I’ve always been interested in the ‘styles’ of the great players – classifying and cross-classifying them. Obviously such classification is subjective and a bit artificial. A ‘propensity’ towards one type of play is probably more accurate than to say a player has a specific style. If you make a list of a half-dozen styles you can see most of the greats have more than one of them. It is fun to see how the styles of one player intersect or don’t intersect with others.

That said I’ve enjoyed the Chess Secrets series (Everyman) which groups players into styles and analyzes their games with emphasis on how their games reflect stylistic choice in moves and plans.

Chess Secrets is now four volumes. The first (and still the best) was The Giants of Strategy by Neil McDonald highlighting Kramnik, Karpov, Petrosian, Capablanca and Nimzovitch vis-à-vis strategic motifs such as Restraint and How to Use the Pawn Ram. I consider this book one of the best of the past decade; the annotations are sharp, germane to the style issue and quite insightful.

Great Attackers by Colin Crouch, the second in the series, featured Kasparov, Tal and Stein. It is also a decent volume but not in the same league as Strategy.

The third volume, The Giants of Power Play by Neil McDonald featuring Topalov, Geller, Bronstein, Alekhine and Morphy was also excellent. All three of these volumes offer the reader short but meaty introductions explaining the particular style presented in the book. The games keyed well off those ideas although more so in the McDonald tomes than in Crouch’s.

Comes the most recent Chess Secrets, Heroes of Classical Chess by Craig Pritchett highlighting Carlsen, Anand, Fischer, Smyslov, Rubinstein.

This one was a real disappointment! It has a two page discussion of what Pritchett labels the ‘classical direct’ style. Here’s a quote: ‘By ‘classically direct’ chess I imply a kind of universality of play that embraces all styles, in a sense, and transcends narrow boundaries – a style that is based on such overarching attributes as clarity, energy, toughness, ambition and a fundamental sense of analytic ‘correctness’.’ Whew! Talk about gobbly-gook. My eighth grade English teacher would have tossed such writing back to us with a generous helping of red ink. When I see writing this weak – high on adverbs and adjectives, low on nouns - it is an alarm the author really doesn’t have anything to say.

The introductions to the individual players are yawners with more historical pabulum than stylistic insight. While the ‘hard’ analysis is sharp, the notes don’t really relate to the stated theme except in a few obligatory en passants. Those annotations obviously cannot spin off the book’s introduction since – as mentioned – it was two pages of not-much-of-anything. The entire book has the feel of just using the classical style as an excuse to crank out another volume in the series.

I suppose we may see one or two more Secrets – Masters of Defense, Heroes of Technique, etc. If so, I hope the editors go back to McDonald for them.

At one time I tried to purchase almost every new chess book published in English. I gave that up for two reasons about six or seven years ago: 1) There were just too many coming out to read all of them, 2) Ninety-five percent of them were worthless. I don’t consider a bunch of games tossed together under a very loose and weak theme and a catchy title as enough to warrant a book; an Internet article perhaps but not a book. Everyman and Gambit are the worst offenders in this regard, although they’ve both had a few winners along the way. But, again, the percentage of junk, especially from the Brit publishers, is just too high.

I think of the current mass markets, Quality Publishing has the highest winners-to-losers ratio.

Bottom line, it's an excellent read. Yasser is a natural story teller - the kind of guy that would be fun to hang out with - and it comes through in his writing.

There are lots of anecdotes, and they are revealing! Lots of juicy bits here, including some sensitive areas, but it all comes across with compassion, humor and honesty. I understand these huge chess figures (including Victor Korchnoi) in a way I never quite got before. I was intruiged by his dedication of the book to Bent Larsen as, "My one true chess hero". Hm, tell me more - and he does.

I like chess books best that combine stories and description with games and annotations, like David Bronstein's The Sorcerer's Apprentice, so this is definitely my kind of book.

He doesn't cherry pick the games, and shows each of them, warts and all. The analysis is simple enough to follow, but interesting even for advanced players (I would guess :) Often it shows the lines he was considering at that moment during the game, revealing insight into his GM thinking process.

I've been playing through all the games on a board, following the simple annotations, and it's been inspirational. I think he got the simple to complex ratio just right, allowing frequent jaunts into sublines, but not taking you too deep. It feels educational; I'm checking out every subline he shows. That's not something I can say about many chess books.

If I were pressed to pin point a weak area in the book, it would be that because he's not picking his best games, but showing all the games with the world champions, there are some that leave a little to be desired. But, if you are like me, it doesn't matter, as I'll find something to learn from any 2600+ grandmaster game. Yasser's style is positional and active, so it's a nice balance. He's very honest with his errors, and you can really feel his pain at times. He also has a strong competitive nature so his triumphs come through clearly.

Always there are anecdotes and stories surrounding the games, the characters and the situations. I think due to Yasser's open personality and social adroitness, he has been privy to rare friendships and situations very few others have had.

Yasser has a unique insight into the politics, and he explores some of those controversial areas as well.

Yasser's love for the game, and for people, really comes through in the book. It makes me proud to have looked up to him as an impressionable pre-teen rookie.

Has anyone seen that book with a title someting like "Chess Genius...."? its a sort of 'man behind the man' theme, talks about people like Danilov, trainers of the champions, stuff like that. A new wrinkle in chess books, might be good.