Kings, Commoners and Knaves

Kings, Commoners and Knaves
Author: Edward Winter
Publisher:
Total Pages: 480
Release: 1999
Genre: Games & Activities
ISBN:

A cornucopia of games, positions, biographies, mysteries, howlers, reviews, quotations, etc., featuring a cast of hundreds from the chess world of today and yesteryear -- the champions and the under-achievers; the scholars and the bunglers; the saints and the sinners. Every page provides fascinating, little-known material from an author who is prepared to name names.

Endgame

Endgame
Author: Frank Brady
Publisher: Crown
Total Pages: 442
Release: 2012-01-17
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0307463915

NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Who was Bobby Fischer? In this “nuanced perspective of the chess genius” (Los Angeles Times), an acclaimed biographer chronicles his meteoric rise and confounding fall, with an afterword containing newly discovered details about Fischer’s life. Possessing an IQ of 181 and remarkable powers of concentration, Bobby Fischer memorized hundreds of chess books in several languages, and he was only thirteen when he became the youngest chess master in U.S. history. But his strange behavior started early. In 1972, at the historic Cold War showdown in Reykjavik, Iceland, where he faced Soviet champion Boris Spassky, Fischer made headlines with hundreds of petty demands that nearly ended the competition. It was merely a prelude to what was to come. Arriving back in the United States to a hero’s welcome, Bobby was mobbed wherever he went—a figure as exotic and improbable as any American pop culture had yet produced. Commercial sponsorship offers poured in, ultimately topping $10 million—but Bobby demurred. Instead, he began tithing his limited money to an apocalyptic religion and devouring anti-Semitic literature. Bobby reemerged in 1992 to play Spassky in a multi-million dollar rematch—but when the dust settled, he was a wanted man, transformed into an international fugitive because of his decision to play in Montenegro despite U.S. sanctions. Fearing for his life, traveling with bodyguards, Bobby lived the life of a celebrity fugitive—one drawn increasingly to the bizarre. Drawing from Fischer family archives, recently released FBI files, and Bobby’s own emails, Endgame is unique in that it limns Bobby Fischer’s entire life—an odyssey that took the chess champion from an impoverished childhood to the covers of Time, Life and Newsweek to recognition as “the most famous man in the world” to notorious recluse.

W.H.K. Pollock

W.H.K. Pollock
Author: Olimpiu G. Urcan
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 509
Release: 2017-05-24
Genre: Games & Activities
ISBN: 0786458682

During his first years in America, William Henry Krause Pollock participated in some of the most important American chess events of the 19th century. Pollock played matches against strong players like Charles Moehle, John L. McCutcheon, Jackson W. Showalter and Eugene Delmar. This biography analyzes in great detail Pollock's chess play, as well as his career and life in England, Ireland and America. His American years unveil even more about the American chess landscape during the first half of 1890s, one of the most interesting periods in American chess history. Offered here are an unprecedented collection of annotated games played by Pollock (around 500), historical photographs and line drawings. Sources include historical chess journals and magazines with chess columns from America, the United Kingdom and Canada.

The Chess Artist

The Chess Artist
Author: J. C. Hallman
Publisher: Macmillan
Total Pages: 356
Release: 2013-09-10
Genre: Games & Activities
ISBN: 1466852232

In the tradition of The Professor and the Madman, Longitude, and The Orchid Thief, Hallman transforms an obsessive quest for obscure things into a compulsively readable and entertaining weaving of travelogue, journalism, and chess history. In the tiny Russian province of Kalmykia, obsession with chess has reached new heights. Its leader, a charismatic and eccentric millionaire/ex--car salesman named Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, is a former chess prodigy and the most recent president of FIDE, the world's controlling chess body. Despite credible allegations of his involvement in drug running, embezzlement, and murder, the impoverished Kalmykian people have rallied around their leader's obsession---chess is played on Kalmykian prime-time television and is compulsory in Kalmykian schools. In addition, Kalmyk women have been known to alter their traditional costumes of pillbox hats and satin gowns to include chessboard-patterned sashes. The Chess Artist is both an intellectual journey and first-rate travel writing dedicated to the love of chess and all of its related oddities, writer and chess enthusiast J. C. Hallman explores the obsessive hold chess exerts on its followers by examining the history and evolution of the game and the people who dedicate their lives to it. Together with his friend Glenn Umstead, an African-American chessmaster who is arguably as chess obsessed as Ilyumzhinov, Hallman tours New York City's legendary chess district, crashes a Princeton Math Department game party, challenges a convicted murderer to a chess match in prison, and travels to Kalmykia, where they are confronted with members of the Russian intelligence service, beautiful translators who may be spies, seven-year-old chess prodigies, and the sad blight of a land struggling toward capitalism.

