KASPAROV'S FIGHTING CHESS 1999-2005
Authors: Tibor Karolyi and Nick Aplin
336 pages
$21.95
Batsford Chess (2006)

Reviewed by John Donaldson

Hungarian International Master Tibor Karolyi is a hard working chess professional. Well-known as a trainer, with Peter Leko being his most famous pupil, Karolyi has concentrated much of his energy of late on writing, and he has been putting in a lot of work with a biography and game collection on Judit Polgar in 2004, two volumes on Kasparov this year and a work on Karpov scheduled for publication in a few months. I should add these are not small volumes! His latest, co-authored with Nick Alpin (henceforth the two authors will be referred to as Karolyi), KASPAROV'S FIGHTING CHESS 1999-2005 is a 336 page, two-column paperback that has little white space. Of course, if sheer number of pages was all one wanted in a chess book it would be easy to recommend certain other authors, but with Karolyi you get quantity and quality.

Since Kasparov has not yet come up with a book that covers his later career, the only book that can be compared to the present work is GARY KASPAROV'S CHESS GAMES: Volume 2 by Igor Stohl (covering 1994-2005), published by Gambit in 2006 as a beautiful hardback with dust jacket but for $12 more. The two books have a similar number of pages but the page layout is a more generous in the Gambit book. Karolyi offers the reader 77 games over a more concentrated period of 7 years) while Stohl annotates a bit over 50 games over 12 years). There is no way the two authors couldn't have some overlap but I found a fair number of games that could be found in only one of the two volumes. Both books have plenty of prose explanation in the game commentary but concrete variations make up much of the annotations reflecting both the rise of strong chess computer programs help in the search for the truth and the undeniable fact that Garry Kasparov played a very analytical, calculating style of chess. Typically Anatoly Karpov games are better suited to annotations based on words than those by Gary Kasparov!

While there may be some devoted fans of Garry who will go through all the games and notes in KASPAROV'S FIGHTING CHESS 1999-2005, I suspect more will find the observations by Karolyi of the world chess scene equally if not more entertaining reading. Karolyi has his opinions and isn't shy about sharing them.

KASPAROV'S FIGHTING CHESS 1999-2005 adds to our knowledge of one of the greatest chess players of all time. It will be very interesting to see how Garry deals with his latter career and this book and that by Stohl will undoubtedly be consulted when he does.

Click to buy (or get more information about) KASPAROV'S FIGHTING CHESS 1993-1998

Click to buy (or get more information about) KASPAROV'S FIGHTING CHESS 1999-2005

Click to buy (or get more information about) GARRY KASPAROV'S GREATEST CHESS GAMES, VOLUME 1 (Author: Stohl. Price: $35.00)

Click to buy (or get more information about) GARRY KASPAROV'S GREATEST CHESS GAMES, VOLUME 2 (Author: Stohl. Price: $35.00)