TN,


You're right, Lutikov's games would be interesting. (Just the games against Tal alone are fascinating)  How about a collection of Deep Fritz' best games, annotated by the great chip itself?     I am joking, but I know that it won't be long before someone at ChessBase comes up with the idea!

There was once an idea for a series of best games of anyone who broke 2700.  I think they published maybe two volumes before calling it quits.  I still would love to see such a series created.

BTW, the main reason I didn't include the Second Piatgorsky Cup among the great tournament books was the packaging.  It's little more than a pamphlet and will fall apart if I go through it one more time.  It is a classic because of the commentaries by the participants.

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To get back on track,  Jacob Yukhtman could do with a game collection. A truly remarkable player.

No doubt most of you are going Jacob who? another little known player worthy of a game collection is Anatoly Lutikov.

Toppylov

"What are your favorite game collections (on one player not tournament books or books like the Kasparov series)


These are my favorite ones:

Karpov's Best Games,Bobby Fischer: My 60 Memorable Games, My Chess Career by Jose Capablanca, Kasparov Greatest Chess Games but my favorite out of all of my books is Paul Keres: Road to The top this is a very very good book with excellent annotation! 

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But Alekhine does not trouble us in his annotations, which is the whole point.  If someone wants us to read his annotated games, he should write well, and write truly about chess.   

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This comment is a complete non sequitur.  Korchnoi was not criticised for his play, but for his unpleasant, uninformative writing.

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I love the Second Piatgorsky Cup, or Santa Monica '66, because of the way the games are independently annotated by both grandmasters, and how often they disagree with each other.  Occasionally the battles are strictly over the tactics, in which case you can see why someone lost!  But most often they have different ways of interpreting what actually happened in the game.   

If more tournament books were done in that format, I'd buy all of them, and spend far too much money on chess books.

Well ive got:

1) Life & Games of Mikhail Tal -Tal
2) Mikhail Tal's 50 best games - Clarke
3) Spassky's 100 best Games -Barden
4) My 60 Memorable games - Fischer (faber)
5) My 50 yrs of Chess - Marshall
6) Capablanca's 100 best games -Golombek.

1) & 5) apart from having good games & brief explanations of ideas of certain moves also have plenty of light hearted & amusing anecdotes. But 1  also contain highlighted parts of  certain games, so not all games are complete games.

2) are 50 full games of Tal from his early days to the time he won the Wch from Botvinnik. Full of his typically speculative sacrifices all over.

3) & 6) have nicely written autobiographies of the player concerned. In 3, there are a few KG games including that 'James Bond' one against Bronstein. Quite a nomber of Saemisch games against the KID which is quite typical of Spassky. I didnt realyl enjoy 6) for the want of more action from Capa.....but have to admit his handling of the various positions & his positional judgement & feel is really sublime. 

4) has a lot of very heavy going analysis of variations and sub variations which at my level is most of the time pretty unfathomable. But i like the games & try to pick out the ideas of both positional & tactical themes involved. As you play thro more games you will also see that Fischer isnt a full blooded tactical player like Tal or Marshall always on a lookout for a sac or a swindle. he is more of a very aggressive version of Capablanca! - aggressive positional play building up to neat attacks later (some games dont even have sacs). I like his candid observations and comments of certain key positions or of his opponents. Larry Evans wrote good & sometimes witty introductions to each game.

If I had to choose just one..... Probably Fischer.

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I have it. It is decent, but I find it very inconsistent. On the one hand you get very deep analysis or comments at some points, but on other points he talks like his audience consists of people who just learned chess. It is certainly not a bad book, but I am unsure about its value.

My favourite games collection is Uhlmann's winning with the french. I learned more from it than from any other opening or complete games book.
Two other books I very much liked are not really game collections: 
-Flear's mastering the endgame in which he mixes his own endgames with theory. I found that very insightfull, though the endgames are very tough to understand at one read.
-Donner's the king. Collection of his writings, which are very funny when you're dutch. Iirc there are only three analysis of his own games, but they absolutely entertaining. The most brilliant one is his win over Velimirovic in a Benoni in which he gets completely run over by black, but wins in a spectecular endgame.