On Mar 12, 5:06 am, "Wlodzimierz Holsztynski (Wlod)"
wrote:

You were (greatly :-) disappointed because you didn't
peruse the introduction to the book.

I seriously doubt that; generally speaking, I
find the text more interesting than the games
themselves. The exception is where the text
is nothing but blather.


I have the 2nd
russian edition of the book. It iincludes two intros,
both to the first and to the second edition. Bronstein
wrote in both introductions that his monography
is devoted to the middle game.

I hardly expect an author to expound on the
virtues of 1. e4 e5, 2. Nf3 Nc6, but most of
these games became "interesting" long before
any commentary whatever appeared. At the
time the games were played, most strong
chess players would have been familiar with
the then-current fashions in the openings, but
this book has been raved about for decades
afterward, and there is a gaping hole between
the more recent fashions, and what was then
well-known.

Perusing the recommendations given on rgc,
it becomes apparent that the older such a
work is, the greater its chances of being
praised in the same manner as this book has
been. My conclusion is that people tend to
recommend books which were recommended
to them, years, if not decades earlier, for the
quality of such books is simply not up to par;
not up to the standards which would bring the
books to the top of any purely objective list.

Example: Basic Chess Endings, as we know,
is filled to overflowing with analytical errors, yet
it has been mentioned time and again as one
of the "best" endgame books; when people
complain that they were unable to read it, the
answer is offered up: it's a reference work, not
a romance novel. But that brings us right back
to /quality/ again; a reference should have few
if any careless errors, unlike GM Fine's effort.
Now, if it was not possible to write without so
many errors "creeping in", then we would have
to choose among the possibilities using some
other criteria; but in fact, there /are/ endgame
books with no discernible errors, let alone
enough for a compendium of them to render
another book in its own right, as with BCE.

Now that I have a very strong chess engine
handy, I could probably look over the gaping
holes in GM Bronstien's famous work, but I
now have the impression that all these
recommendations are worthless; just look
at some of the books highly recommended
here-- they are mediocre at best, while a lot
of more modern works are systematically
overlooked. It's nostalgia that rules the day,
not quality.

If you go to the Web site jeremysilman.com,
you will find what is purportedly the biggest
collection of chess book reviews extant; but
looking over some of these, I discovered that
books on the primary reviewers' favorite chess
openings are covered in-depth, while books on
say, cave paintings by hump-backed camels
are glossed over, not really reviewed at all.

There is a /huge/ variance in the length and
depth of the reviews, and as the averages
indicate, even the numerical scores given by
the various reviewers vary widely in meaning.
For one or two reviewers, a book given a 9
means it was fairly good, while for others, a
9 means it is the finest book ever written, on
a pet line in the reviewer's very favorite chess
opening. It's all subjective, and sometimes,
very, very shallow.


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