Pal Benko: My Life, Games, and Compositions

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Summary: A New Standard
Review: Anyone unhappy with this book (Pal Benko: My Life, Games, etc.) should probably avoid the very best in chess literature and read Archie comics instead.

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Summary: Clarification to my prior review
Review: Apparently Benko did write his own annotations (I assume) and Silman wrote the biographical sections and Watson wrote the ridiculus and out of place survey on openings that I still say should have been deleted from the book. And there are too many compositions. No doubt Benko was a strong and inventive Grandmaster, as he did scalp many strong players.

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Summary: The best game collection to date
Review: First of all this book is over 600 pages! I haven't seen a chess book this big that wasn't in several volumes. I've read several game collections and this is by far the most informative. I just got this book and am very impressed with how thorough each game is analyzed. Everything is laid out well and the games are easy to find. There is a lot of prose used to comment on the games, which is typical for Silman. The authors discuss the plans that each player is employing and they do a good job of telling you why they did or didn't choose a variation when complications arise. And there are tons of compositions...hard compositions. Pal Benko's life is also very interesting. It is interspersed throughout the games, which lightens up the density of the material. These games are very intense so it's good to get a little back story of what was going on in those times. He went through great hardship to get where he is today, and is still arm wrestling strongly!!! I am very happy I bought this book and am sure it will give me much pleasure for years to come.

Rating:
Summary: The best game collection to date
Review: First of all this book is over 600 pages! I haven't seen a chess book this big that wasn't in several volumes. I've read several game collections and this is by far the most informative. I just got this book and am very impressed with how thorough each game is analyzed. Everything is laid out well and the games are easy to find. There is a lot of prose used to comment on the games, which is typical for Silman. The authors discuss the plans that each player is employing and they do a good job of telling you why they did or didn't choose a variation when complications arise. And there are tons of compositions...hard compositions. Pal Benko's life is also very interesting. It is interspersed throughout the games, which lightens up the density of the material. These games are very intense so it's good to get a little back story of what was going on in those times. He went through great hardship to get where he is today, and is still arm wrestling strongly!!! I am very happy I bought this book and am sure it will give me much pleasure for years to come.

Rating:
Summary: A well balanced biography of a less well known chess player
Review: From a distance, Pal Benko is one of those players that forms some of the more frequently quoted footnotes in chess history. For example, in biographies of Tal (wearing sunglasses). This book however, does an excellent job in bringing Benko out of the recesses of chess, and gives glimses of his personality, as well as some others both well known and less so. The book strikes an excellent balance between biography, games (well annotated), opening survey, and endgame compositions (something Benko was well known for and very good at, and would be familiar to readers of Chess Life). The production standards are uniformly excellent quality and the content well laid out and easy to read. The book would be on a par with Lawson's on Morphy, but a bit thin in content when compared to Skinner and Verhoeven on Alekhine (probably the best games collection ever written), as it aims to strike a balance across the full range of Benko's chess interests. I feel that if this is the objective, the book achieves its objectives very well, and it dwarfs anything written on Lasker, Pillsbury, Fischer, Spassky, Botvinnik, and Smyslov for example. At the price quoted in Amazon it is a bargain and will become a collector's item, and not least a very good read in the meantime. The pictures of Fischer visiting Tal in hospital in 1962 are alone worth the price of admission.

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Summary: Benko - an outstanding book
Review: I boought this book as an afterthought - it helped me arrive at a total purchase with free shipping...it turned out to be the most rewarding chess book buy I can remember, and I have a 160 plus library with all the most highly rrated books, including best games by Capa, Alekhine, Tal, Fischer, Bronstein and so on...The games section of this terrific book is worth the price, alone. Benko's annotations are instructional and easy to follow, and rank equally with Tal and Bronstein's. I have many books on my shelves that languish, half-read; this one is a joy to read and will not be found on my bookshelf until I have finished going through it.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely amazing
Review: I haven't finished the book yet, but couldn't resist telling the world ASAP what an incredible book this is. Benko's life story and games in the hands of the more than capable writer Jeremy Silman is simply an unbeatable combination. Let me be the first to guess that this book will join the first-tier of the chess canon. Simply an amazing book.

Rating:
Summary: Absolutely amazing
Review: I haven't finished the book yet, but couldn't resist telling the world ASAP what an incredible book this is. Benko's life story and games in the hands of the more than capable writer Jeremy Silman is simply an unbeatable combination. Let me be the first to guess that this book will join the first-tier of the chess canon. Simply an amazing book.

Rating:
Summary: Too long
Review: I haven't read this book but at how many pages it has it is too long for a biography. Also having three chess authors is like having too many cooks in the kitchen. Finally I agree that the book is a bit expensive--probably because it weights so much. Wait to get it used.

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Summary: Games Collection for the New Millenium
Review: I'm not one to write book reviews, but when I received this book (after long anticipation), yesterday, I was astounded. Other reviewers have mentioned its length, which can be daunting. Benko/Silman/Watson have packed in as much material (annotated games, biographies, opening analysis, endgame problems) to fill up three or four traditional chess tomes, and they truly cover, at great depth, every aspect of the game. One thing that seems not to have been brought up in the other reviews are the short biographies of other grandmasters, inset in shaded boxes throughout the games section. These, along with the included interviews, really brought home to me the fact that chess is a game fought between two -people- and not only two minds. The pschyological aspect of chess, and its unfortunate victims (a tragic story about Raymond Weinstein is related in his biography), is a repeated sub-theme in the work: Benko's perpetual time problems. All in all, an extremely impressive work; few relevant adjectives can really do justice to it. The authors have surpassed themselves. And, as a side note, it is possible to purchase the book at much less than $45; some searching around should solve that problem.