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Champions of the New Millennium

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400 Seiten, kartoniert, Quality, 1. Auflage 2009

9,95 €
Inkl. MwSt., zzgl. Versandkosten

In Champions of the New Millennium three accomplished authors present the eighteen best chess players in the world today. Each player is introduced with an illuminating profile, and then four of his or her finest games are explained in depth.

These players are:

Ten established stars: Anand, Kramnik, Topalov, Morozevich, Svidler, Mamedyarov, Shirov, Leko, Ivanchuk, Aronian.

The players likely to dominate the next decade: Karjakin, Carlsen, Radjabov, Wang Yue, Ponomariov and Grischuk.

The best female player ever, Judit Polgar.

And finally, World Championship finalist and comeback kid, American star Gata Kamsky.

Weitere Informationen
Gewicht 860 g
Hersteller Quality
Breite 16,9 cm
Höhe 24 cm
Medium Buch
Erscheinungsjahr 2009
Autor Ljubomir FtácnikDanny KopecWalter Browne
Sprache Englisch
Auflage 1
ISBN-13 978-1906552022
Seiten 400
Einband kartoniert

004 Key to symbols used

005 Foreword by Anthony Saidy

009 Preface

January 2009 ratings and World ranking

014 1 Veselin Topalov (2796 - World no. 1)

041 2 Viswanathan Anand (2791 - World no. 2)

069 3 Vassily Ivanchuk (2779 - World no. 3)

099 4 Magnus Carlsen (2776 - World no. 4)

127 5 Alexander Morozevich (2771 - World no. 5)

153 6 Teimour Radjabov (2760 - World no. 6)

173 7 Vladimir Kramnik (2759 - World no. 8)

195 8 Peter Leko (2751 - World no. 9)

221 9 Levon Aronian (2750 - World no. 11)

245 10 Alexei Shirov (2745 - World no. 12)

263 11 Wang Yue (2739 - World no. 13)

285 12 Alexander Grischuk (2733 - World no. 14)

309 13 Ruslan Ponomariov (2726 - World no. 16)

331 14 Gata Kamsky (2725 - World no. 17)

355 15 Shakhriyar Mamedyarov (2724 -World no. 18)

377 16 Peter Svidler (2723 - World no. 20)

405 17 Sergey Karjakin (2706 - World no. 27)

425 18 Judit Polgar (2693 - World no. 36)

450 Index of complete games

452 Alphabetical index of complete games

453 Selected list of photographs

GM Walter Browne, GM Lubomir Ftacnik and IM Dany Kopec present you in this lovely printed heavyweight, the eighteen best chess players of today.

Each of the eighteen players is introduced with a readable introduction, some creative made photographs from all stars of the new millennium, plus four deeply analysed games.

The strongest grandmasters in the world today are Anand, Kramnik, Topalov, Morozevich, Svidler, Mamedyarov, Shirov, Leko, Ivanchuk and Aronian.

The most promising youngsters in chess are at this moment: Karjakin, Carlsen, Radjabov, Wang Yue, Ponomariov and Grischuk.

Included also is the best female chess player of all time Judit Polgar plus the playing comeback man Gata Kamsky.

All together we come on a total of 72 well analysed games where Lubomir Ftacnik is responsible for the games on: Aronian, Kamsky, Ponomariov, Leko, Anand, Wang Yue, Ivanchuk and Mamedyarov.

Danny Kopec: Kramnik, Carlsen, Svidler, Morozevich and half of Polgar.

Walter Browne: Grischuk, Karjakin, Shirov, Radjabov, Topalov and half of Polgar.

The book has become a real heavy weight with it's 100 colour photos where many of them have never seen any print before.

Thirty years ago Walter Browne was one of the best players in the world too, see Best games of the young grandmasters by Pritchett & Kopec 1980, so it is very pleasant to see such a creative chess professional as author of this book,on a new generation of champions.

There is a fine index of complete games plus alphabetical index but I am missing a in this book an openings index plus bibliography.

Conclusion: A book with high instructional value!

Mit freundlicher Genehmigung

with kind permission

John Elburg, www.chessbooks.nl

Foreword

Then, and now.

