200 Open Games : Bronstein's Play-By-play Account of His 200 Most Memorable Games

By David Ionovich Bronshteĭn, David Bronstein, David Ionovich Bronstein

Book Overview

As a great Soviet International Grandmaster, David Bronstein has long been recognized as the chess player with the most fertile imagination. He is also the originator of some of the most brilliant and provocative games. In addition, as 200 Open Games demonstrates, he is one of the most originator and stimulating of chess writers.

200 Open Games centers around the popular 1. P-K4 P-K4 opening (Bobby Fischer, for one, consistently chooses the king's pawn opening). "The author's idea," writes Bronstein, "is to show that quite a large number of similar games are in fact different in the way they have been created in the minds of the players. And although they are different, all these games, with their identical first move, still retain for a considerable time traces of one and the same inherited pattern. ..."

The 200 open games are grouped separately under the different "openings", concentrating on the Ruy Lopez. "The chess goddess Kaissa, foresaw endless discussion about the infinite nature of chess and in order to make it easier to find arguments, she invented the Ruy Lopez by way of proof," to quote the author. Bronstein avoids the conventional technical move-by-move analysis; the moves for each game are presented in full and there is a wealth of illustrative diagrams, but the lively and frequently amusing commentary analysis emphasize the ideas

behind the moves and the main feature of each game. As a result, the reader gets a real insight into the thinking of a brilliant grandmaster. He is also able to appreciate the way in which the original 1 P-K4 P-K4 move imposes its patterns on the subsequent game for a considerable time - and equally, the subtle ways in which very different games are created in the minds of the players.

David Bronstein, one of the world's strongest grandmasters, was challenger to Botvinnik for the world championship in 1951, and succeeded in tying the match 12-12. He has played in matches and tournaments against an impressive roster of international chess greats of our time. 200 Open Games is the first of his books to be translated into English.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 4871874192
• ISBN13: 9784871874199
• Release Date: July 2019
• Publisher: Ishi Press International
• Length: 258 Pages
• Weight: 0.70 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.6" x 5.5" x 8.5"

Customer Reviews

mixing ideas and recollections from his past

the main feature about this book is not the fact that it is written about open games; it must be said that it is not a treatise on openings; the author reviews his old open games set according to opening and gives some advice about those openings but without any deep analysis; he just points to the main turning points of every game and adds recollections of the said games; let say that he played some of these games before 1950 and he wrote the book in the seventies; one game sticks up in my memory: the one with Keres holding the black pieces in Amsterdam (1956) during the candidate tournament: Bronstein says that going over that particuliar game 15 years later, he could not understand why he had let the game go the way it had (leadind to his ultimate defeat and eviction from the world championship cycle yet again...), and then after lengthy thougth he had the joy and pain to remember his train of thought during the game. Today, your computer may feed you with incredible lines of analysis but this cannot help you about your game; Bronstein shows how things went in his games; some went well and some did not because one cannot win every encounter even against weaker opposition because somehow weird things may happen on the chessboard...; he played a incredible amount of different openings but one can feel his love for e4-e5 in this book together with his unique attitude towards chess; a great book indeed written by a great mind.

his personal impressions are pretty interesting

Bronstein gives the scores of 200 of his open games - pretty much his entire practice, win, loss, and draw, including gm draws. With each, he gives a paragraph or two of what he finds of interest - a maneuver, a combination, a tournement situation, personalities, or whatever. there's not a lot of analysis, but there are a lot of ideas to be picked up. More than anything else, the book seems to be about personal attitude. I don't play open games any more, but I haven't been able to give up my copy.

A great book on the Open Game!

David Bronstein is one of the most colorful chess writers. This book is written in an odd style but is informative and fun! He covers almost every opening that contains (1. e4 e5): "The Open Game". The book is not burdened with analysis instead Bronstein gives a more subjective view of the players objectives. This is a "must have" for a king pawn player!