Silman's Chess Odyssey

"Cracked Grandmaster Tales, Legendary Players, and Instruction and Musings"

From the bestselling author of How to Reassess Your Chess and Silman’s Complete Endgame Course comes a new book. Part instructional, part history, and part memoir, International Master Jeremy Silman pays homage to the game he loves. Chess is a strategic battle, a struggle for power and dominance. It can become an obsession, or can simply be a game to be enjoyed. When played at its highest level it is an art form.

In Chess Odyssey Silman touches on all these aspects of the game. Starting on the light side with behind-the-scenes tales of tournament life, Silman’s Chess Odyssey then takes a serious turn to history, and profiles the life and careers of eleven legendary players (Adolf Anderssen, Ignatz Kolisch, Johannes Zukertort, Siegbert Tarrasch, Wilhelm Steinitz, Emanuel Lasker, Frank Marshall, Rudolf Spielmann, Alexander Alekhine, Salo Flohr, Efim Geller) including over 275 games with diagrams and analysis.

In the third part of this 540 page tome Silman, writes of criminals who were also talented chess players, discusses an odd series of game at a historic interzonal tournament, and memorializes some friends.

Known as one of the premiere instructional chess writers and teachers, part four concentrates on just that and includes a smattering of material on openings, imbalances, tactics, chess psychology, and FAQ.

Illustrated thoughout with black & white photographs.

Jeremy Silman is an International Master and a world-class teacher, writer, and player who has won the American Open, the National Open, and the U.S. Open. Considered by many to be the game's preeminent instructive writer, he is the author of over thirty-seven books, including How to Reassess your Chess, Silman's Complete Endgame Course, The Amateur's Mind, The Complete Book of Chess Strategy, and The Reassess Your Chess Workbook.

Excerpt