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Chessville
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The CD opens with a preface by Kasparov himself in which he pays a handsome tribute to the Publishers, We are all children of The Informant.
There is a reason for this omission. In the earlier years it was a practice for the Informant to cover only FIDE -rated events. Consequently, rapid and blitz tournaments were left out of Informant issues. It is only in the last two decades this policy has changed and events like the Melody Amber are covered in the Informant. Incidentally, Melody Amber is the only prestigious event in which Kasparov has not participated. The Close-up section has a lovely collection of images, mainly associated with world championship matches. As for the main database, 595 out of 1193 games are annotated by Kasparov himself. The rest are no less interesting as most of them are annotated by his rivals: Kramnik, Karpov, Anand, Shirov and others.
Similarly there is a massive collection of 123 theoretical novelties (TN) ranging from the Ruy Lopez to the Reti Opening. Besides, there are four major Theoretical Surveys of English Attack (B80), Scotch Game(C45), Catalan Opening ( E04), and the King's Indian Defence(E92), outlining Kasparov's contribution to these systems. There is also an audio commentary by Kasparov on the 16th Game of the World Championship Match 1985 against Karpov. The Section "Play Like Kasparov" has quiz positions based on standard ideas like combinations, attack, defence and endings. There is also a novel theme, Rare blunders & Misconceptions. There are as many as 34 positions in which Kasparov has committed oversights or misjudged the position. These positions show that even Kasparov is human.
A case in point is the following game. Along with Kasparov's notes, I
have made grateful use of the excellent commentary on the same by Jacob
Aagaard in his book Starting Out: The Grũnfeld (Everyman Chess,
2004.) Beliavsky
- Kasparov [E00]
The second game is one of the thirteen Best Games chosen by Kasparov himself. Along with Kasparov's notes I have also offered the commentary on the game by Igor Stohl from his book Garry Kasparov's Greatest Chess Games Volume 2:
Garry Kasparov - Veselin Topalov [B07]
The last example is based on the theme of rare blunders and misconceptions:
Alexie Shirov - Garry Kasparov (Annotations by Alexie Shirov)
Highly Recommended.
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The Chessville
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Chess Informant has hit a jackpot with this CD. What can be more
enticing than a terrific collection of annotated Kasparov games for an avid
chess fan? Carping critics would complain that the entire CD is no
more than an assembly line job as the main database consists of 1193 games
published by the Chess Informant itself over the years. But if one
takes into account the fact that at least half of the games were published
in the pre-computer era, conversion of the published matter over a span of
nearly three decades (1976-2005) into electronic data has been no mean task.
This is followed by the biographical record with match & tournament
cross-tables. There is at least one glaring omission here.
Kasparov participated in the World Blitz Championship, St. John 1988.
This was a star-studded field with 32 players including Kasparov, Karpov,
Vaganian and Tal, the eventual winner. Kasparov was eliminated in the
third round by Kiril Georgiev of Bulgaria with the score 1-3.
While Kasparov himself has selected 13 Best Games of his career, there is a
separate set of 100 Best Games chosen by the Informant Jury over the years.
What can one say about the games? They are fabulous. As for the
annotations, there is a certain degree of difference between the annotations
of the games in the pre-computer era and what followed thereafter. As
Kasparov himself would acknowledge, the evaluation of earlier games is bound
to change on account of computer analysis. It is to his credit that
most of his annotations are vindicated by the silicon friend.
