Talent and youth, bright middle-class children with psychopathic tendencies – that’s what’s needed for success at tournament chess; with the emphasis on youth. And so their mums send them forth with the Spartan mother’s warning: come back victorious or don’t come back at all. Well, it is a discipline, codes-rules-values, and [...]
Entries Tagged as 'Reviews'
Chess Duels
June 10th, 2010 · No Comments · Reviews, Yasser Seirawan
This is one of the best chess books published in recent years. Perceptive, instructive, rich in anecdote and self-deprecating humour, Chess Duels is a candid and entertaining tour of elite chess and its leading personalities.
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Not the British Chess Magazine
March 12th, 2010 · No Comments · Features, Reviews
NTBCM was a funny spoof magazine edited by Murray Chandler. Borrowing the format of its venerable target, NTBCM published only one issue (in 1984), an entertaining mix of strange games, jokes and witty articles such as ‘How Weird Is Your Chess’ by Jon Speelman, ‘Do Vegetarians Lack the Killer Instinct? – A Statistical Analysis’ and [...]
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Troubled relationships
February 26th, 2010 · No Comments · Reviews
KING’S GAMBIT
A son, a father, and the world’s most dangerous game
Paul Hoffman
Hyperion, 2007, 424 pages
Review by Sarah Hurst
Paul Hoffman hit on a great idea for a book, but I’m not sure that he was aware of it. By the end of King’s Gambit I’d finally worked out what the book should have been about: relationships [...]
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The Yiddish Policemen's Union
May 3rd, 2009 · No Comments · Reviews
The Yiddish Policemen’s Union
Michael Chabon
HarperCollins 2007, 414 pp., £17.99 (hardback)
As one of a few thousand Jews living in Alaska, I was pleased to discover there was a novel out about how Alaska would look if millions of Jews had settled there instead of in Israel after the Second World War. When I opened The Yiddish [...]
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The Art of Bullshitting
February 14th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Reviews
by former US scholastic chess superstar and martial arts giant, What-a-load-of-old Josh Munchkin
Scene: The final of the 2007 Tai Chi Kwaendo-kwaendo-kwaendo Look No Hands world championships, Taiwan
I am standing in the middle of the mat, drenched in sweat, feeling as though I am watching my own death. Both my legs had been torn off, my [...]
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Unorthodox Chess Openings
February 14th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Reviews
Unorthodox Chess Openings by Eric Schiller
Cardoza Publishing, 1998, 520pp., £18.95.
Utter crap.
Tony Miles
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The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal
February 14th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Reviews
The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal by M.Tal
Cadogan, 1997, 496 pp., £17.99.
I recently had the good fortune to pass the night chez one of the strongest Swiss players of all time. Drooling over his amply stocked bookshelves I came across the original, 1976, RHM version of The Life and Games of Mikhail Tal. The [...]
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Under the Black Sun
February 14th, 2009 · No Comments · Reviews
Under the Black Sun by Eric Woro. Axiom Books, 384pp., $8.95.
I had no hesitation in choosing to review Under the Black Sun. All I knew was that it was ‘a chess novel’. I believe that most chess players spend so much time with their noses buried in traditional chess literature that they hardly ever actually [...]
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Samurai Chess
February 14th, 2009 · 1 Comment · Books, journalism, plagiarism, Reviews
Samurai Chess: Mastering the Martial Art of the Mind by Michael Gelb and Raymond Keene. Aurum Press, 1997, 224pp., £15.95.
Frankly I wish I’d never agreed to review this book. Criticism of it will inevitably seem like gratuitous Mondo knocking, and praise will be seriously misplaced. Actually I quite like the cover. If you want something [...]
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