Interview with a Grandmaster

Rating:
Summary: It's great to see the personalities behind the games.
Review: This is a fun book. I'm surprised it hasn't gotten more attention. There are 9 grandmasters interviewed, including Yasser Seirawan, and Sofia Polgar. I particularly appreciated Sofia's comments on Blitz chess, since I sometimes have trouble convincing my friends that they can actually improve in some ways by playing fast games.

Each master annotates (proudly but lightly) a victory of his own, and one of his historical favorites. I'm not sure it's worth the money, but it's certainly worth your time.

Rating:
Summary: Fascinating but not really instructional.
Review: This is a very interesting read. The book consists of a series of interviews with very strong Grandmasters. Each interview is followed by two games chosen by the Grandmaster, one of which is what they consider to be their own best game, and the other is what they consider to be the best game (or at least one of the best games) ever played. It is not entirely clear who annotated the games. It is however clear from the fact that the GM's own annotations are occasionally included in italics that the rest of the annotations are not by the GMs themselves. The book's authors are Aaron and Claire Summerscale and given that Claire conducted the interviews it seems probable that Aaron (who is a GM) annotated the games. The annotations are certainly sound though they are mostly verbal with relatively few variations given. Arguably this limits the instructional value of the annotations but on the other hand does make the book more accessible to less advanced players. The questions in the interviews are well chosen and the GMs for their part give well thought out (or occasionally very funny) answers. The blurb on the back cover of the book (or at least the back cover of my edition) implicitly bills it as being instructional. It isn't really, one can learn a great deal more from multiple author books like 'Learn from the Grandmasters' and games collections like Shirov's 'Fire on Board'. 'Interview with a Grandmaster' is not a book to be studied but a book to be browsed and dipped into again and again.