Two different eras. Two distinct chess worlds. Two disparate universes of chess information.

"Then" was smack-dab in the middle of the 20th century, when at age 13 this writer joined the Marshall Chess Club in New York. The great Frank Marshall was gone, and his widow Carrie held sway. There, I was to glimpse my first grandmaster.

It was a simpler world, whose undisputed capital was Moscow, USSR. FIDE had just named the first official grandmasters - numbering a mere 27. None could deny that each of those great players deserved the title. (Who would omit the Austrian-Argentinean Erich Eliskases, conqueror of Capablanca and later, Fischer? And what student today even knows his name?) The acolyte could set out to know the art of each one. If shown a selection of games, one could guess who had played them, from their style of play and opening preferences.

Some of us "adopted" one GM or another, as a model. For example, US Master Abe Turner studied hundreds of games of Salo Flohr, and essayed a technical style of play. Some tried to emulate the dashing verve of a Bronstein, or the positional depth of a Reshevsky.

Today, so watered-down have FIDE's standards become, that we are anticipating the 1000th GM. Whom to study and emulate now? We need guidance as never before.

In all eras, students take their first cue from the world champion. It was the era of Botvinnik the scientist, and I made the mistake of adopting the French Defense before mastering the open game. Later I realized that I should have been studying the great attacker, Paul Keres.

One day while strolling a few blocks east of the club, I discovered member Walter Goldwater's used-book shop, and Voila ! the fascinating world of chess literature.

There was the departed demi-god in whose games I delighted - Alekhine. (Steinitz, Lasker and Capablanca would have to wait.)

Chess literature in English appeared finite. It was not difficult to acquire all the most instructive books. Siegbert Tarrasch, who had taught all Germany, taught me too in The Game of Chess. But I needed the antidote to his dogmatism - Aron Nimzowitsch's My System. Alekhine's My Best Games of Chess set the gold standard for creative excellence, but he was inimitable. Marshall's Swindles were fun. Capablanca's elegant chess seemed deceptively simple. Reuben Fine's Basic Chess Endings was our bible - until its many flaws were uncovered. Modern Chess Openings was the only opening book needed, and periodicals sufficed to keep one abreast of developments. If you were serious, you got them from Russia.

Today, the number of chess books has increased astronomically, spurred by the entry of Britain into the front ranks of chess countries. Instead of one authoritative book on the opening, there are now hundreds devoted to a single defense or variation. Every master seems to think that the world can't wait for yet another exposition of the middlegame, tactics, or strategy - his. Whereas before one could keep up with new books easily, now one cannot even keep up with the reviews. I do not profess to understand today's economics of chess publishing, but surely the poor reader/buyer needs some guidance.

One wanted to know more, to appreciate the essence of all the GMs. There were tournament books, books dedicated to one great player or another, and collections of master games. But a special genre of chess book was needed: selected games elucidating the top individuals of a given era.

Reti's Modern Ideas in Chess from 1922 was a short, lyrical explanation of the great players' ideas. Its descendants include Imre Konig's profound study of opening evolution, Chess from Morphy to Botvinnik (1955) and R. N. Coles' Dynamic Chess, the Modern Style of Aggressive Play (1956).

But the earliest book known to this bibliophile, devoted to characterizing an array of leading players, is Modern Master Play by F. D. Yates & Wm. Winter, in 1929. It covered 21 living players, with one to six games of each, preceded by a brief bio and assessment of style. Reti went deeper with Masters of the Chessboard (1932) with six "older" and 16 "newer" players with one to several games of each, a monument of this genre from the highest of sources.

Savielly Tartakower weighed in with a lighter touch, alas never translated into English, in Führende Meister (1932) with a single game of each of the top 23 players in the world, and Neue Schachsterne (1935), with 30 lesser and younger aspirants. What is special about the latter is the great wit's ability to epitomize each player in a word. Andre Lilienthal was "Optimistic," Mikhail Botvinnik was a "Deep Prospector" and Gideon Stahlberg "Elegant." Stahlberg was inspired to write his own Chess and Chessmasters (1937, updated 1952) the later edition covering 20 stars from Emanuel Lasker to Svetozar Gligoric with penetrating portraits and one to three games each. From far Australia came Lajos Steiner's Kings of the Chessboard 1948, sampling 22 leading players whom he had faced in European events.

