| The third volume of My Great Predecessors (Everyman 2004, www.everymanchess.com, figurine algebraic, 332 pages, hardback, $30) is the smallest in the series (most have averaged close to 500 pages) and is priced less as well. It covers World Champions Tigran Petrosian and Boris Spassky and their contemporaries: Svetozar Gligoric, Lev Polugaevsky, Lajos Portisch and Leonid Stein. Like volume 2, this work benefits from Kasparov having played all those featured except Leonid Stein who died tragically at age 38 in 1973. The ill-fated Stein, noted for his razor sharp style, is particularly well-covered here with 46 pages devoted to him. There are plenty of personal observations by Kasparov throughout My Great Predecessors: Part III, but many readers will be more interested in the annotations that appear in this book. Has Kasparov borrowed extensively from the past? Has he added something new? In my unscientific examination Garry came out quite well. I took the well-known game Kotov-Gligoric, Zurich 1953. Curiously this game was not included by Gligoric in his recent autobiography I Play Against Pieces, but it was of course analyzed by Bronstein in his famous book on the tournament. Kasparov uses these annotations as his starting point but goes well beyond in his five page examination of the game. Particularly to the point is his evaluation of the position after Black's 21st move, where Gligoric sacrificed a second pawn for a dark-square bind with 21...f3. Bronstein in his book gives 21...f3!!. Kasparov says this is going too far and gives 21...f3!?. He points that the second sacrifice of a pawn forces Black to play with extreme accuracy and the threatened Ng1-f3 was not so easy to implement, that 21...Rae8!? or 21...Be8!? were both probably better. Several concrete variations are then given to support Kasparov's claim. My Great Predecessors: Part III is another fine volume in this series, all of which belongs in every chessplayers library. I do have a few quibbles, but they are minor. It would have been nice to have a bibliography. To give one example:on page 15, in the notes to Reshevsky-Petrosian, Zurich 1953, in the note to White's 28th move analysis by Crouch is credited but with no reference given. It's from the underrated How to Defend in Chess (Everyman 2000) by the English IM Colin Crouch but I doubt many readers would know this. At the end of the introduction Kasparov thanks GM Vladimir Belov and Honored USSR Trainers Alexander Nikitin and Mark Dvoretsky for their help in preparing this volume for publication. Exactly what work they did is not clear though in some endgames Dvoretsky is quoted extensively. A few pages of photos of those featured would have been great (Petrosian and Spassky are featured on the dust jacket) though cost is always an issue. Today, when paperback chess books are starting to cost $25 a handsome hardback at $30 is a bargain. Highly Recommended |