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Rating: 
Summary: Dr Nunn strikes again
Review: An excellent and entertaining selection of some of the best games of the last 30 years or so. Some of the games are so complex that a couple of pages of notes do not do them jusice. However, our author always tries to pinpoint the major variations and that point in the game when the game was lost. You'll be delighted with this book, I have no doubt.
Rating:
Summary: Dr Nunn strikes again
Review: An excellent and entertaining selection of some of the best games of the last 30 years or so. Some of the games are so complex that a couple of pages of notes do not do them jusice. However, our author always tries to pinpoint the major variations and that point in the game when the game was lost. You'll be delighted with this book, I have no doubt.
Rating: 
Summary: Nunn does miniatures!
Review: I have always had a soft spot for this topic ... I have built entire web pages - and even web sites - dedicated to great, short games of chess. So I was very happy to see that a player of Nunn's stature do a book on this fun and instructive topic. I don't know what motivated Nunn to write this book, but I am very thankful he did. He took his database, and decided (properly) that a miniature was any game that lasted only 25 moves. (or less) "To my horror, there were over 65,000 such games." - GM John Nunn. In order to get this down to a more manageable number, he decided to further limit the games to those where both players were rated at least 2500 (Elo) or better. This got the number down to around 1,300 games. Nunn then played through all of these and whittled the number down to about 120 games. [From the period 1971 to 1999.] (He knew that some games would be eliminated once they were subjected to thorough analysis. The publisher had already given the mandate of only 101 games for the final version of the book for publication.) I would have liked to see more detailed analysis, maybe some opening stuff and more commentary ... but Nunn notes the format of the work placed great restrictions on the amount of space. (Although we wonder why some games deserve five pages of analysis, and others only get one!) But in the end, we are presented with 101 great games of chess. Some of these are true masterpieces, I doubt (very much) that the average player has seen more than a handful of these games prior to studying this volume. Now the $64 question is: Is this book any good? And ... "Will it help me get better?"
I think the answer to both questions is a resounding YES!!! Chess is a primarily about tactics. And the emphasis here is definitely on the "hand-to-hand" aspect of chess. Chess is also about surviving the opening and eliminating mistakes, and a careful study of this book will also help you achieve this goal as well. And to be really successful, your chess study should also be fun, and I think this book meets this criterion as well. I give this book my HIGHEST recommendation!! There are a few shortcomings to this book. A couple of the examples are turkeys, and probably should not have been included ... they are definite lumps of coal in the presence of diamonds. A couple of the games are more curiosities and opening traps than they are real games of chess. (I.e., # 92. H. Spangenberg - V. Tkachiev; BLACK wins in only 12 moves.) But much of this is really a matter of taste too. A real oversight is the lack of any index. How many times did Kramnik make this collection? (Three times, that I can see.) How many times was the Najdorf Sicilian played? (Four times out of the first ten.) How many times did Tal score a touchdown? (More than once.) It would have also been nice to see a list of groupings like: "The best win(s) in under 15 moves, the best Sicilians," etc. It would have been nice to know what the sources were for some of the annotations. (Mostly they came from the Informants, I imagine.) But in the end, this is a great little book. Its fun and it is filled with really scintillating tactics. If you don't enjoy this book - you should consider giving up chess!
Rating:
Summary: Nunn does miniatures!
Review: I have always had a soft spot for this topic ... I have built entire web pages - and even web sites - dedicated to great, short games of chess. So I was very happy to see that a player of Nunn's stature do a book on this fun and instructive topic. I don't know what motivated Nunn to write this book, but I am very thankful he did. He took his database, and decided (properly) that a miniature was any game that lasted only 25 moves. (or less) "To my horror, there were over 65,000 such games." - GM John Nunn. In order to get this down to a more manageable number, he decided to further limit the games to those where both players were rated at least 2500 (Elo) or better. This got the number down to around 1,300 games. Nunn then played through all of these and whittled the number down to about 120 games. [From the period 1971 to 1999.] (He knew that some games would be eliminated once they were subjected to thorough analysis. The publisher had already given the mandate of only 101 games for the final version of the book for publication.) I would have liked to see more detailed analysis, maybe some opening stuff and more commentary ... but Nunn notes the format of the work placed great restrictions on the amount of space. (Although we wonder why some games deserve five pages of analysis, and others only get one!) But in the end, we are presented with 101 great games of chess. Some of these are true masterpieces, I doubt (very much) that the average player has seen more than a handful of these games prior to studying this volume. Now the $64 question is: Is this book any good? And ... "Will it help me get better?"
I think the answer to both questions is a resounding YES!!! Chess is a primarily about tactics. And the emphasis here is definitely on the "hand-to-hand" aspect of chess. Chess is also about surviving the opening and eliminating mistakes, and a careful study of this book will also help you achieve this goal as well. And to be really successful, your chess study should also be fun, and I think this book meets this criterion as well. I give this book my HIGHEST recommendation!! There are a few shortcomings to this book. A couple of the examples are turkeys, and probably should not have been included ... they are definite lumps of coal in the presence of diamonds. A couple of the games are more curiosities and opening traps than they are real games of chess. (I.e., # 92. H. Spangenberg - V. Tkachiev; BLACK wins in only 12 moves.) But much of this is really a matter of taste too. A real oversight is the lack of any index. How many times did Kramnik make this collection? (Three times, that I can see.) How many times was the Najdorf Sicilian played? (Four times out of the first ten.) How many times did Tal score a touchdown? (More than once.) It would have also been nice to see a list of groupings like: "The best win(s) in under 15 moves, the best Sicilians," etc. It would have been nice to know what the sources were for some of the annotations. (Mostly they came from the Informants, I imagine.) But in the end, this is a great little book. Its fun and it is filled with really scintillating tactics. If you don't enjoy this book - you should consider giving up chess!
Rating:
Summary: Habit of Excellence
Review: Superb is not enough! Nunn has a habit of producing excellent chess books. Add 101 Brilliant Chess Miniatures to Nunn's list of well annotated, edited, researched, and written books. These 101 decisive games were culled from over 65,000 games of twenty five moves or less between chess players of at least 2500 Elo. All of the games are post 1970 with many from the late 1990s. Entertainment and instruction are seamlessly woven together in 101 Brilliant Chess Miniatures. Play through the classic, Tal-Uhlmann, Moscow 1971. Enjoy the virtuoso performance in Topalov-Ivanchuk, Linares 1999. The annotations and comments to all the games are top notch. Buy this book now! If you are a tournament player, you'll win more games. If you just love chess, you'll fall in love all over again!
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