The short list used to be:

Tarrasch's 300 Games
Alekhine's My Best Games
Fischer's 60 Memorable
Tal's Life and Games

To that list, I would add (trying to limit to one book for each player):

Sergeant, Morphy's Games of Chess
Soltis, Frank Marshall
Donaldson/Minev books on Rubinstein
Chernev, Capablanca’s Best Chess Endings
Golombek, Capablanca's Best Games
Tartakower, My Best Games of Chess 1905-1954
Botvinnik’s Best Games vol 1-3
Smyslov, My Best Games of Chess 1935-1957
Bronstein, The Sorcerer’s Apprentice
Tal, Tal-Botvinnik 1960
Keres, Road to the Top/Quest for Chess Perfection
Kotov, Grandmaster at Work
Vasiliev, Tigran Petrosian His life and Games
Larsen, Bent Larsen’s Best Games
Cafferty, Spassky’s 100 Best Games
Karpov's My Best Games
Karolyi, Karpov's Strategic Wins
Varnusz, Selected Games of Lajos Portisch
Gligoric, I Play the Pieces
Kasparov, on Gary Kasparov
Shirov, Fire on Board
Benko, My Life, Games and Compositions
Griffiths/Nunn, Secrets of Grandmaster Chess
Nunn, John Nunn's Best Games
Speelman, Jon Speelman’s Best Games
Taimanov, Taimanov’s Selected Games
Geller, Application of Chess Theory (don't have Nemesis yet)
Anand, My Best Games
Kramnik, My Life and Games
Nesis, Khalifman's Life and Games

How is Kasparov's, "The Test of Time" generally viewed?

It is very expensive, even as a used paperback. So when I saw a price for a copy in very good condition on Ebay for a third the going price most places, I pounced. I figured even if over my head now, it can only get rarer. And I take very good care of all my books for all subjects. The seller has lots of other used titles and is part of a sale by the "Manitoba Chess Hall of Fame and Museum Inc." that I stumbled onto. In case others are curious here's a link:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/pean64/m.html?_nkw=&_armrs=1&_ipg=&_from=

If that link burps since I keep myself logged in, the seller is pean64.

FWIW,

Andrew

an ordinary chessplayer wrote on 07/26/20 at 05:53:43:

My pleasure. It's a lot less of a fib than one would think. It's a real biography, one that would be good even without the games. There are stories of Euwe being brave as a civilian supporting the resistance in WWII, suspenseful round-by-round coverage of tournaments like Groningen 1946, evocations of his character as a math student and teacher, psychological insights, and more. Granted, Euwe was no Lord Byron, so there's a limit to how gripping it can be. As Fischer's quipped,  "something's wrong with that guy--he's too normal!"

My German is not that great either. One witty thing in Tarrasch that might have mystified me no matter how big a vocabulary I had was his comment on a move refuting an opponent's idea: "that was the poodle's core!" What an expression!  I remembered it's what Faust says when he succeeds in forcing a supernatural being to emerge from its disguise as a poodle and a mere traveling scholar steps out--but it's really Mephistopheles. How to translate that?  (Looking it up, I see it is a perfectly ordinary expression that usually means "the heart of the matter," but here it's great writing because a devilish move has just appeared on the board.) Other things I never figured out.

@RoleyPoley--I know, so many great books out of print. Now if I just had time to read the ones I own cover-to-cover...but in my life I have rarely read anything cover-to-cover, chess or not. I just picked up a copy of Averbach's game collection. He seems like a modest, but erudite scientist. I'm looking forward to playing through his endgames, though he went out of his way to showcase his middlegame skills, too. Still looking for a copy of Gligoric.

Stigma wrote on 07/25/20 at 19:35:00:



I think i accidentally left 'the' in as i was initially writing a sentence about only knowing the name from the Bogo-Indian and seeing the odd game of his mentioned here and there (where the focus is often on the play of his opponent).

Gee, it's fun thinking of an answer to this. My list changes over time as I develop enthusiasms. Here are some current favorites.

• Beim, Paul Morphy: A Modern Perspective
• Tarrasch, his own 55 or so games from Die moderne Schachpartie (German only; written to be "like my 300 Games, but much more instructive," i.e. for a more general audience)
• Donaldson and Minev, Akiva Rubinstein, Uncrowned King, Vol. 1
• Golombek, Capablanca's Best Games,
• Botvinnik's Best Games, Vol. 1-3 (annotations are similar to the descriptive-notation Dover 100 games, but reworded, occasionallly updated and cross-indexed with the other volumes, as in "I used x method, which we have already described in in game y").
• Keres, The Road to the Top
• Karpov, My Best Games (1978)--he wrote this one in the run-up to the Baguio City Korchnoi match. Not as dry as the later collections, it'swritten for a less expert audience.

.
Some collections I am currently disenchanted with: I find it hard to make myself read Alekhine's games since his annotations are so dishonest, though I know I should. Tal is a great writer, but I can't make myself root for his unsound play. Kasparov's annotations are extremely variation-heavy, and it's hard to forget that he's been personally rude to me just as he has to so many others.

Someone asked about Euwe. There is a biography by Münninghof, with game annotations by Euwe. It's well-written and entertaining, but I haven't gone through games from it yet.

Thanks Roley.  It looks nice and a good book on Bogoljubov is over due.  I think people perceive him unfairly as a “tomato can” whom Alekhine played to duck Capablanca.

I’m a big fan of games collections, but not sure if I will get this — at least not right away.  lately I’ve been trying to focus on more modern players.  I suppose that’s a question for another thread — which games collections to focus on?

I was wondering how Botvinnik's annotations in the cheap Dover book, "100 Selected Games" compare to the annotations in his 3-volume set. 

I recall Smyslov's notes to the 40 complete games in "Endgame Virtuoso" (previously unmentioned in this thread!) are identical to the notes for those particular games in his "My Best Games" anthology.  At least, that was my conclusion before I sold my copy of the original anthology (1957 edition iirc) to a collector.

I don't believe a game collection for Euwe has been mentioned.  I don't even know of one.

I'm not sure of the quality of "Why Lasker Matters" by Soltis, but i'm wondering whether it is worth tracking down & buying.

Besides Smyslov's "Endgame Virtuoso", others that either I missed above or were not mentioned:
Chess Praxis by Nimzowitsch
Art of Positional Play by Reshevsky
Magic of Tal by Gallagher
Nezhmetdinov's self-annotated book (or Super-Nezh by Pishkin)
The green book on Leonid Stein by Gufeld.
Mednis's book on Karpov; I believe the title is "How Karpov Wins".

James Plaskett wrote a self-annotated games collection well-disguised by the title, "Starting Out: Attacking Play".  It is obviously the least-serious book in this post, but it is reasonable for its target audience.

slates wrote on 06/26/08 at 20:13:23:


6 games atleast, at most 10. I saw the ECO codes.