Yasser Seirawan is a name every serious chess player should know, if not through his playing career then through his entertaining commentary on elite chess events for the Saint Louis Chess Club and many other venues.
His long career is remarkable in any number of ways. For starters, he became a Grandmaster (GM) after just under eight years of playing. Back in those days (the 1970s and early 1980s) this was an incredible feat, as there were only just over 100 GMs in the world! Along with this, he won the U.S. championship four times, qualified for the Candidates, and eventually broke through to the top 10 in the world. As if that wasn’t enough, he was also one of Victor Korchnoi’s trainers during Korchnoi’s glory years, 1978-1981. Needless to say he had an incredible chess career.
Along with (and also due to) all of his other achievements, Seirawan had the chance to meet and play against an incredible 9 (!) out of the 16 widely recognized world champions. There is no question that he has many stories to tell and Chess Duels: My Games With the World Champions focuses on his games and other encounters with the world champions.
Even before I began reading this book, I had little doubt that it would be both an informative and entertaining read. One of my favorite things about this book are his many colorful stories and the historical elements. Seirawan was among the world’s elite players for a long time, and had the chance to play and talk with many of the greatest chess players ever. He seems to have engaging stories about every world champion from Alekhine on, and he tells them in a very entertaining fashion. If you will indulge me for a minute, I would like to give an excerpt from the book that I feel illustrates Seirawan’s writing style perfectly:
“Another memory of Mischa (GM and former world champion Mikhail Tal) that I’d like to share comes from an event in Reykjavik, Iceland. We were in the ‘player’s room’ where we could serve ourselves coffee, drinks and sandwiches while at play. I had a container of orange juice and I was looking for a glass; Mischa had a lighted cigarette with an incredibly long ash and was hunting for an ashtray. We almost bumped in to one another, establishing eye contact for a brief moment and he said, ‘You have your problems, I have my problems’. We both laughed and continued our hunt. Somehow that statement sums up the whole of life as well.” (page 105).
Though the book is highly entertaining, it certainly contains a great many instructional aspects as well. In fact, I think that the annotated games in this book are very instructive (especially for players at somewhere around an 1800-2000 USCF level), and even in the stories there are gems to be found. An example is this passage told to Seirawan by the legendary world champion Garry Kasparov:
“Garry Kasparov once told me a story which went like this: he had an adjourned ending in which he had (a) pawn and bishop for the exchange and was worried whether he could hold the position. He telephoned (GM and former world champion Mikhail) Botvinnik and after explaining the material imbalance got a question in return. ‘Does your bishop have a square on which it is firmly anchored?’ asked Botvinnik. ‘No,’ Garry told him. ‘Then you are lost.’
This discussion took place before Garry had given him the actual position. Indeed, further analysis by Garry proved Botvinnik to be correct. ‘Yasser, it was extraordinary. He immediately put his finger on the heart of the position.’” (page 50).
There are many more instructional nuggets such as this throughout the book. In fact, as a result of the analysis of a Seirawan-Tal game (pages 96-99) I recently won an important game in similar fashion with the same unusual capture.
To summarize, I think the games in this book are indeed instructional for players up to 2000 USCF, but with so many historical elements it seems accessible to almost any level of chess player who enjoys such stories and the lore and history of the game. I personally enjoy reading about chess history, and would give it 5/5 stars. In my view, everything here is spot on, and I would enthusiastically await a book or series of books by Seirawan following his entire career.
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