Garry Kasparov On My Great Predecessors Part Two

This magnificent compilation of play from the 1960s through to the 1970s forms the basis of the third part of Garry Kasparov's history of the World Chess Championship. This volume features the play of champions Tigran Petrosian (1963-1969) and Boris Spassky (1969-1972).

Part two features the play of champions Max Euwe (1935-1937) Mikhail Botvinnik (1946-1957, 1958-1961 and 1961-1963), Vassily Smyslov (1957-1958) and Mikhail Tal (1960-1961). These books are more than just a compilation of the games of these champions. Kasparov's biographies place them in a fascinating historical, political and cultural context. Kasparov explains how each champion brought his own distinctive style to the chessboard and enriched the theory of the game with new ideas. All these games have been thoroughly reassessed with the aid of modern software technology and the new light this sheds on these classic masterpieces is fascinating.

More than just a compilation of play from the great chess players of the 1960s and 70s, Kasparov's biographies place these champions in a fascinating historical, political, and cultural context.

Garry Kasparov, the thirteenth world champion and widely acclaimed as the greatest player ever, assesses the contribution of his 12 great predecessors. This is the second part of a three-volume series.

Over the past few years the great chess player Garry Kasparov has written five best-selling books praising the contributions to chess made by the previous world champions. The series is called ''My Great Predecessors''. As a reaction to this wonderful series of books, leading chess writer Tibor Károlyi has written this imaginary sixth volume. In gently humorous – but chessically serious – style, the author imagines Kasparov is annotating over 70 of his own lost games, and blaming all these defeats on the bad influence of each of the previous world champions, providing in-depth analysis to show how he was misled by them. The book also serves as a highly instructive, practical chess book – to beat Kasparov, the greatest player of all time, took some pretty special chess, and readers will enjoy learning from this. It is astonishing how the author has managed to find so many games that exhibit uncanny similarities between Kasparov and his predecessors, which makes the content of the book extremely plausible – as if Kasparov himself were writing it. This is a brilliant and totally original chess book that could only have been written by someone with great knowledge of Kasparov and the past world champions.

Garry Kasparov on Garry Kasparov, Part 1 is the first book in a major new three-volume series. This series will be unique by the fact that it will record the greatest chess battles played by the greatest chessplayer of all-time. The series in itself is a continuation of Kasparov's mammoth history of chess, comprising My Great Predecessors and Modern Chess. Kasparov's historical volumes have received great critical and public acclaim for their rigorous analysis and comprehensive detail regarding the developments in chess that occurred both on and off the board.. This new volume and series continues in this vein with Kasparov scrutinising his most fascinating encounters from the period 1973-1985 whilst also charting his development away from the board. This period opens with the emergence of a major new chess star from Baku and ends with Kasparov's first clash with reigning world champion Anatoly Karpov - a mammoth encounter that stretched out over six months. It had been known in Russia for some time that Kasparov had an extraordinary talent but the first time that this talent was unleashed on the western world was in 1979. The Russian Chess Federation had received an invitation for a player to participate in a tournament at Banja Luka and, under the impression that this was a junior event, sent along the fifteen year old Kasparov (as yet without even an international rating!). Far from being a junior tournament, Banja Luka was actually a major international event featuring numerous world class grandmasters. Undeterred Kasparov stormed to first place, scoring 111/2/15 and finishing two points clear of the field. Over the next decade this 'broad daylight' between Kasparov and the rest of the field was to become a familiar sight in the world's leading tournaments.

Garry Kasparov was the highest-rated chess player in the world for over twenty years and is widely considered the greatest player that ever lived. In How Life Imitates Chess Kasparov distills the lessons he learned over a lifetime as a Grandmaster to offer a primer on successful decision-making: how to evaluate opportunities, anticipate the future, devise winning strategies. He relates in a lively, original way all the fundamentals, from the nuts and bolts of strategy, evaluation, and preparation to the subtler, more human arts of developing a personal style and using memory, intuition, imagination and even fantasy. Kasparov takes us through the great matches of his career, including legendary duels against both man (Grandmaster Anatoly Karpov) and machine (IBM chess supercomputer Deep Blue), enhancing the lessons of his many experiences with examples from politics, literature, sports and military history. With candor, wisdom, and humor, Kasparov recounts his victories and his blunders, both from his years as a world-class competitor as well as his new life as a political leader in Russia. An inspiring book that combines unique strategic insight with personal memoir, How Life Imitates Chess is a glimpse inside the mind of one of today's greatest and most innovative thinkers.