Saint Petersburg 1895/96

Publisher: Caissa, 2016, Pages: 124, Hardcover

"International Chess Tournament"

After many years of familiarity with them it has been a pleasure to go back and analyze in greater depth the interesting and important games of the St. Petersburg 1895/96 tournament.

Publisher Dale Brandreth suggested we take a fresh look at them in the process of bringing out a new printing of his existing title. A couple of months spent with these outstanding players is indeed a proposition that is difficult to turn down.

For this annotator the tournament is decidedly bittersweet. The great players and their prestige, the result of impressive accomplishments, certainly make one's involvement with the event a worthwhile one; but this admirer of Pillsbury is disheartened by his (obviously medical) collapse in the second half. The American's early defeats of Lasker and bis impressive play generally in the first nine rounds give us a tantalizing glimpse of what a match with Lasker might have been like. If only.

For this version of the book I have included the game introductions written by John Owen for the first edition (1989). These are engaging and enlightening and definitely should be brought over into this later work. I have also put in some interesting (and often colorful) comments from the British and German periodicals of that time, whose perspectives offer us a historical experience of the games. As always, I have checked my analysis with the strongest contemporary chess engines to ensure adecent level of accuracy.

Thanks are due to Dale Brandreth for bis request to update this important Caissa Editions title and for providing the contemporary sources.

Bob Sherwood