The Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games

This review pertains specifically to the first edition. I do not have the second edition and probably will not buy it because I will probably never finish learning everything that I can from the first! I really like the book and have learned much so far. The selection of games is very good and that analysis is good. Based upon some of the other reviews here, it may not be perfect analysis, but it is very good. At first I thought that the biographies were unnecessary because anyone who could use this book would know about the players, but then I learned quite a bit there too. A very good book and at a very reasonable price.

THE WORLD'S GREATEST CHESS GAMES. Edited by Graham Burgess, John Nunn, and John Emms. Foreword by Vishy Anand. 560 pages. Mammoth Book Series. New York: Carroll & Graf Publishers, Inc., 1998. ISBN 0-7867-0587-6 (pbk).Although 'One Hundred of The World's Greatest Chess Games' might have been a more appropriate title - since everyone is going to quibble about the editors' selections, and, as others have pointed out, their omission of even a single game by Paul Morphy is inexcusable - this book provides what is without doubt one of the finest and most instructive game collections of all. Starting with the incredibly interesting McDonnell - Labourdonnais (London 1834) - with its final position which "once seen, is never forgotten: three passed pawns on the seventh rank overpowering a hapless quuen and rook" - and ending with the Anand - Lautier (Biel 1997), the collection includes the some of finest games of many of the best chess players the world has seen. Although you're not going to find all of your favorites here, you'll find many of them. And unfamiliar names such as Nezhmetdinov will probably end up becoming new favorites. Each game is prefaced by biographical information about the players; short but interesting accounts of the circumstances surrounding the game; and a description of whatever special characteristics the game might have. We are, in other words, given not only text but context, that living context without some knowledge of which we will never be able to fully appreciate the brilliancies (and blunders) of these games. The book is further enriched by the very full annotations which the editors have provided.These annotations seem to me to be masterful, and to strike a perfect balance between verbal comment and analysis. For beginners, there is plenty of verbal comment to help them understand what is happening throughout the game, comment that seems to me to be about as illuminating and helpful as you can get. More seasoned players will appreciate the editors' often fairly lengthy analysis of variations, analysis which attempts to summarize the best and most recent thought about particular lines and helps lead us to a deeper understanding of the finer points in these games.But it gets better, for not only is the content of this book exceptional, so is its layout, a layout clearly designed for ease of readabilty. Well-printed in double columns using figurine algebraic notation, each move of the game has been given its own separate line in BOLD type. Diagrams are plentiful, large, and clear. Even the file (a - h) and rank (1 - 8) designations have been printed respectively both above and below and on the left and right of each diagram. Unfortunately, as a mass market paperback on poor quality paper, it comes with that special contribution to the modern reader's hell - narrow inner margins and a glued spine which seems intended to automatically self-destruct at some point. But you can't have everything, and one

Even though I already own a few "great chess games" books, I feel this is an awesome addition to my library. This is a book that not only entertains but educates. I enjoyed the verbal explanations of plans, move orders, and thematic summaries of "lessons learned." I felt confident that the authors had not simply rewritten previous annotators' analysis' but checked detailed move variations for tactical flaws (with computer assistance not available in the past). For example, the Reti-Alekhine (Baden-Baden, 1925) game is analysed by the Grandmaster authors with the help of computer chess software, not to diminish Alekhine's abilities but to aid in seeing how complicated the game was. I finished the book with a better appreciation of the accomplishments of world-class players and I would recommend this book to advanced beginners and beyond.

I am very impressed by the quality of the annotations throughout. I am a Grade A player and likes to use a computer database to go through master games. So often the older books fail to give horribly obvious (once pointed out!!) tactical shots. This book is computer-proof. All the conclusions are well supported and I feel secure with it! A rigorous piece of chessic scholarship. And it is cheap - pity the quality of the paper shows it. Well done!

This is the "games collection" that I have been waiting years to find! It is a book of 100 chronologically-ordered, heavily annotated chess games, which the three authors decided upon through some sort of weighted voting system, in which Graham Burgess annotated 50, John Nunn 25, and John Emms 25. It is not a "mammoth"-sized book; it is about the size of a typical bestseller paperback, though somewhat wider. To give you an idea of where the historical concentration of games occurs, Game 1 is from 1834, Game 25 is from 1926, Game 50 is from 1963, Game 75 is from 1981, and Game 100 is from 1997. The most heavily-represented players are Mikhail Tal (11 games), Bobby Fischer (9), Garry Kasparov (8), Anatoly Karpov (8), Jose Capablanca (6), Emanuel Lasker (6), and Boris Spassky (6). I would have expected to see more games from Paul Morphy (0 games!), Adolph Anderssen (2), Harry Pillsbury (2), Tigran Petrosian (2), Wilhelm Steinitz (3), and Alexander Alekhine (4). From those lists, you can probably infer that the book is somewhat skewed toward the modern games. On the other hand, there are only three Karpov-Kasparov games, which surprised me. There is a lot of analysis in the games, with plenty of biographical descriptions and "color". Despite the fact that three different authors did the annotating, there is a very "uniform" feel to the games; it doesn't read like it's three disjointed authors. Maybe that's because three people did the analyzing and one person did the writing.My favorite historical collection of annotated games was always Tartakower & du Mont's famous collection of 500 games, plus a supplemental book of 100 more games, but those left off at around 1950. For a long time those two books were my chess Bible, and so I knew hardly anything about players like Tal, Fischer, Karpov, and Kasparov, let alone the less famous players who still had played some amazing games in modern times.Sure, there are several modern collections of games (especially "Winning Chess Brilliancies" by Yasser Seirawan, "Modern Chess Brilliancies" by Larry Evans, and "The Art of Chess Analysis", by Jan Timman), and plenty of collections of best games of individual players, from Paul Morphy to Alexei Shirov. However, I hadn't yet found an individual book that gave you this kind of in-depth perspective across chess history into modern times. This book ranges from the famous 1834 McDonnell-de la Bourdonnais 62nd match game with the three black pawns side by side on the seventh rank, all the way through to games of the last couple of years, like Viswanathan Anand's great attacking games against Anatoly Karpov in 1996 and Joel Lautier in 1997. I think that there is real value, both entertaining and instructive, in seeing comments from the same authors on such a wide chronological range of games.Furthermore, it is very rare to see such modern analysis of older games. Few books released these days seem to cover any ga