| Chess World Championships: All the Games, All with Diagrams, 1834-2004, 3d ed.. Two Volume Set (McFarland & Company, Inc. www.mcfarlandpub.com, 2006, 897 pages, 1375 diagrams, paperback, algebraic notation, $45) by James H. Gelo is a record of World Championship matches from del a Bourdonnais - McDonnell 1834 to Kramnik-Leko 2004. Every game in these matches, from the early unofficial ones to both the FIDE and BrainGames events, is included with no annotations but one diagram - 1429 games in all. To the casual chess player the first question that is likely to come to mind is why do I need this book? Must if not all the games are available for free, certainly the ones played after WW2. No annotations means that it is hardly the sort of book one is likely to play through from cover to cover. Clearly this is a reference work of a specialized sort. If you want to find out what day a particular day a game was played Gelo has it. Want to know how many times the Benko Gambit has been played in a World Championship Match? You can found out the answer - zero - by going straight to the detailed opening index. This third edition is 61 pages longer than the previous one published in 1999. I was curious, were there any substantive differences between the two editions besides the new match material? To check I went to reviews of the second edition and compared it with the 3rd edition to see if there were changes. After all in a work like this accuracy is everything. Taylor Kingston in his review of the 2nd edition mentioned that in his sampling of several dozen older games, "I found only four minor discrepancies. Gelo shows extra moves at the ends of the 64th McDonnell-Labourdonnais game and the first three games of the 1896-7 Lasker-Steinitz rematch." ..."While I cannot say who is exactly right here, these discrepancies seem not very serious. The spot-checking tests, though not conclusive, do indicate a very high level of accuracy in Gelo's work." I detect no changes in Volume 3 regarding the four games mentioned above - what appeared in the second edition might well be correct. Kingston continues his review: "Gelo makes his one clearly wrong inclusion in this period: Lasker-Janowski 1909. It is known that this was not a title match (though their 1910 match was). Therefore it belongs no more than, say, Lasker's informal 1908 match with Abraham Speijer, and to include it perpetuates a common misperception." This match is included again, but for only for cost reasons - it was prohibitive to redo the typesetting. Gelo, as he indicates in the preface, clearly has been persuaded by the judgement of Edward Winter and others that Lasker-Janowski 1909 was not a title match. Summarizing, this is a book for those with a strong interest in chess history. As typical for all McFarland books the physical productions standards are excellent. The bibliography is 8 pages long and there is a very detailing opening index including ECO code, a general opening index and a player index. |