Max Euwe, the most prolific author of all world champions and who even rivaled Fred Reinfeld, wrote a book about the eight participants in the great AVRO tournament of 1938, with several games of each, known in English as Meet the Masters (1940). Here he succeeds in epitomizing the kind of position each prefers. Fine: sharp ones. Reshevsky: "boring" ones. Keres: wild ones, etc. Then in The Development of Chess Style (1968) Euwe covers everyone from Greco to Spassky, with a strong emphasis on Steinitz' positional play.

The Soviet School of Chess by Kotov & Yudovich (1951) continued the line, but with a new twist: not only were Soviet players justly proclaimed the world's best, but chess must be shown to further the values of the Soviet State, founded by chess buff V. I. Lenin. For workers, chess promoted literacy (and I would add, kept them from carousing in the streets); for the ruling elite, chess was the premier emblem of a supposedly superior social system. Patriarch Mikhail Chigorin gets his rightful due; but how to deal with the greatest Russian player, Alekhine, who departed Soviet Russia early on and never again deigned to set foot in his native land - even collaborating with the Nazi regime? The authors "discovered" that Alekhine pined for Russia and longed to return. Everyone learned dynamic play from him anyhow. After Stalin's death, the second edition quadrupled the size of the Alekhine section. Dozens of other illustrious players are covered.

In 1972, in conscious emulation of Reti, I made my own entry into the genre with The Battle of Chess Ideas paying homage to the top ten living players, most of whom I had I over the board. I too epitomized, as in "Larsen, the Vitality of Romance." Chess Canada called it "fuel for the soul." The 1994 update, The March of Chess Ideas, added more superstars, the three Ks.

In 1980 our current co-author Danny Kopec, along with Craig Pritchett, weighed in with Best Games of the Young Grandmasters, eight youthful stars, and predicted that one of them, teenager Garry Kasparov, would win the world crown. Another, our co-author Walter Browne, a fellow product of the New York chess maelstrom, would merely win the US title a half-dozen times. When Ray Keene wrote The Young Pretenders (1994) nine completely new stars had vaulted into contention, two of whom, Anand and Kramnik, would become world champions. Paul Motwani's The Most Instructive Games of the Young Grandmasters (1999) had 13 GMs, of whom six were new to the reader, including future world champion Topalov.

Now we are in a new millennium, and no one more than chess fans has reason to rejoice. In the computer era they are presented with an embarrassment of riches. This youth of a half-century ago who naively felt on top of all developments, is now a septuagenarian facing a torrent of information and struggling to know what, and who, is important.

Enter our three authors and Champions of the New Millennium to tell us. Danny Kopec, Walter Browne and Lubomir Ftacnik - two Americans and a Slovak who have collaborated closely as instructors - are uniquely qualified to elucidate their subject. Each brings a wealth of top-level practice, teaching and writing to the task. Browne, whom I have known since my teenage years, would have been a world title candidate had he been under the wing of trainers who could cure him of habitual time pressure. Perfectionism and objectivity are his hallmarks. Ftacnik, also a redoubtable competitor, holds a world record for number of games annotated. No top player is a stranger to him. IM Kopec, a professional educator and author, presides over a popular chess summer camp in which the other two have participated. Thus I look forward keenly to their book as the latest contribution to a venerable tradition. I know that I shall grapple with 18 foremost grandmasters of today, assess their styles of play, look for influences of their predecessors, enjoy their subtleties and brilliancies. If then I wish, I can make odds on the chance of each to reach the very summit. It will be a true pleasure to enjoy the fruits of creativity of both the authors and the players. All chess buffs may luckily join in this pleasure, as chess literature inexorably advances.

