Spassky Best Games Pdf Download
Lora Ceasor
I have seen lately in an interview with Boris Spassky that he is working on a book. I can't remember which interview it was or I would post a link. My inquiry is whether anyone here has any knowledge of this book? Maybe an upcoming titles news section from one of the major publishers has this information? I have poked around some sites and come up with nothing so far. I can only find an older Spassky game collection online and it is not authored by him and therefore not all that interesting to me. I feel that he is underappreciated in the chess publishing world and hope that a game collection being authored by him will be published. Any information on this topic would greatly interest me. Thanks to the forum contributors in advance!
That interview you read about on line is a bit old, I read it myself and knew then it would never happen. Only way it would get finished if someone he could now trust would step in and finish it with him and for him. Sounds like his personal life isn't going well either. What a shame. He was another one of my favorite players of all time. What an era he came from.
I do remember that he did analyze a Karpov match around 1974 for the USCF chess magazine. Might have been versus Polugaevsky. His annotating style was quite different. Seemed to spend less emphasis on tangible variations and more on the less concrete aspects of the match.
The problem with Spassky is that he always was rather lazy (a trait not uncommon among people with huge natural talent). In an interview he said that the book he wanted to write should be published after his death (presumably he had the idea to be brutally honest about some of his contemporaries, and planned a real reckoning with the Soviet authorities), also because it would be a labour of love, and 'no one makes money from writing chess books'. What with his stroke and all since then, this project has surely been shelved for good.
Spassky would have been better off writing a best games collection in the early to mid 1980s, when he, although past his best, still had considerable playing strength and energy to do the analytical work required, apart from the writing (for which he would have the details relatively fresh in his mind) itself - it would probably have become an instant classic and a bestseller. It wouldn't surprise me if he lost most of his interest in writing a book when the computers became strong.
That was a rather insightful answer @bonthecat . It is a great shame such a project has never happened as this leaves a huge hole in the chess literary canon. I would bet my bottom dollar that Spassky would have told some really great stories.
Yes, I think Spassky would have lots of very interesting things to say about his peak years in Soviet chess. Averbakh wrote a book a few years ago, which sort of hinted at a lot of the underhand dealings going on, but he was never really explicit. In interviews Spassky has spoken of his treatment after he lost the match against Fischer, but not in great detail. One thing Spassky has mentioned is how counterproductive the authorities were through their measures towards not only himself but also towards Taimanov. They were both barred him from travelling abroad for quite some time afterwards, and as Spassky pointed out, at that point, having suffered a bad defeat, what do you want to do? Go and hide in a corner and cry? No! You want to avenge your defeat, you want to show the world that you still know how to play chess. For this reason alone, Spassky's victory in the USSR championship in 1973 must have been very sweet.
I had forgotten that he won this championship just the next year! I'll have to get into some of those games. There's also a tournament book for the second Piatigorsky Cup which Spassky won where each player annotates their own games. This might be a good start.
I wanna get my hands on both Piatigorsky cup books for sure. I find it pretty funny to think of a Soviet chess delegation in sunny California. I also wanna get a set of the Herman Steiner pieces that were used in at least the second tournament to my knowledge, but the official Staunton company no longer makes their version and the others that are available now are just simply not affordable.
Piatigorsky Cup books are certainly very nice, in both the contestants to the games give fairly light notes to their games. Think first only available in hardback, but second is available in dover paperback too.
The King's Gambit has been "refuted" at several points in the past. Most have later been proven incorrect, IIRC only two lines at this point seem suspect. But that's not the point. The point is: how many of your opponents know enough about those lines to play them as accurately as required to win? (John Shaw in his book on the KG noted analyzing one of the resulting positions overtaxed the water-cooling in the computer he was using to help analyze it.) Refuting something in theory does not equate to refuting it in over-the-board play.
"Refutations" of white openings often fall into the category described above, which is that white fails to maintain the advantage of the first move. Give that some thought while asking yourself the question: "would I rather play a position that retains a slight advantage if I follow a fixed and complex series of moves, or would I rather play a level position that I understand completely and am comfortable playing?"
It's that last bit that tips the balance. I know a national master that loves to play the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit. His preference is so well known that everyone he plays has the opportunity to "book up" on that opening, of which by most reports "fails to maintain the white opening advantage" would be a kind description. Yet he won. Consistently. Yes, even against other masters. (I've won more than I've lost with it myself, though I don't make a "steady diet" of it.) He was so familiar with the strategies and tactics of the resulting positions he was comfortable playing them against anyone.
And that's the point. If it's a position you're comfortable playing, it doesn't matter even if a computer says you stand a few centi-pawns worse. (Heck, unless your opponents are routinely over 2200ELO even a theoretical full pawn difference may not matter.) If you understand and are comfortable in the middlegames that arise from it, you'll win more than your "objectively evaluated" share of them.
King's Gambit is not really a horrible opening. Just after all the theory that has been amassed since Spassky has shown that it loses white's advantage. There are other openings that create a good amount of initiative without the possibility of falling into a losing position.
Black can very quickly equalize, for example 2...Bc5 or 2...exf4 3.Nf3 d5. Among many others. Black can also try to maintain his opening advantage with lines like 3.Nf3 d6, among others. In fact black has so many options to be well prepared as white you need to know nearly a dozen different primary variations.
But it is an aggressive opening that works well against weaker opponents. Spassky may have won more games against weaker players using it than players of equal strength playing different openings against the same opponents. Spassky's record was among the "best," until he ran into top-flight competition, notably Fischer.
That is all very silly. It the KG is as fine in most lines for top players as much as for amateurs. The computer gives equal or tiny negative in most lines, plus in others. But does so when white is down a pawn. That means that it considers that White has an attack advantage that is equal to a pawn. Equal from a computer when you have gambited a pawn means it is a good line. If you read the rubbish people write on these forums you would think that if you played it against a gm over 2500 that you just lose by force. That isn't true at all, there are many wins and heaps of draws against super GMs in the last 30 years. Yes if you go into some terrible line in the fischer defence you can get a horrid position where you are fighting for a draw, but there are many options for white that avoid this. And if you look at super GM games in last 30 years with the KG, you will see that almost none of the GMs play the so called critical lines from black, likely because they are only super critical if you are a computer or are playing correspondence chess.
Spassky immigrated to France in 1976, becoming a French citizen in 1978. He continued to compete in tournaments but was no longer a major contender for the world title. Spassky lost an unofficial rematch against Fischer in 1992. In 2012, he left France and returned to Russia.
Spassky learned to play chess at the age of 5 on a train evacuating from Leningrad during the siege of Leningrad in World War II. He first drew wide attention in 1947 at age 10, when he defeated Soviet champion Mikhail Botvinnik in a simultaneous exhibition in Leningrad.[9] Spassky's early coach was Vladimir Zak, a respected master and trainer. During his youth, from the age of 10, Spassky often worked on chess for several hours a day with master-level coaches. He set records as the youngest Soviet player to achieve first category rank (age 10), candidate master rank (age 11), and Soviet Master rank (age 15). In 1952, at 15, Spassky scored 50 percent in the Soviet Championship semi-final at Riga, and placed second in the Leningrad Championship that same year, being highly praised by Botvinnik.
Spassky has beaten six undisputed World Champions at least twice (not necessarily while they were reigning): Vasily Smyslov, Mikhail Tal, Tigran Petrosian, Bobby Fischer, Anatoly Karpov, and Garry Kasparov.
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