Chess Brilliancy: 300 Historic Games from the Masters

Rating:
Summary: All the best / mainly from Informant
Review: A student of mine purchased this book several weeks ago. Last night I went to chess club and I received a copy as a gift. I stayed up for hours reading it. (And going over the games.) {I am a chess master that teaches chess (on the Internet) and builds chess sites.}

My impressions were as follows:

#1.) He claims the every first game to receive this prize was the game, Bird-Mason; 1876. (There were games before this that were mentioned as best games of various events.)
His analysis of that game is too critical. The game is very entertaining and quite brilliant - especially for that time period.

#2.) I checked several of his analysis versus dozens of copies of the "Informants." Sometimes all he did was copy the analysis and notes, and maybe flesh them out with a few comments. His analysis is almost word-for-word copies of some analysis that appears in seveal issues of the NIC Year-book.
#.3) He gives all the games names, some show a sense of humor. Titles like: "Art Imitating Life," and "Original Banality." (an oxymoron)

I went over close to a dozen games, I found at least two errors in the analysis. Some of the analysis is very critical of older games. He does NOT always give all the moves of a game, and I find this to be a drawback. He also greatly criticizes some older and well-known brilliancies, (like Bogolyubov-Alekhine, Hastings; 1922) but does not substantiate his criticisms. (In fact he is simply regurgitating analysis done by GM's like Nunn and Soltis, there seems to be little new work here.) He also gives several famous games that have been thought to be total FAKES ... (i.e., Botvinnik - Chekover); and does not even comment on this fact.

Having said all this, would I buy this book? The answer is yes. But let me give you a few reasons you should NOT buy this book: DON'T buy this book if you are looking for chess instruction, or to get better; DON'T buy this book if you hope it will improve your game. This is quite simply a book about the most brilliant games of chess ever played. (The annotations are nowhere near as instructive as a Nunn or Soltis book.) Now having said that, let me give the following qualification: If you purchased this book, and did a systematic study of these games, you would DEFINITELY improve your tactics. Some of these games are the best and most intense tactical 'free-for-alls' ever played.

This is really a book for a serious chess lover. Buy this book if you love chess, and would like a record of all of the most brilliant games ever played. If that is your rationale, then this would be a good book to get, and you could spend hundreds of enjoyable hours studying these exciting contests. This would also be a good reference book. (250 games.)

Rating:
Summary: Worth Reading
Review: Damsky is a well-known chess writer; many readers will be acquainted with books that he has authored or co-authored, e.g. "The Art of Defence in Chess", "Attack with Mikhail Tal", and "The Heavy Pieces in Action." This new book of his - "Chess Brilliancy" - is interesting and instructive, but not without its shortcomings.

The heart of this book is the third chapter, 140 pages long, which examines the highest rated game from each of the Chess Informants from Numbers 4 to 72. There are also games or game fragments that didn't quite get the highest rating, but which Damsky feels are worth including. All told, there are close to one hundred games given in this third chapter.

Damsky has collated the notes from various sources. The cognoscenti are doubtless aware that Chess Informant itself published a book titled "640 Best Games 64 Golden Games" some years back, where the ten best games from each of the first 64 Informants were presented. Unfortunately, no notes accompanied the games. To this extent, Damsky has performed a service for the chess public. The notes explain the ideas in words, and some lines are also given, but of course, this analysis can't match that given in Informant itself, nor is it comparable to the analysis given in the recent books by Nunn and Stohl.

Besides performing the service of giving these "best games", with notes, in one book, Damsky also frequently indicates what it was that impressed the judges; it could, for example, be consummate technical skill, subtlety in manoevring, or brilliance in attack. We thus get an idea of what exactly it is that impresses the GM elite, i.e. how they conceive the game of chess. This will most likely have a salutary effect on the reader's chess-playing strength.

The cover advertises 250 games. Unfortunately, there are only 219 given altogether. About a hundred of these, given in the fourth chapter, are games readers are likely to have already seen umpteen times - games of Tarrasch, Capablanca, and Alekhine, for example; the notes to these games are sparse. It seems they've been employed as "filler."

In summary, a book worth buying just for the third chapter.

Rating:
Summary: Yes, Five stars!
Review: One of the first chess books I still remember that I actually purchased myself when I was ten years old was Fred Reinfeld's 50 Brilliancy Prize Games of the Chess Masters (descriptive notation), which included "brilliant" games from 1880 up to the mid 1950's (its recently been reprinted by Dover books). That book helped inspire me to look for unusual moves in my own games, and showed me many interesting combinations. This book by Damsky easily replaces Reinfeld's book for various reasons- the notation in Damsky's book is algebraic, and there are 219 games in Damsky's book. Reinfeld's old book originally published by Macmillan (now on Dover) was smaller and probably had a superior binding. The games in Damsky's book include some of the same games in Reinfeld's book, but the majority of Damsky's book features the best games from 1968-1998 chosen by the panel of the Informant series of bi-annual publications. Informant was published twice a year as a collection of the best of the current chess games of each year, and Damsky's book collects the best 100 or so of these games spanning 30 years, as well as another 100 of the best games from 1880-1965. The book basically features spectactular games from the absolute greatest chess players of the past 150 years. The annotations are fine, and I strongly recommend this book for both instruction and for fun. Damsky spends alot of time discussing just what constitutes the ever evolving definition of what really is a "brilliancy". Damsky's other books include the sacrifice primer "Attack with Tal" from 1994.