International Master Anthony Saidy

Los Angeles, March 2009

In den frühen Tagen der modernen Schachgeschichte war es noch relativ einfach, verschiedene Spielauffassungen zu unterscheiden. Für Steinitz, Tarrasch und Nimzowitsch war das Spielbrett nicht nur das Terrain sportlicher Wettkämpfe, sondern dogmatischer Ansichten, die sich in den Partien widerspiegelten. Auch in der zweiten Hälfte des 20. Jahrhunderts gab es noch zahlreiche Spieler mit sehr individuellem Stil. Zunehmend waren jedoch Universalisten gefragt. Und spätestens mit dem Computerzeitalter ist es für den Laien immens schwer, überhaupt noch so etwas wie eine individuelle Handschrift bei den Topspielern zu erkennen. Und doch: Schaut man genau hin, gibt es sie. Morosewitsch, Schirow (jedenfalls früher) oder auch Mamedjarow haben sich auch in der Gegenwart einen eigenwilligen Zugang zum Spiel bewahrt. Aber bei ultimativen Universalisten, wie z.B. Swidler, Leko oder Wang Yue, fällt eine Stilbeschreibung deutlich schwerer.

Das renommierte Autorentrio Lubomir Ftacnik, Danny Kopec und Walter Browne hat mit Champions of the New Millennium jetzt einen Band vorgelegt, der 18 der momentan besten Spieler der Welt präsentiert. Jeder Einzelne wird mit vier Partien vorgestellt, garniert mit etlichen Fotos. Jedem Kapitel vorangestellt sind eine zweiseitige Beschreibung der Karriere des Spielers und eine Spezifizierung seines Stils.

Bei einigen Porträts scheint es allerdings, als ob die Texte schon 2006 vorlagen und dann etwas schludrig ergänzt wurden. So ist bei Anand zwar die WM-Titelverteidigung von 2008 gegen Kramnik erwähnt, bei seinen Schnellschacherfolgen heißt es aber, er habe bei den Chess Classic von 2000-2006 ununterbrochen gewonnen - tatsächlich reichte seine Siegesserie bis 2008. Auch die beiden Schach-Oskars von 2007 und 2008 "vergaßen" die Autoren.

Die Stilbeschreibungen nehmen leider im Vergleich zur Laufbahn den weitaus geringeren Raum ein. Die meist nur 7-10 Zeilen reichen freilich nicht, eine adäquate Charakterisierung abzugeben. Zudem sind die Einschätzungen qualitativ unterschiedlich. Während bei Topalow der Punkt getroffen wird, ist z.B. die Darstellung bei Anand oder Iwantschuk recht blass und bleibt allgemein. Gerade bei diesen Alleskönnern hätte der Leser mehr Aufschluss erhoffen dürfen. Auch bei Anderen bleibt die kurze Erklärung unzureichend und letztlich unbefriedigend. Der Leser erhält mit Champions of the New Millennium daher weniger eine tiefe Stilanalyse, als vor allem gut kommentierte zeitgenössische Partien, die für jeden fortgeschrittenen Spieler eine Freude sein dürften.

Mit freundlicher Genehmigung

Harry Schaack, KARL 4/2009

**********

Das Buch "Champions of the New Millennium" stellt 18 Großmeister vor, die derzeit in der Weltrangliste ganz oben stehen und die dementsprechend das heutige Spitzenschach repräsentieren. Das Autorentrio Ftacnik/Kopec/Browne widmet jedem Großmeister im Durchschnitt 20 Seiten und vier ausführlich kommentierte Partien, die den Spielstil des jeweilig Betreffenden am Besten charakterisiert. Die hier vorgestellten Schachhelden sind: Anand, Kramnik, Topalov, Kamsky, Polgar, Yue, Carlsen, Ivanchuk, Aronjan, Morozevich, Karjakin, Svidler, Leko, Radjabov, Mamedyarov, Grischuk, Ponomariov und Shirov.

