Soviet Championships

by Mark Taimanov, Bernard Cafferty

The famous Soviet Championships, run annually from 1920 to 1991, were truly extraordinary events. Every top Soviet Grandmaster, including Botvinnik, Tal, Kasparov, Spassky, Petrosian, and Karpov, participated regularly, and the best games have gone down in history. This fine book gives a complete record of the results of the Championships (by Bernard Cafferty), while the superb selection of annotated games has been specially provided by the famous Russian Grandmaster Mark Taimanov.

Genres: Chess

226 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 1998

Reviews

[Cormac Zoso · Rating 5 out of 5]

As most chess players will no doubt know, the Soviet Union dominated the chess world for over half of the Twentieth Century. If a Soviet wasn't the world champ, then something amazing had happened (such as Bobby Fischer coming along). So when you start to read through this fine book assembled and written by the noted chess writer Mark Taimanov along with Bernard Cafferty you realize that the Soviet national championship was every bit as exciting and important, and on many occasions more so, than even the world championship. The national championship featured the world championship of course but also many past and future champions at various times and also the strongest players to never quite make the leap up to world champion (such as Paul Keres and Victor Korchnoi).

So this was the very best battling the very best for local bragging rights and it is presented in an exciting way and the analysis of the games is quite good. The only thing I'd have wanted was more games. Each year has two, three, or four games and this is nice but really, once you start seeing the match-ups you of course only want to see more. I realize these are available online nowadays but usually they do not have quality analysis.

But I still recommend this book without hesitation and it would make a well-loved gift to the chess addict in your life.

[Travis Timmons · Rating 2 out of 5]

Great games. But no writing. Mostly a database dump with some sweet photos in the center section.