Chess Results 1951-1955
Gino Di Felice
Mea culpa! When I reviewed Gino Di Felices Chess Results 1947-50, the seventh volume in a series covering over 200 hundred years, I was under the impression that it was the last. Such is not the case as evidenced by his two latest works, Chess Results 1951-1955 and Chess Results 1956-60. Like the previous books in this series, they are published by McFarland & Company, Inc. and the physical production is up to the usual McFarland standards, which means outstanding. The crosstables and match scores are clearly laid out, the paper is good and the books are well bound. Both titles are indexed by both player and event.
Di Felice has followed in the footsteps of a giant, the great pioneering chess archivist Jeremy Gaige, but his own contributions have been large. Gaige, whose classic Chess Personalia (McFarland 1987) is in need of updating, only published the results of his crosstable research up to 1930. He did publish a checklist going up to 1950 but DeFelice has gone well beyond this with 1,620 crosstables for 1950-1955 and 1,390 crosstables for 1956-1960. The author received some criticism for not listing his sources in earlier books, but that has not been the case for his last four volumes, which have drawn heavily from both electronic and print mediums.
This series is not for the tournament player looking to improve their game, but historians and journalists will find it extremely useful be it for writing an article or researching an individual player. Finding a list of events a player participated in use to be a long process but now with the Chess Results series it is possible to get 95 percent (or more) of the events in minutes.
McFarland is to be commended for publishing this series, which is now over 3500 pages!