bookReview117

Chess is My Life
Edition Olms 2005 (http://www.edition-olms.com/ and in the US http://www.trafalgarsquarebooks.com/)
Hardback
226 pages
Figurine algebraic
CD with 4280 of his Korchnoi's games
$39.95

Ask a knowledgeable chess fan to list the strongest players never to become world champion and the names that are going to come up again and again are Akiva Rubinstein, Paul Keres and Viktor Korchnoi. Change the question to the strongest players over 60 years old and the list will be Emanuel Lasker, Vassily Smyslov and once again Viktor Korchnoi. There can be no doubt that Korchnoi is one of the most unique and compelling figures in chess for the last half century. Fortunately he is not just a great player but has a burning desire to share his insights. The past few years have seen him share his legacy through two books of his best games (both published by Olms) and two DVD's produced by ChessBase.

An earlier book with the same title - Chess is My Life - was written by Korchnoi nearly 20 years ago but it bears little relation to the present work which is unique in chess literature. It's not so much that it covers all of Korchnoi's life from his formative years when he lived through the terrible blockade of Leningrad during the Second World War to the three epic matches with Karpov. No, what makes this book unique is Korchnoi's frankness. He tells things as he sees them and doesn't mince words. For example when discussing the character of Dutch Grandmaster Jan Hein Donner, who he clearly despised, Korchnoi quotes Bent Larsen about Donner: 'Everything that he said was exceptionally interesting, bit it was all untrue!'

More than a few of Korchnoi's colleagues from his Soviet days come in for harsh criticism, but Viktor Lvovich doesn't grant himself immunity. He tells of the traditional "Friends and Rivals" match between the USSR and Yugoslavia held in Leningrad in the summer of 1957. The Yugoslavs complained throughout the event about the poor service and poor food as well as the difficulty of sleeping through the white nights. Gligoric was the only one to play well. Korchnoi then writes: 'He won against me with Black. Apparently this loss greatly upset me. In his memoirs Gligoric recalls that on his last day, accompanying him to the railway station, in the conversation I kept returning to our game and promised to beat him next time. Frankly speaking, not very hospitable...'

Chess is My Life makes for fascinating reading as Korchnoi touches upon almost every important chess event in the last 50 years from the Soviet Championships, Curacao, the matches with Spassky and Petrosian, to the current system for running the World Championship. Every chess player of a certain age knows about Tal getting hit with a bottle in a Cuban bar during the 1966 Olympiad but here you get the details and ramifications. Despite having the absolute best score in the Olympiad - 9.5 from 11 - Tal was punished and how. Two years later, just before departing for the Olympiad in Lugano, the team was gathered together and at the last moment Tal was told he wasn't going. The beneficiary, the enigmatic Smyslov, who on several occasions used his "blat"( Russian for influence and power) to push his way to the front of the line.

Korchnoi has his own memories of certain events but no one's can be perfect and certainly not for all the details. When discussing the boycott by Soviet and East European players of certain events he was participating in after his defection, Korchnoi shares some mixed memories on pages 158 and 163. He writes: ' As for the Soviet boycott, its origins were revealed when Romanishin and Yusupov accidentally arrived at the tournament in Lone Pine, when I was already there. A multi-stage exchange of telegrams and letters were required and finally the central organ of power in the USSR, the Communist Party, graciously allowed the Grandmasters to participate side by side with me in the tournament. These documents were redeemed by me from the office of he Communist Party Central Committee in 1994.'

The actual story, which I remember because I played at Lone Pine 1981, and confirmed with published accounts of the time, is Yusupov and Romanishin arrived in Lone Pine on the bus from Los Angeles International Airport with most of the players the day before the first round. There were rumors but no Korchnoi at the players meeting that evening, but the next morning he miraculously appeared. He had arrived at 1:45 in the morning on a Greyhound bus from Los Angeles and was lucky to run into the tournament travel coordinator Jerry Hanken, who was having a late night blitz session with fellow Master James Thinnsen in the lobby of the Dow Villa Motel. Hanken tried to get Korchnoi a room but found that everything was sold out in Lone Pine that weekend due to skiers stopping over on the way from Los Angeles to Mammoth Lakes. Fortunately Jerry remembered that Lev Alburt had a double room and the fellow defector was happy to host Viktor for the night. So Korchnoi was definitely in Lone Pine after rather than before Romanishin and Yusupov who were stuck in the middle of things. Korchnoi had called the Soviet government's bluff as it would have looked silly asking its two players to fly all the way back home without playing. As a practical matter there was no Soviet official willing to make a decision on a few hours notice. That was how the boycott was broken and when Korchnoi and Yusupov played they shook hands. Viktor won a very nice game.

Besides the lively writing another nice thing about this book is the wonderful photos throughout. There are images of Korchnoi at different stages of his life, from when he was a kid to the present. Some of them are quite surprising like the one with Viktor K. and Jimmy Carter - taken not when the latter was President but Governor of Georgia. Remember, Korchnoi played his Candidate's match with Mecking in Augusta. Another plus are the eight annotated games and the high quality example of chess composition (game 9).There is a preface by Garry Kasparov and a foreword from St. Petersburg Grandmaster Sergey Ivanov. Last but not least the purchaser gets a nice little bonus, a CD with 4280 of Korchnoi's games. Of course most of these are on Mega2006 but I counted about 60 that were not, about half before 1950.

This is a tremendous book that every chess player will find compelling reading. You may not agree with all of Kortchnoi's observations but the chess world is much richer for his having put pen to paper.

Highly Recommended