World Champion Smyslov and His 120 Best Games

samsloan

2012-11-18 21:59:13 UTC

World Champion Smyslov and His 120 Best Games

A Selection of the Best Games of Vassily Smyslov World Chess Champion

Edited and Arranged by
Alexander Liepnieks and Jack Spence

Introduction by Sam Sloan

This collection of best games of Smyslov is probably the best
collection of his annotated games in Descriptive Notation. This book
was first published in 1958, the year that Vassily Smyslov was World
Chess Champion.
While it is true that these games are now available in the Internet
databases, they are without notes. Modern day annotations are largely
computer generated data dumps. Gone are the days when a master will
tell you what he was actually thinking when he made a certain move.
One is reminded of the "Merck engage" ad that runs on TV with a bunch
of people saying things like "I am not a target demographic" "I am not
data" "I am not a patient, I am a person".
Here, we chess players learn little from reading a book that tells us
what the Fritz Computer Program says about a particular position,
unless we plan to have Fritz running illegally in our head phones
while playing our next rated game.
Although Smyslov held the world title for only one year, there is
little doubt that he was the strongest active player in the world
throughout most of the 1950s, until the emergence of Tal and Fischer
late in that decade.

Smyslov was born on 24 March 1921. He won the two strongest chess
tournaments of that decade, Zürich 1953 and Amsterdam 1956. He was a
world champion candidate eight times in 1948, 1950, 1953, 1956, 1959,
1965, 1983 and 1985. He died in Moscow on 27 March 2010 at age 89.
I met Smyslov twice, first at the 1986 Copenhagen Open in Denmark and
then at the 1986 World Chess Olympiad in Dubai. Mostly I remembered
how big he was and how he towered over me. He was a giant of a man,
about 6 feet 6 inches tall.
Alexander Liepnieks was born 5 November 1908 in Latvia. He died 28
April 1973 in Nebraska (SSN 506-36-4463). His name in Latvian is
Aleksandrs Liepnieks. He is best known for writing “Chess Psychologist
World Champion Tal” ISBN 4871875466 published in 1961 and for editing
a Latvian chess magazine.
Alexander Liepnieks was a life long friend of the parents of my
Latvian wife Anda. They left Latvia together in 1944, lived together
as Displaced Persons in Germany, came to America in 1951 as refugees,
and were sponsored to Lincoln Nebraska together by a church
organization. They are buried near to each other in Wyuka Cemetery in
Lincoln Nebraska where he has a chess piece carved on his tombstone. I
never knowingly met him but I did visit his grave because he is buried
near to the graves of the parents of my Latvian wife, Anda. His grave
stone is memorable because of the chess piece carved into it.
Jack Spence was born September 20, 1926. Spence was a rated chess
expert, best known for publishing compiled collections of games in
major leading tournaments. He did so many of these that no complete
list is available. There might even be a hundred of them. For example,
he did a tournament book for the 1960 US Open in St. Louis. As I
played in that tournament, I would like to get that book but I cannot
obtain it anywhere.
Spence published tournament books for most of the US Opens of that era
as well as playing in many of those events. He also did annotated
games collections of many top grandmasters. Among his works are “The
Chess Career of Rudolph Spielmann” in three volumes, “The Chess Career
of E. D. Bogoljubow” in two volumes, “The Chess Career of Richard
Teichmann”, “The Wertheim Memorial Chess Congress 1951”, “The New York
Chess Tournament, 1927”, “United States Chess Championship 1948”,
“Carlsbad 1923”, “Carlsbad 1929” and “Bled 1931”. His co-author here,
Alexander Liepnieks, participated in the great tournaments at Carlsbad
1923 and Carlsbad 1929, but not in the grandmaster section.
Jack Spence died in November 1978 in Nebraska. SSN 507-22-9121

Sam Sloan
San Rafael, California
USA
November 11, 2012

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