I recently completed Chess Duels: My Games With The World Champions (Everyman Chess, 2010) by GM Yasser Seirawan. As part of my study/training process, on a daily basis at lunchtime I normally work through a book of annotated games, ideally written by a master-level player that showcases their internal thought process. There are of course a number of good "Best Games" type books out there - including ones I've previously completed - but I found this one to be uniquely valuable in several respects:
Kasparov's retirement left the chess world in a sad state. It was denied the joy of seeing Kasparov play, and the World Championship title itself no longer seemed to have legitimacy. After all, the title only meant something if chess players around the world thought it did. With multiple and ever-changing Champions, and shorter and shorter matches, the chess world could really only look to the rating list to determine who was "number one."
- Seirawan includes all his career games with the world champions he played against, not just the best ones, which immediately differentiates this collection from others. While in fact he has an excellent competitive record against them, some of the games (win, loss or draw) inevitably feature his blunders and bad decisions. This balance makes the book even more valuable for instructional purposes, since he can provide firsthand explanations of not just why moves (or evaluations) were incorrect, but the thought process behind the choices. It also serves to humanize and normalize even his bad play, which of course we can all relate to from our own experience, making us feel better about chess.
- The background stories he shares about himself and his opponents are similarly humanizing and provide interesting context to the games. I found the content overall to be appropriately balanced and largely focused on chess-relevant themes, rather than trying to be too biographical. He had particularly fascinating accounts of some of the behind-the-scenes activities of Fischer and Kasparov.
- While the events of international chess politics are of course historically dated (through 2010), this is still the best review and set of insights into those World Championship-level issues that I've seen. Personally one of the reasons I was turned off from an interest in tournament chess for a number of years after college was the interminable series of Kasparov-Karpov matches, which were followed by a fragmented, confusing and opaque world championship process. Seirawan provides an insider and largely objective viewpoint on all this, without letting it become too much of a rant.
- For those familiar with his live commentary style, Seirawan's authorial "voice" is similarly clear and well-organized, as well as being appropriately humorous (often self-deprecating) while still taking his subject matter seriously.
- Factors that were behind historical world championship controversies are still relevant to what we see in today's top-level chess scene, as evident in the following excerpt, where Seirawan comments on Garry Kasparov's retirement from competition in 2005:
