C.J.S. Purdy's Fine Art of Chess Annotation and Other Thoughts: Volume 1

Rating:
Summary: great book for players under Elo 2000
Review: This book contains 100 master games annotated by Purdy: 25 world championship games from Botvinnik to Spassky, 25 grandmaster games from tournaments, and 50 master games from Australasia. In his notes, Purdy tries to elucidate the ideas behind the players' moves rather than reeling off long variations of analysis. However, when required, Purdy did include analysis of his own. In this, he was very good as evidenced by his achievement of winning the first World Correspondence Chess Championship. The book also includes tips on playing the openings, middlegame, and endgame as well as the playing over of grandmaster games (a form of solitaire chess). Perhaps the most useful part of the book is Purdy's system of thinking which the student should use to decide upon his moves. Purdy developed his system many years before Jeremy Silman elaborated the Silman Thinking Technique in his book How to reassess your chess. Purdy's system of thinking is also discussed in more detail in his other book The Search for Chess Perfection. My only complaint with the book (a minor flaw) is that information about the tournament and year in which some of the games were played is not included. Highly recommended.