Very instructional!
Capturing the youthful joy of playing beautiful chess, Judit Polgar has created an intimate and instructional book for players of all strength. For aspiring young and amateur players, she shows how to play winning chess by giving tactical examples of "tricks" that arise after even the most innocuous of moves.
For example on page 49, Judit plays a seeming innocuous move 32. K-KR4 while closing her eyes as if from fright only to spring the trap of a Queen sacrifice after her opponent Lars Bo Hansen is lured into 33. QxP. Upon seeing the Queen sacrifice 33. ... Q-N7 check, Hansen's "face turned red instantly."
What is so extraordinary about this book is the sheer intimacy of being in the mind of Judit as a young master and international master as she has kept a handbook of all her games along with the time spent for each move. She provides the particular circumstances and stakes of each encounter along with a short bio of many of her opponents along with the strategy and thought processes of her games as the moves are being played.
Today, Judit's "Skill-Building Chess" subject has been adopted to be taught in Hungary's elementary schools. For those and other parents, this would be a valuable guide as to how to prepare their children to have a head start on learning chess although many will not be able to devote as much time to immersing their children in chess as did Judit's parents. Still, parents can learn much on how to teach their children winning chess tactics and strategy from this book.
For lovers of chess of all levels, this book also has chapter on decisive games such as her win fearlessly playing the King's Gambit to defeat Glenn Flear in the last round at Hastings 1988/89 to not only win the tournament but the brilliancy prize in the process. Afterwards, she was so happy to call home to share the joy of her achievement with her dad. Also, Judit has annotated her decisive win over Tibor Tolnai (Hungarian Super-Championship 1991) that not only won the tournament but earned her the third and final norm for the coveted Grandmaster title - thus crowning her the youngest Grandmaster in history at age of 15 years, 4 months supplanting arguably the best player of all times Bobby Fischer by over a month.
In addition, for players of all levels, this book devotes a chapter on memorable games such as her first victory over a Grandmaster when at the tender age of 11 she defeated GM Lev Gutman at Brussels in 1987. There is also her win (Munich 1991) over Viswanathan Anand (the present world champion) whom she and her sisters considered a "genius" after barely managing to draw against him in 100's of friendly blitz games when he visited them in Budapest.
What I really like about this book is how well written and organized it is so that anyone can take it aboard an airplane and enjoy the games and instructional positions without the aid of a chessboard. With only a general understanding of algebraic notation (a-h for columns and 1-8 for rows), anyone can follow along with her move for move and annotation for annotation to final result.
This is one of the best chess books of the many I have ever read and I eagerly look forward to Judit's next books "From GM to Top Ten" and a "Game of Queens." It is a bargain at Amazon having just been reduced to under $20 (from $22.95 that I paid)! Well worth the money and time!
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