Table Of ContentA Book of Chess
C.H.O’D. Alexander
Bobby Fischer’s dramatic World Championship win over
Boris Spassky was headline news throughout the world. It has
transformed the world of chess, opening up new horizons for
players at every level. A Book of Chess is the first complete,
illustrated survey of all aspects of the game since chess
became news.
A Booh of Chess is a considered view, by the distinguished chess
musk
correspondent of the Sunday Times and the Financial Times,
of the essence of chess, the source of its fascination throughout
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fifteen hundred years of history. It combines an immensely
readable survey of professional play in the Soviet Union and jjri Lii - 1
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the West (Just how does a Grandmaster make it to the top? i
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How does he live? How does he stay there?) with a discussion
of the philosophy of the game, and what it has to tell us about ®^k>' §j 1 ij
the workings of the brain and the nature of thought. He |r m
considers the problems facing computer programmers and the
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chance that one day a computer program will be able to beat kw / ^ j:
any human player. Also covered are the ‘mechanics’ of chess
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(Board, rules, clocks, pieces, etc.), the amateur game in all its
aspects, and the highways and byways of chess - problems and
studies, alternative forms, and related games such as
three-dimensional chess, Shogi (Japanese chess) and Go.
A further section, the iconography of chess, covers the role of
chess in art, literature and within our present-day consumer
culture. It includes stories and extracts from novels about chess.
Scattered through the book are about thirty fully annotated
games.
C.H.O’D.Alexander, in a long and distinguished career, has
discussed and analysed the game with its leading exponents in
the East and the West, and he has enlivened his text with
stories and anecdotes about famous players. For the book, he
arranged a detailed and controversial interview with one of
the world’s best players, the Danish Grandmaster,
Bent Larsen.
A Book of Chess has been edited and designed by Derek
Birdsall, who collaborated with C.H.O’D.Alexander on the
Penguin Fischer v. Spassky. It is illustrated throughout with a
unique collection of photographs, diagrams, drawings and
engravings.
$10.00
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2019 with funding from
Kahle/Austin Foundation
https://archive.org/details/bookofchess0000alex
State of Vermont
Department of Libraries
Northeast Regional Library
P. 0. Box 188
St. Johnsbury, Vt. 05819 A Book of Chess
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Fischer v. Spassky:Reykjavik 1972 _;x>
Edited and designed by Derek Birdsall
Harper & Row
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by C.H.O’D.Alexander
Harper & Row Publishers
New York, Evanston, San Francisco, London
All rights reserved. Printed in Great Britain. No part of this
book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
without written permission except in the case of brief
quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For
information address Harper & Row, Publishers, Inc.,
10 East 55rd Street, New York, N.Y. 10022.
© C.H.O’D.Alexander and Derek Birdsall 1973
FIRST U.S. EDITION 1973
0-06-010048-6
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOG CARD NUMBER: 73-11894
Made and printed in Great Britain by
Westerham Press Ltd, Westerham, Kent
Set in Monotype Walbaum
The authors would like to thankF.D.Buck, G.H.Diggle,
Edna Ellis, John Ernest, Peter Jay & Clive Phillpot
for their help in the preparation of this book
Designed and produced by Omnific/London
Art Editor: Fiona MacGregor
Picture research: Zoe Henderson
Contents
Prologue
Section 1: The nature of Chess
Chapter 1: The game and its players 11
Chapter 2: Chess and computers 21
Chapter 3: Illustrative games by men, women,
children — and computers 25
Section 2: The history and development of Chess
Chapter 4: Fourteen centuries of Chess 37
Chapter 5: The dialectic of Chess: the development of style 47
Chapter 6: Games illustrating the development of style 56
Section 3: Chess for blood
Chapter 7: A day in the life of an Olympiad 71
Chapter 8: The tournament circuit 7 7
Chapter 9 : Profile of a Grandmaster 86
Section 4: Chess for fun
Chapter 10: The Amateur game 97
Chapter 11: Variants of the game 101
Chapter 12: Problems and endgame studies 117
Section 5: The Iconography of Chess
Chapter 13: Chess and visual Art 131
Chapter 14: Chess and Literature 137
Bibliogra phy 157
Index 158
6
Prologue The scene is the USSR v. Yugoslavia match at the 1972 Skopje
Olympiad; on the right, the top board game, where Svetozar
‘Chess ... is a foolish expedient for making idle people Gligoric, the leading Yugoslav Grandmaster since 1945, is play¬
believe they are doing something very clever, when they are ing the Soviet ex-World Champion Tigran Petrosian. Many of
only wasting their time.’ Bernard Shaw the older spectators - and certainly Gligoric and Petrosian - will
remember their encounter at Belgrade eighteen years earlier
‘ . . . master chess grips its exponent, shackling the mind and when Gligoric won a famous victory and ‘. . . pandemonium
brain so that the inner freedom and independence of even the broke out at the end of the game, and the playing hall, which
strongest character cannot remain unaffected. ’ Einstein was overflowing with spectators, was cleared by the police.
While this expulsion was in progress the players’ clocks were
‘My entire life has been devoted to the game ... I don’t stopped and the lights turned out and after about half an hour
believe a day has gone by that I have not played at least one some of the spectators were allowed to return to their seats and
game of chess - and I still enjoy it as much as ever.’ play (in the other games) was able to continue.’* But this game
F.J.Marshall, former US champion is only one of about 150 in progress; 63 countries from every
continent in the world, ranging in strength from the World
‘Chess is a sea in which a gnat may drink and an elephant Champions, the USSR, to the Virgin Islands are contesting the
may bathe.’ Indian Proverb 20th chess Olympiad, and 23 women’s teams are playing for the
Women’s Team Championship. Each of the players is wholly
absorbed in his game; whether you are good or bad, nothing
else matters when you are playing. This obsession doesn’t just
affect the players - it spreads to anyone with an emotional
stake in the games. As well as playing in these events, I have
frequently been non-playing captain of the English team; then
one is as completely involved as if playing - I always used to go
away from the games for periods, not through lack of interest
but in an attempt to avoid getting too tense and transmitting
nervousness to the players.
The Olympiad, although the biggest of all the international
events, is very far from being the only one. There are many
other team events such as the European Team Championship,
the six-country West European team tournament and indi¬
vidual matches between countries; there are student team
tournaments and events at the school level such as the Glorney
Cup in which England, Scotland, Ireland, Wales, France and
Holland compete.
Important though these team events are, we still have not
come to the heart of the chess scene - the individual tourna¬
ments and matches. First there is the cycle of events culminating
in the gladiatorial displays of the World Championship matches,
such as the 1972 Fischer-Spassky struggle - an Icelandic saga
indeed. Then there are about 30 international tournaments a
♦The Skopje game was less dramatic than this; after a hard struggle
in which Petrosian was under some pressure, the game was drawn in
41 moves.
