The insert to Andrew Soltis' 100 Greatest Chess Games of the 20th Century, Ranked reveals that Soltis is the "author of more than 90 books," and it really shows, in the tradition of other chess writers with 80 books or more (I can think of three others). Originally, I was so upset with this apparently cobbled-together book that I had written over 4 pages of criticism, and then realized that it wasn't worth it. I'll try to summarize just a few of my objections instead.

The author has a system of assigning points by "criteria" which he then seems to ignore entirely. For one thing, that a game is well known or famous, not one of his criteria, clearly counts for more than the stated criteria. Soltis, as indicated by his oversized bibliography, apparently limits himself mainly (wholly?) to other's lists/selections, Informant lists, and games collections of famous players. He says that he doesn't attempt to balance the selection according to period, but then includes almost no wins by the best-known contemporary grandmasters (e.g., 1 Anand loss, 1 Shirov loss, 1 Ivanchuk loss, nothing by Kramnik, etc.). He calls Ivanchuk a "supertalent" and "genius," by the way--I wonder what game could have given him that idea? Any serious attempt to really use his "criteria" would replace many of his duller selections by the brilliant efforts of these players.

His well-known dislike of Karpov provides a stark example of personal prejudice. Karpov is represented by 3 losses and not a single win. Pathetically, Soltis tries to confuse the issue by including a Karpov win in the Introduction as an example of what couldn't make the book, claiming that Karpov played like a "machine." Then he creates a "strawman" by saying "Of all Anatoly Karpov's games, this [reject-JW] may be the most impressive for its accuracy and finesse." A ridiculous statement, by the way, the implication being that any other win from the "machine" couldn't qualify. This from the man who said something like: "Who can remember any of Karpov's wins?" in a "Karpov Forum" specifically designed to trash Karpov himself.

Soltis claims that a game which is unsound or with poor opposition (meaning the play of the loser, not the rating) shouldn't be included, but then includes both types, where it takes clear mistakes (sometimes numerous and not very obscure ones) for the opponent to lose. He ignores awe-inspiring positional masterpieces containing several profound moves and sustained brilliance in favor of a handful (if that) of lesser positional efforts by famous older players.

His #1 game of the century is Berliner's famous correspondence game against Estrin. This of course included vast amounts of thinking time ("weeks" just for the initial idea, according to Soltis) and no constraints on moving the pieces to test ideas. I think that's fine, but then did Soltis really make a serious effort to find the other postal masterpieces? His categories of "originality," "opposition [play in the game]," "soundness" (accuracy/difficulty), "breadth/depth," and "overall aesthetic quality" are ones which would greatly favor the correspondence game, and I suspect that there would be at least 30 or 40 of them if Soltis took his own categories seriously (I believe there were only 3).

I said that I'd limit myself. To finish with, a comparison with Burgess, Nunn and Emms' Mammoth Book of the World's Greatest Chess Games is interesting. They too relied upon games by top-level players and famous games, but they also had one of their 3 criteria as "historical significance." More importantly, they had deep and original analysis for every game; Soltis' notes are superficial and as far as I can see, completely unoriginal. The main reason I can see to get this book would be its set of top-flight games; but then why not get a similar set of thoroughly annotated games by higher-quality authors (the just-mentioned Mammoth book), for a fraction of the cost? As with all Mcfarland books, the production quality is superb, but a closing comparison might be useful: Can you imagine Soltis' deeply-researched Soviet Chess in a cheap pamphlet or newsprint form? I can't. Can you imagine this book in that way? Easily.