\s3 Das erste Kapitel des Buches ist Veselin Topalov gewidmet, seine Partie gegen Aronjan 2006 (Wijk) macht den Anfang:

Topalov, V (2801) - Aronian, L (2752) [E15]

Corus Wijk aan Zee (10), 2006

1.d4 Sf6 2.c4 e6 3.Sf3 b6 4.g3 La6 5.b3 Lb4+ 6.Ld2 Le7 7.Lg2 c6 8.Lc3 d5 9.Se5 Sfd7 10.Sxd7 Sxd7 11.Sd2 0-0 12.0-0 Sf6 13.e4 b5 14.exd5 exd5 15.Te1 Tb8 16.c5 Lc8 17.Sf3 Se4 18.Txe4 dxe4 19.Se5 Dd5 20.De1 Lf5 21.g4 Lg6 22.f3 b4 23.fxe4 De6 24.Lb2 Lf6 25.Sxc6 Dxc6 26.e5 Da6 27.exf6 Tfe8 28.Df1 De2 29.Df2 Dxg4 30.h3 Dg5 31.Lc1 Dh5 32.Lf4 Tbd8 33.c6 Le4 34.c7 Tc8 35.Te1 Dg6 36.Txe4 Txe4 37.d5 Tce8 38.d6 Te1+ 39.Kh2 Df5 40.Dg3 g6 41.Dg5 Dxg5 42.Lxg5 Td1 43.Lc6 Te2+ 44.Kg3 1-0

Danach folgen weitere Partien gegen stärkste Gegnerschaft, glossiert mit ausführlichen Kommentaren und zahlreichen Farbfotos (!). Zu den Kommentaren möchte ich noch hinzufügen, dass hier nicht einfach nur vorhandene Analysen verwendet wurden sondern viel eigene Arbeit und eigene Analysen in das Buch einflossen. Das ist keineswegs selbstverständlich und Bedarf einer extra Erwähnung. Sehr positiv empfand ich auch die vielen Farbfotos, die nummerierten und sehr übersichtlichen Diagramme, das lesefreundliche Layout und nicht zuletzt die gesamte Aufmachung.

Das Buch ist aber nicht nur eine reine Partiensammlung sondern bietet viel Wissenswertes über die weltbesten Schachspieler, von einfachen biographischen Daten über Turniererfolge bis hin zu den Eigenschaften des Spielstils.

Ich persönlich habe einen sehr guten Eindruck von dem Buch, hier stimmt wirklich einfach alles! Tolle Analysen, viel Text, unzählige hochklassige Farbfotos und das Ganze in einem qualitativ hochwertigen Rahmen.

Zum Abschluss noch eine Partie aus dem Buch vom "weltbesten Carlsen vom Schach":

\s3 Kramnik,V (2799) - Carlsen,M (2733) [A30]

Corus Wijk aan Zee (12), 2008

1.Sf3 Sf6 2.c4 e6 3.Sc3 c5 4.g3 b6 5.Lg2 Lb7 6.0-0 Le7 7.d4 cxd4 8.Dxd4 d6 9.Td1 a6 10.Sg5 Lxg2 11.Kxg2 Sc6 12.Df4 0-0 13.Sce4 Se8 14.b3 Ta7 15.Lb2 Td7 16.Tac1 Sc7 17.Sf3 f5 18.Sc3 g5 19.Dd2 g4 20.Se1 Lg5 21.e3 Tff7 22.Kg1 Se8 23.Se2 Sf6 24.Sf4 De8 25.Dc3 Tg7 26.b4 Se4 27.Db3 Tge7 28.Da4 Se5 29.Dxa6 Ta7 30.Db5 Dxb5 31.cxb5 Txa2 32.Tc8+ Kf7 33.Sfd3 Lf6 34.Sxe5+ dxe5 35.Tc2 Tea7 36.Kg2 Sg5 37.Td6 e4 38.Lxf6 Kxf6 39.Kf1 Ta1 40.Ke2 Tb1 41.Td1 Txb4 42.Sg2 Txb5 43.Sf4 Tc5 44.Tb2 b5 45.Kf1 Tac7 46.Tbb1 Tb7 47.Tb4 Tc4 48.Tb2 b4 49.Tdb1 Sf3 50.Kg2 Td7 51.h3 e5 52.Se2 Td2 53.hxg4 fxg4 54.Txd2 Sxd2 55.Tb2 Sf3 56.Kf1 b3 57.Kg2 Tc2 0-1

Mit freundlicher Genehmigung

Martin Rieger, www.freechess.info

Oktober 2009