Checkmate: The 12 Games That Changed Chess Forever
London, 1851. In a smoke-filled cafe, a modest Prussian mathematics professor sacrifices his queen, both rooks, and a bishop to mount a final assault with three minor pieces. The Immortal Game is born. One hundred and sixty-six years later, an artificial neural network learns chess from scratch in four hours -- and reinvents the game with a poetry no one had imagined.
Between these two moments, twelve games shook the board -- and the world.
Checkmate tells the story of these legendary encounters as great works of historical journalism. This is not a technical manual: it is an adventure story where sixty-four squares become a mirror of our civilization.
The 12 gamesThe Immortal Game -- Anderssen vs Kieseritzky, London 1851Romantic audacity in the age of the Crystal PalaceThe Opera Game -- Morphy vs Duke of Brunswick, Paris 1858
An American genius humbles European aristocracyRubinstein's Immortal -- Rotlewi vs Rubinstein, Lodz 1907
Beauty in its purest form, on the eve of a world in turmoilThe End of the Aristocracy -- Botvinnik vs Capablanca, Netherlands 1938
Soviet science triumphs on the eve of warThe Game of the Century -- Byrne vs Fischer, New York 1956
A 13-year-old prodigy stuns the chess worldThe Match of the Century -- Fischer vs Spassky, Reykjavik 1972
The Cold War played out on 64 squaresThe Duel of the Century -- Karpov vs Kasparov, Moscow 1985
Ice against fire at the twilight of the USSRThe King Walk -- Short vs Timman, Tilburg 1991
The king crosses the board in the boldest march in historyMan vs Machine -- Kasparov vs Deep Blue, New York 1997
The day artificial intelligence defeated the world championKasparov's Immortal -- Kasparov vs Topalov, Wijk aan Zee 1999
The greatest sacrifice of the 20th centuryThe Queen Beats the King -- Polgar vs Kasparov, Moscow 2002
A woman defeats the greatest player in historyThe Age of the Centaur -- AlphaZero vs Stockfish, London 2017
Artificial intelligence reinvents chess in four hoursThis book is for you if...You love history, geopolitics, and extraordinary destiniesYou are curious about chess without being a player (yet)You are a chess enthusiast who wants to rediscover the great games from a narrative angleYou are interested in artificial intelligence and its impact on human creativity
No prior knowledge of chess is required. Every technical concept is clearly explained. Every game is told from first move to last, like a thriller. A glossary at the end of the book defines all terms.
Interactive: QR codes in each chapter let you replay the games online on Lichess, move by move, at your own pace.
From London to Reykjavik, from Moscow to Wijk aan Zee, from the Great Exhibition of 1851 to Google DeepMind's servers -- open this book, and let History unfold on the chessboard.
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