Yasser Seirawan

Named the ChessCafe.com Book of the Year for 2010, Chess Duels is one of the best chess autobiographies published in quite some time. Yasser Seirawan is an engaging and entertaining writer, who in Chess Duels offers us his insights of and games with the world champions of the recent past. A raconteur of the chess anecdote, Seirawan uses the well placed story and anecdote to flesh out the character of each champion.

Seirawan a four U.S. chess champion played at the highest levels of the show more international chess scene during the 80's and 90's and gives an inside look at some of chess personalities and chess politics of that era.

It is the games with the world champions that hold center court, and though there no games with Bobby Fischer, Max Euwe or Mikhail Botvinnik portraits of these champions are included, Seirawan ranks the top three champions thus:

1. Garry Kasparov

2. Anatoly Karpov

3. Bobby Fischer

I find it hard to dispute his rankings, but there are those for who Bobby will always be number one.

Seirawan is a gifted as well as an entertaining annotator, his notes are clear and concise. Notes that take the reader to the heart of a game, sometimes with a tinge of humor usually at his own expense.

Seirawan's insights on the restless soul that is Garry Kasparov, the Good Garry and the Bad Garry is one of the most revealing portrait of perhaps the greatest chess player ever. The Anatoly Karpov that emerges in this book is less the Soviet man of the future and more of a Russian gentleman. It is these two men who will be linked together in chess history, who stand at the center of this book. The affection and respect Seirawan feels for both these men and the other champions as well as the game of chess comes shining through in these pages.

I cannot recommend this book enough, I know beggars can't be choosers but can we have more please.

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Good introduction to the game, but meant for a complete novice. I enjoyed how Seirawan mixed instruction with history to give the reader an appreciation for both how the game evolved and the personalities that helped to shape modern chess. His commented games and examples have enough intermediary diagrams of positions that about half can be followed by a new player without needing a chess board. This makes for a good compromise between book length and ease of use.

This was an interesting publication, as it is Microsoft Press; meaning that it was first put together on Word. Let me first say that there is an error on page 246 (there's a funny joke about publishers who thought they published an error-less book - they got the title wrong). Some manuals do not "give a King's point count as 3 1/2". Some manuals give a Knight's point count as 3 1/2.

This was the first serious chess book I have read through, and let me tell you, I got my analysis board good show more and broken-in. The other neophytic chess books I've read have been no where near 257 pages.

As a chess and chess literature newbie, I really learned a lot. I learned of pawn structures; I learned to read the position and know whether to prefer knights or bishops for the endgame; I learned of territory, and of targets.

Seirawan, towards the end, becomes a bit more conversational in his writing; and I like that. He even references a "prose-like" chess work, which I have now forgotten. I wish I had taken notes with a voice recorder, or used a highlighter at least, so that I could look up the books he mentioned. It will take a while to go back through. There was just so much good information; and yet, after every couple of paragraphs, you are given theory to work through on your analysis board.

The diagrams given half-way through notations were really helpful. Many times, I found I had erred. Wishing to glean as much knowledge as I could, I would start over from the beginning anyway.

Seirawan and Silman proved to me with this book that I really enjoy the nightly ritual of chess reading. My 5" magnetic sheesham wood set and I look forward to more. show less

I haven't spent much time with this, but the front cover (at least of the 2007 revised edition) says that it's by Yasser "with Jeremy Silman" and the contents do seem to have a lot in common with the latter's "How to Reasses Your Chess"; there appears to be quite a bit of overlap (which isn't to say that this book is bad; it's probably not, though I did find quite a few typos).