INSTRUCTIVE MODERN CHESS MASTERPIECES (Enlarged Edition)
Author: Igor Stohl
Gambit Publications (2009)
448 pages
$32.95
Reviewed by John Donaldson
Gambit Publications recently published a new, enlarged edition of Slovak Grandmaster Igor Stohl’s INSTRUCTIVE MODERN CHESS MASTERPIECES. This massive tome, which won the 2001 Cramer Award for best book, received considerable critical acclaim and I was among those praising it, writing the following:
“INSTRUCTIVE MODERN CHESS MASTERPIECES is clearly a labor of love. One could safely guess that the Slovak GM has dedicated one year of his life to this book. Stohl could have probably made more money flipping burgers at McDonalds, but he has instead chosen to give us an outstanding work. The fifty games in this book are heavily annotated, typically averaging six pages each. Stohl has chosen very tactical games rich in content. The central thesis of his book is the emphasis on dynamic play in modern chess, that more and more top players are breaking the ‘so called’ traditional rules of chess to create winning chances.”
This new edition features a revised introduction and 12 new games. The first edition spanned the period 1993 to 2000, the present work continues to 2007. Twelve new games might not sound like much for some writers but for Stohl it translates to an additional 130 pages! Keeping in mind that Gambit is using its normal oversized format (10 1/2 inches by 7 3/4) with a very readable but compact font (I believe quite similar to Times New Roman 11) and you have a tremendous amount of high quality chess material – a good candidate to take if marooned on a desert island.
The prospective buyer can judge first hand if this book is suitable for them by going to http://www.gambitbooks.com/pdfs/086Samp.pdf for a sample game from INSTRUCTIVE MODERN CHESS MASTERPIECES. One could enjoy this work only playing over the actual game continuations and prose commentary but that would be missing the best part, the highly detailed to the point analysis that Stohl has done to try to get to the truth.
How does one get through get through the heavy analysis? Back in 2001 Stohl providing the solution writing that “a combination of a suitable chess database and a playing program is, together with a chessboard, the most suitable way to study this book.”
Summaries at the end of each game, typically running a half page, do a good job of identifying the turning points in each game and reinforce the instructive points that Stohl has made in his annotations.
