Super Nezh: Chess Assassin is the first book in English to properly chronicle the career of Rashid Nezhmetdinov, one of the chess world's greatest artists. This book features 100 games by the Tartar master who collected many famous scalps, including Mikhail Tal several times. Tal was impressed enough by Nezhmetdinov that when he was asked to annotate a win by another player that created a deep impression on him, he chose his loss in the 1957 USSR Championship to R.N. for the book Learn from the Grandmasters.

Nezhmetdinov was born far from the centers of Soviet chess. He didn't have a proper trainer when he was growing up, yet he won the Championship of the RFSSR on several occasions. Invitations to foreign events were few and far between for Soviet players in the 1950s. Nezhmetdinov only got one opportunity to play outside of the country, but he took good advantage of it taking second place at Bucharest 1954 behind Kortchnoi. He received the International Master title for this performance, but was clearly of GM strength.

Super Nezh: Chess Assassin offers a wealth of biographical material about Nezhmetdinov's life. The games are heavily annotated with a nice balance of prose and concrete variations and are often based on the Tartar's own thoughts about the game. The material is not arranged chronologically, but by themes such as attack, strategy and endgame.

Like all Thinkers' Press books, Super Nezh: Chess Assassin is well produced with good paper and solid binding. There are not a lot of photographs in this book, but the few that do appear are classic, especially one that includes a young Anatoly Lein. There are a lot of crosstables in this book (the formatting takes a little bit of getting used to) but, curiously, not one of his great success at Bucharest. This book deserves a place in every chessplayer's library.

YOU CAN FIND THIS BOOK AT