200 Open Games

the main feature about this book is not the fact that it is written about open games; it must be said that it is not a treatise on openings; the author reviews his old open games set according to opening and gives some advice about those openings but without any deep analysis; he just points to the main turning points of every game and adds recollections of the said games; let say that he played some of these games before 1950 and he wrote the book in the seventies; one game sticks up in my memory: the one with Keres holding the black pieces in Amsterdam (1956) during the candidate tournament: Bronstein says that going over that particuliar game 15 years later, he could not understand why he had let the game go the way it had (leadind to his ultimate defeat and eviction from the world championship cycle yet again...), and then after lengthy thougth he had the joy and pain to remember his train of thought during the game. Today, your computer may feed you with incredible lines of analysis but this cannot help you about your game; Bronstein shows how things went in his games; some went well and some did not because one cannot win every encounter even against weaker opposition because somehow weird things may happen on the chessboard...; he played a incredible amount of different openings but one can feel his love for e4-e5 in this book together with his unique attitude towards chess; a great book indeed written by a great mind.

Bronstein gives the scores of 200 of his open games - pretty much his entire practice, win, loss, and draw, including gm draws. With each, he gives a paragraph or two of what he finds of interest - a maneuver, a combination, a tournement situation, personalities, or whatever. there's not a lot of analysis, but there are a lot of ideas to be picked up. More than anything else, the book seems to be about personal attitude. I don't play open games any more, but I haven't been able to give up my copy.

David Bronstein is one of the most colorful chess writers. This book is written in an odd style but is informative and fun! He covers almost every opening that contains (1. e4 e5): "The Open Game". The book is not burdened with analysis instead Bronstein gives a more subjective view of the players objectives. This is a "must have" for a king pawn player!