The Queen of Kings

I all but finished reading this book sometime in the spring. I had the Game Section left to read over. That section is about 143 pages long covering a total of 25 games played by Zsuzsa Polgar against other strong players of the day. The book(353 pages) was written by Zsusza Polgar and Jacob Shutzman. I don't remember alot of detail about the first half of the book because that was back at the end of spring. And it didn't really hold my attention that well. Nothing too riveting. So all I feel I can comment upon about this book is the quality of the games in the back section of the book. The games were very interesting and worth going through. If the first half of the book wasn't so boring to me I might recommend it to others. And now onto the next book.

End Game

I finished reading this book by Dominic Lawson sometime in January this year. I had originally obtained this book from a bargain bin in the 90s for just one dollar. I had attempted to read it then and had left the book half finished. Not sure why. I was probably more interested in basketball and the bars. The book is Copyrighted 1994 and is 253 pages long. This book is about the 1993 World Championship Chess Match between Garry Kasparov and Nigel Short and some of the events that led to it. The perspective is given from the Nigel Short camp. Twenty one games over the course of two months were played, all of them in the London area. I thought that the authors elaboration of the training, trainers and events kept the book very interesting. One can't help but admire Nigel Short for his attempt to win the match against of the worlds best Grandmasters. Below is game 16 from the match. Played on 12 October 1993:

(show chess board)(hide chess board)

In all, this was an entertaining read.

Book Review

I recently finished reading the book,"The Ten Most Common Chess Mistakes". This book was written by the renowned chess player and chess author, Larry Evans. I found it a slightly strange coincidence that I was reading one of his books when the news of his passing was announced.
The book is the second edition published by Cardoza Publishing. The book has 218 examples of typical blunders separated into groups of similar theme. There are ten chapters of these different themes. Larry has given each one of these different examples an interesting yet descriptive name followed by a brief story or explanation of the game or position at hand. The majority of these examples are only one page long, making this a perfect book for down time in the throne room.
While I found this book very entertaining and easy to read, I think the most important stuff to be learned out of this book comes from the Introduction and the first two pages of chapter one and all of the last chapter, chapter eleven. Chapter eleven is particularly interesting because it explains the importance and how to retro-analyze games and positions. Lastly, I was surprised to see, as I turned the page, an example from a local game with both names recognizable to me as patrons of tournaments from my area! You guys are famous now! Congrats!