be selective, can’t read everyone or I’ll be old and dead before getting past 1940.

if the games are annotated by the player himself then that’s the book I’ll select by default.

So far I’ve read hundreds of games by

Morphy

Steinitz

Lasker

Tarrasch

Capablanca

Reti (Masters of the Chessboard)

Tartakower (500 master games)

Alekhine (currently here)

i like Alekhine’s annotations . They give a good mix of words, evaluations, and lines. Meaty and challenging but not too much. 

Reti is my favorite writer so far. It’s a shame he only got to write two books.

You should most definitely add Rubinstein to that list. He was an absolutely marvellous player (better than Tarrasch and much less dogmatic) with a beautiful classical style - unfortunately World War I ruined his already frail psyche, and he gave up tournament play in 1930 or so (more than 30 years before his death in 1961). In English there are only a few game collections with him. The most well-known one is Hans Kmoch's 'Rubinstein's Chess Masterpieces' (100 games). It's good, but not fantastic. The best one by far, by Yuri Razuvaev (and another author whose name now escapes me), has only been published in Russian and Italian. Rubinstein hardly wrote anything himself, basically sparse notes to games in some tournament books and chess magazines, plus extensive contributions on the section on openings in the last edition of the Swedish 'Lärobok i schack' by the Collijn brothers (a Swedish 'Bilguer's Handbuch' published in five different editions from around 1900 up to the early 1920s). To wit, there's only one short book by him, published in Spanish, 'La partida de ajedrez' under the editorship of Julio Ganzo. However, Rubinstein's style is such that you're bound to learn loads from his games anyway, just by playing over them. He was especially strong on the QP games and a very fine endgame player. The equal of Capablanca and Lasker.

I agree, Reti was a fine author. He wrote a couple of books in Spanish as well. 'Curso cientifico de ajedrez' (a set of lectures) and 'Estudios completos' (his endgame studies). For a very long time, Russian, Spanish and German were the most important languages for chess books (many treasures to be found there).

sigh, add another to my list then.

thanks for the tip. I was looking for something I could learn from chigorin but I’ll check out Rubinstein

Hehe! You can always limit yourself. Don't go through all the games at once (for instance I suspect you've got Tarrasch's '300 games'), you can always have a look at say 20 or 30 or so by each player. In his introduction, Kmoch identifies a number of excellent Rubinstein games which merit specific study. Then go on to the next player on your list, do 20-30 games by him, and so on. Then return and start the process all over again by another 30 games by Morphy, Steinitz, Lasker etc. It's very enjoyable to go back and forth between them.

Our chess heritage is so rich that it will always take an enormous amount of time to study each great player in depth, one at a time. Also, you do have Tartakower and Du Mont's '500 Master Games' on your list. You can easily get through a number of these players the first time around (if we say that you study 15 to 30 games by each one) by just looking up their games in the index of that book. For instance, Alekhine features with no fewer than 64 games (the most by quite some distance) in that collection. Actually, I'd suggest you start off with '500 Master Games', and go over the players with the most games, because they'll typically be the most important, most influential and best players of that era (Morphy, Steinitz, Blackburne, Chigorin [spelled 'Tchigorin' in that book] Lasker, Alekhine, Capablanca, Bogolyubow, Marshall, Euwe, Keres, Nimzowitsch, Reti, Rubinstein, Spielmann, Tarrasch, Tartakower, Pillsbury, Mieses, Janowsky). This will give you an excellent grounding, and you'll find many gems in there. Tartakower and Du Mont did a companion volume, '100 Master Games of Modern Chess' up to the 1950s, and you could do the same there with players like Botvinnik, Euwe, Keres, Najdorf, Fine, Reschewsky etc. Some of them obviously feature in the 500 Games volume as well, so well worth looking up there, too.