Chess Buzz for August 1, 1997

This Week's Topic: Chess Books

"MCO is THE GOOD BOOK." -Jack Straley Battell, Executive Editor Chess Review

Walter Korn was best-known as the editor of Modern Chess Openings, called "the Chessplayer's Bible" in the days before computer databases were common. Korn edited the openings reference for 50 years, in conjunction with leading players like Grandmaster Larry Evans and Grandmaster Nick deFirmian.

A Grandmaster once told a student, "You need to read a book on middlegames." Daunted by the thought of all the different titles out there, the student asked, "Which one?" To which the GM replied, "What difference does it make? You haven't read any of them..."

Many chessplayers have a copy of MCO--and like many bibles, for a lot of us it remains more a comfort than a reference--we know the answers are in there if we'll take the time to look, but few are those who actually go through "chapter and verse" to seek out the information for themselves. It has been suggested that the difference between a serious chessplayer and a simple social player lies in the weight of books purchased each year. Not necessarily read of course--just bought. Someone else suggested that the dividing line between amateur and titled player is that "only Masters have read more chessbooks than they own."

Oddly enough, most of the Masters and Grandmasters that your Buzz correspondent has spoken to seem to share a common experience: a week, just one week, when a single chess book reached out and grabbed them. It might have been Capablanca, Alekhine, Kasparov, Fischer--it might have been a book about a great tournament, or even a primer. But there was a point in their chess career when for the first time, instead of a chess book being something that they ought to read, it became something that they couldn't stop reading. Perhaps it's merely a developmental stage, that moment when the language of chess is finally comfortable enough for the reader to really "hear the music.". Perhaps it's a question of temperment. But it doesn't seem to be just an issue of will or self-discipline. This isn't an assigned task, but a true obsession, an activity purely for the joy of it.

Korn said, in the preface to the 10th edition of MCO, that the challenge was "where to draw the line between the required merits of completeness yet clarity on the one hand, and the unweldiness of too heavy a tome on the other." Good advice for any Editor. But for a player, the balance in choosing and working with chessbooks may come at yet another point: the balance between education and affection, between study and joy.

There have been thousands of chess books published for hundreds of years. Even the US Chess Federation catalog can't carry them all. This week, why don't you choose one just for the pleasure of it? A book that will keep you reading. Whether it's a game collection, an endgame primer, or even MCO--this week, see if there's one out there that's calling to you.

Well, that's the buzz for this week.

Have a hot story for us? A trend you want us to look into? An item only chessplayers can appreciate? Write webmaster@uschess.org

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