Whenever any grandmaster of chess is asked the question "Which chess book helped you the most" or "To what book do you most attribute your success," the answer is almost always the same. All or almost all grandmasters say there is one book that stands above all others in leading to success over the board. The name of that book is: International Grandmasters Chess Tournament Zurich 1953 by David Bronstein What is it that makes this book so much better than the others? Is it the deep analysis, the explanation of the ideas or ...
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Whenever any grandmaster of chess is asked the question "Which chess book helped you the most" or "To what book do you most attribute your success," the answer is almost always the same. All or almost all grandmasters say there is one book that stands above all others in leading to success over the board. The name of that book is: International Grandmasters Chess Tournament Zurich 1953 by David Bronstein What is it that makes this book so much better than the others? Is it the deep analysis, the explanation of the ideas or is it the personality of the author himself in his exuberant explanations of how the struggle creates art. There have been many translations and revisions of this book. The translators and revisers deserve high praise in translating the words of Grandmaster Bronstein into other languages. However, a translation can never equal or convey the full meaning of the original. Most of the grandmasters singing high praises of this book have read it in the original Russian because until recently most of the grandmasters in the world were either Russian or from Eastern Europe. Of the 15 grandmasters competing in Zurich 1953, nine were from the Soviet Union. The only truly Western players were one from Sweden and one from the Netherlands. The player from Argentina and the player from the USA were both born in Poland, plus there was one player from Yugoslavia and one from Hungary. The original Russian Language edition of this book has been difficult and nearly impossible to obtain. We had been searching for it for years. It is not that there were no copies of this book in existence. Rather this was because everybody who had one did not want to give it up.
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