Author: Jan Timman

Publisher: New In Chess (2005)

216 pages

$24.95

Reviewed by John Donaldson

CURACAO 1962 – The Battle of Minds that Shook the Chess World by Jan Timman is that rare book today, one devoted to a tournament. That hasn’t always been the case, one can think of a long line of famous works from Alekhine’s New York 1927 and Bronstein’s Zurich 1953. Two more recent works that aren’t often mentioned with these two classics, but deserve to be in my opinion, are the tournaments books for the 1966 Piatigorsky Cup (with Isaac Kashdan as the editor and the tournament participants commenting on their games) and Lubosh Kavalek’s Wijk aan Zee 1975. Now add a new book to the list!

The 1962 Candidates’ Tournament in Curaçao was one of the fiercest chess battles of all time. At the height of the Cold War, eight players contested the right to challenge World Champion Mikhail Botvinnik. The format of the tournament was a grueling quadruple round-robin. Twenty-eight games were to be played on the tropical island, in a contest that lasted two months.

Many players will know the general story, how three of the Soviets made a pact to draw with each other to conserve strength in the marathon event, Fischer’s charges of cheating and Tal’s illness, but Timman goes well beyond this. The reader gets everything here. Well-annotated games by an author who combines the rare abilities of being a world-class player, a shrewd observer and an excellent writer take up most of the book. Timman’s insights are not just confined to the top names in the crosstable. Playing through his annotations to the games of tailender Miroslav Filip, one can’t help but feel that the Czech giant was one unlucky participant. Many times as White he would outplay his opponents in nice strategic fashion but then fail to bring the bacon home.

Rounding out this well-done book are lots of historical writing on the event which put things into context, and many interesting photographs, most of which have never been seen before.

Highly Recommended