Great Tales from English History

Great Tales from English History
Author: Robert Lacey
Publisher: Little, Brown
Total Pages: 168
Release: 2004-06-03
Genre: Biography & Autobiography
ISBN: 0759511616

With insight, humor and fascinating detail, Lacey brings brilliantly to life the stories that made England -- from Ethelred the Unready to Richard the Lionheart, the Venerable Bede to Piers the Ploughman. The greatest historians are vivid storytellers, Robert Lacey reminds us, and in Great Tales from English History, he proves his place among them, illuminating in unforgettable detail the characters and events that shaped a nation. In this volume, Lacey limns the most important period in England's past, highlighting the spread of the English language, the rejection of both a religion and a traditional view of kingly authority, and an unstoppable movement toward intellectual and political freedom from 1387 to 1689. Opening with Chaucer's Canterbury Tales and culminating in William and Mary's "Glorious Revolution," Lacey revisits some of the truly classic stories of English history: the Battle of Agincourt, where Henry V's skilled archers defeated a French army three times as large; the tragic tale of the two young princes locked in the Tower of London (and almost certainly murdered) by their usurping uncle, Richard III; Henry VIII's schismatic divorce, not just from his wife but from the authority of the Catholic Church; "Bloody Mary" and the burning of religious dissidents; Sir Francis Drake's dramatic, if questionable, part in the defeat of the Spanish Armada; and the terrible and transformative Great Fire of London, to name but a few. Here Anglophiles will find their favorite English kings and queens, villains and victims, authors and architects - from Richard II to Anne Boleyn, the Virgin Queen to Oliver Cromwell, Samuel Pepys to Christopher Wren, and many more. Continuing the "eminently readable, highly enjoyable" (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) history he began in volume I of Great Tales from English History, Robert Lacey has drawn on the most up-to-date research to present a taut and riveting narrative, breathing life into the most pivotal characters and exciting landmarks in England's history.

Danish Dynamite

Danish Dynamite
Author: Karsten Müller
Publisher: SCB Distributors
Total Pages: 233
Release: 2014-08-14
Genre: Games & Activities
ISBN: 1941270085

White Goes for the Jugular The Danish Gambit, 1.e4 e5 2.d4 exd4 3.c3, is one of the most aggressive chess openings ever devised. Dynamite was invented by a Swede, Alfred Nobel. The book you are reading now, however, was not written by Nordic players. Instead, Grandmaster Karsten Müller and FIDE Master Martin Voigt bring a touch of German method to the analysis of the explosive group of classical open games where White goes for out- and-out attack based on an early e4, d4 and Bc4, often with c2-c3 to follow. Müller and Voigt do not confine themselves to the Danish Gambit alone but they examine a whole family of related opening variations that share some common characteristics. Most importantly, White is ready to offer some material (a pawn or two, sometimes a piece or more). White goes for the jugular and if Black is not careful he will not even reach the middle game, let alone an endgame...A guiding principle for the authors of this book is that White will play attacking chess, fighting for the initiative at every move. If Black does not meet the challenge in an equally determined way, he will surely lose. This is the epub edition of the popular book published in 2003.

Jose Raul Capablanca

Jose Raul Capablanca
Author: Miguel A. Sánchez
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 564
Release: 2015-07-11
Genre: Games & Activities
ISBN: 1476614997

This is the most complete and thorough biography of Jose Raul Capablanca, one of the greatest players in the history of chess. Beginning with his family background, birth, childhood and introduction to the game in Cuba, it examines his life and play as a young man; follows his evolution as a player and rise to prominence, first as challenger and then world champion; his loss of the title to Alekhine and his efforts to recapture the championship in the last years of his too-short life. What emerges is a portrait of a complex man with far-ranging interests and concerns, in stark contrast to his robotic reputation as "the chess machine." Meticulously researched, utilizing many sources available only in Capablanca's home country, it puts truth to legend regarding a man who stood astride the chess world in of its most dynamic and dramatic eras. Numerous games and diagrams complement the text, as do a wealth of photographs.

Eminent Victorian Chess Players

Eminent Victorian Chess Players
Author: Tim Harding
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 406
Release: 2014-12-03
Genre: Games & Activities
ISBN: 1476601437

This book portrays British chess life in the nineteenth century through biographical studies of ten players who shaped the modern game. From Captain Evans, inventor of the famous gambit, to Isidor Gunsberg, England's first challenger for the world championship, personal narratives are blended with game annotations to reassess players' achievements and character. The author has combined deep reading in primary sources with genealogical research to reveal new facts and correct previous misunderstandings. Major chapters on Howard Staunton and William Steinitz, in particular, highlight the tensions between Englishmen and immigrants, amateurs and professionals. The contrasting long careers of Henry Bird and Joseph Blackburne provide a thread of continuity. The lives of several other important figures in Victorian chess are also presented. More than 160 games (with diagrams), several annotated in detail, and 50 photographs and line drawings are included. Appendices provide career records for all ten; there are extensive notes, a bibliography and indexes.

Aron Nimzowitsch

Aron Nimzowitsch
Author: Per Skjoldager
Publisher: McFarland
Total Pages: 465
Release: 2014-10-01
Genre: Games & Activities
ISBN: 1476618321

One of the greatest chess legends of all time, Aron Nimzowitsch (1886-1935), is best known for founding the Hypermodernism school of chess, which emerged after World War I to challenge the chess ideologies of traditional central European masters. This first full-scale biography of Nimzowitsch chronicles his early life in Denmark, his family and education, and his fascination with the game that would become the focus of his life. Also included are explorations of his tournament games and records, his dispute with influential chess teacher Siegbert Tarrasch, and his role in the development of Hypermodern Chess. With detailed accounts of nearly 450 games and the only narrative of Nimzowitsch from 1914 to 1924, a period formerly cloaked in mystery, this volume offers the most thorough profile available of one of chess's greatest innovators.