Re-Engineering The Classics

A Silicon Reappraisal of Thirty-Five Classic Games

Matthew Sadler, Steve Giddins

• Publisher: New in Chess
• eBook ISBN:
  9789083311272
• Year: 2023

Are you ready for the truth about forty of the most fascinating and complex chess games ever played by World Champions and other top grandmasters? Grandmaster Matthew Sadler and renowned chess writer Steve Giddins take a fresh look at some classic games ranging from Anderssen – Dufresne, played in 1852, to Botvinnik – Bronstein (1951) and Geller – Euwe (1953) played a century later. They unleashed the collective power of Leela, Komodo and Stockfish to help us humans understand what really what really happened in these games of World Champions and fan favorites such as Bent Larsen, Michael Basman and Tony Miles.

The first engines improved our understanding of the classic games by pointing out the tactical mistakes in the original, contemporary game notes. But the expertise of Matthew Sadler, in his third book on the us if engines to deepen our chess understanding, is to uncover the positional course of a game. The modern engines, who came alive after 2018, can change our whole perception of the strategic and technical pattern of a game.

You will for example earn to appreciate and understand a classic Capablanca endgame. A classic Petrosian exchange sacrifice. A winning, and then losing, king-hunt endgame between Spassky and Tal. You will see how Bent Larsen already understood the strength as the h-pawn march far before that was revealed by AlphaZero. We will see new strategic ideas and plans that human players had not previously thought of. Even the greatest King’s Indian player ever, Viktor Korchnoi, would be amazed by the engine’s unique ideas on how break through on the Queen side.

The most instructive games are often those which are more strategic and technical. That is why the modern chess engine is such a helpful tool to enrich our understanding. With these engines the authors have re-engineered a wonderful and highly entertaining series of games, generating dozens of positional chess lessons that will help every club player and expert to improve their game.

Table of contents

• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Explanation of symbols
• Introduction
• Technical note
• Game 1 Anderssen-Dufresne, Berlin 1852
• Game 2 Steinitz-Paulsen, Baden-Baden 1870
• Game 3 Lasker-Steinitz, New York, Philadelphia & Montreal 1894
• Game 4 Lasker-Napier, Cambridge Springs 1904
• Game 5 Salwe-Rubinstein, Karlsbad 1907
• Game 6 Schlechter-Lasker, Vienna & Berlin 1910
• Game 7 Capablanca-Tartakower, London 1922
• Game 8 Em.Lasker-Ed.Lasker, New York 1924
• Game 9 Tartakower-Bogoljubow, London 1927
• Game 10 Euwe-Yates, Hastings 1931
• Game 11 Sultan Khan-Menchik, Hastings 1932
• Game 12 Znosko-Borovsky-Alekhine, Paris 1933
• Game 13 Capablanca-Ragozin, Moscow 1936
• Game 14 Reshevsky-Botvinnik, Moscow 1946
• Game 15 Barcza-Wikström, correspondence game 1949
• Game 16 Botvinnik-Bronstein, Moscow 1951
• Game 17 Szabo-Botvinnik, Budapest 1952
• Game 18 Geller-Euwe, Zürich 1953
• Game 19 Reshevsky-Petrosian, Zürich 1953
• Game 20 Spassky-Tal, Riga 1958
• Game 21 Botvinnik-Tal, Moscow 1960
• Game 22 Spassky-Polugaevsky, Moscow 1961
• Game 23 Hort-Keres, Oberhausen 1961
• Game 24 Petrosian-Botvinnik, Moscow 1963
• Game 25 Matulovic-Taimanov, Leningrad-Belgrade 1964
• Game 26 Velimirovic-Kavalek, Belgrade 1965
• Game 27 Gaprindashvili-Ujtelky, Wijk aan Zee 1969
• Game 28 Spassky-Fischer, Siegen 1970
• Game 29 Larsen-Gligoric, Vinkovci 1970
• Game 30 Taimanov-Fischer, Vancouver 1971
• Game 31 Karpov-Kuzmin, Leningrad 1973
• Game 32 Cramling-Suba, Spain tt 1993
• Game 33 Chiburdanidze-Z.Polgar, St Petersburg 1995
• Game 34 Korchnoi-Van Wely, Antwerp 1997
• Game 35 Portisch-Chiburdanidze, Roquebrune 1998
• Postscript – What can we learn?
• Index of names
• Bibliography