The
great Yugoslavian Grandmaster Svetozar Gligoric
is well known to English speaking chess fans of
the 1960s and 70s for his popular column “The
Game of the Month” which appeared in Chess
Life and Review. In this column he managed to
find a fine balance between clear explanation,
concrete analysis and interesting anecdotes. He
has succeeded again with his autobiography, I
PLAY AGAINST PIECES.
I PLAY AGAINST PIECES is a model of what a game
collection should be with 130 well-annotated games,
a tremendous amount of autobiographical material
and a special chapter covering Gligoric’s
considerable contributions to open theory. Those
with a knowledge of Russian or Serbo-Croatian
have some inkling of what a treat is in store
for them, but individuals whose only tongue is
English, and have been forced to make do with
the CHESS OF GLIGORIC (1972) by David Levy and
SVETOZAR GLIGORIC: COLLECTED GAMES (1987) by Colin
Leach, have a real treat in store. It’s
not that those books were bad, but rather that
this one is so good.
Gligoric was a Candidate for the World Championship
and the top player in Yugoslavia for over three
decades. During this time he faced all the top
players in the world and he writes about these
experiences in I PLAY AGAINST PIECES. Particularly
interesting to my mind are his accounts of the
annual “Friends and Rivals” series
between Yugoslavia and the Soviet Union. Routinely
Gligoric would turn in plus scores in these competitions
while all of his teammates would be minus!
If you want to learn how to play 1.d4 as White,
the Kings Indian (later the Tarrasch) and King’s
Indian as Black, this book is like a primer. Gligoric
played these systems throughout his life and contributed
extensively to their development. One of the best
ways of learning an opening is by playing over
high quality, well-annotated examples. This book
provides plenty of them
I PLAY AGAINST PIECES is ably translated by the
husband and wife team of Zoran and Biljana Ilic
and handsomely produced with eight pages of high
quality black and white photos. I strongly recommend
this book to all chess players.
YOU
CAN FIND THIS BOOK AT
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