|
||||||||||||
|
|
||||||||||||
|
Chessville
Advertise to Single insert:
|
The Steinitz Papers and The Collected Works of Wilhelm Steinitz Reviewed by Mike Rosensaft
Wilhelm Steinitz, who later in life Americanized his first name to William, defeated Johann Zukertort in 1886 to become the first World Champion and, quoting Larry Parr, “introduced a new positional style of play . . . where he dominated and utterly befuddled the strongest field at that time.” Steinitz was an extremely quirky, sometimes unreasonable, but always interesting man. I dare say that he would have had a mouthful to say about this review as he regularly referred to book reviewers as “Editorial Thieves”. In many ways, chess in its modern form came from William Steinitz. Studying his life and games offers not only a thrilling romp through a sometimes scandalous and usually amusing bit of chess history, but a deeper understanding of the bedrock principles that created chess as we know it. It is with this mind set that I approached two works on William Steinitz: The Steinitz Papers, a book edited by Kurt Landsberger; and The Collected Works of Wilhelm Steinitz, a CD edited by Sid Pickard.
As noted in The Steinitz Papers, The Montreal Gazette offered this amusing, although unverified, story about Steinitz: Sometimes Steinitz became so absorbed in considering a chess problem that he would stand still in the most crowded thoroughfare. On one occasion he caused such an obstruction that a policeman told him to move on. “Excuse me,” replied Steinitz absently, “but it is your move.” The Steinitz Papers is a compilation of documents and letters written by and to William Steinitz. Albrecht Buschke, quoted in beginning of the book, notes: “Too few people (at least in the chess world) realize that even chess masters have a personal life and that one can learn more about them from their correspondence than from anything else.” This book includes almost three hundred pages of Steinitz’s letters and other documents, and offers a singular view of this great chess champion. The editor, Kurt Landsberger, is a descendent of Steinitz, and in his introduction we are treated to his own difficult journey in piecing together his lineage. Much of his own family was killed in the Holocaust, so it was difficult tracking down his ancestors, but the author finally discovered that Steinitz was his great-grand-uncle. More of this story and a more general biography of Steinitz’s life can be found in Landsberger’s other book on Steinitz: William Steinitz, Chess Champion. I note, though, that besides being an expert on Steinitz, Landsberger has a personal familial stake in this work, making the book that much more authentic and passionately written. At times, I felt as if I was breaking into a celebrity’s diary as I read through these letters. It is extremely evident that an immense amount of hard work went into compiling them. The author relentlessly trekked around Europe and the United States, searching through archives and tracking down any remnants that he could find. The result is an amazing collection of correspondences and documents that span Steinitz’s chess life. The letters reveal a chess champion that could be quite difficult at times, but usually interesting. There are dialogues between Steinitz and other prominent chess players, chess clubs, wealthy backers, magazines and newspapers, and even correspondence games that he would play with others for a small fee. Any true history buff or fan of Steinitz would love this collection and derive an immense amount of pleasure from it. It allows one to look back in time at another era of chess, and one that sometimes had surprisingly similar political problems. To be comprehensive, the editor has not left much out of this collection. This will gladden the historian, but may bore the average player. Many of the letters are quite repetitive and some of little importance. There are few, if any, editorial liberties taken, and each letter, whether boring or interesting, is laid out so that the reader can make his own determinations about the importance of each. To me, this grew tiresome after a bit and I found myself skipping letters when it was evident that they simply restated what I had read in previous correspondences. Still, the aim of the book was to be a preeminent reference work for Steinitz’s life, and taking more editorial liberties, while perhaps making it more interesting to the average reader, would have taken away some of the work’s validity.
This book is not for the reader who wants to know the life story of Steinitz.
In fact, not even a short biography is given in the collection. It
really is meant to be a primary source for serious, advanced study into
Steinitz’s life. There are short passages connecting various letters,
and these offer some insight into Steinitz’s life, but unless the reader
already has some knowledge, he will often find himself lost or confused.
As one of the most striking examples, there are numerous correspondences
back and forth between Steinitz, Zukertort, and others, in an attempt to
organize the First World Championship. However, the last letter
included in this affair is one regarding the stakes of the match, and there
is no mention of Steinitz’s eventual win. To present a complete
picture, a reader needs to pick up Landsberger's other book as well, or find
a similar biography on Steinitz. Overall, though, the book is a historic gem. There are two nice sections in the middle of the book with various photos of Steinitz memorabilia including a ticket to the Steinitz-Lasker match, various photos of Steinitz and other great chess players, newspaper clippings, telegrams, and the menu of a reception held by the New York Chess Club in honor of Steinitz. There is simply nothing else out there that can provide the kind of detailed information that this book has. It is a phenomenal book for the serious study of this interesting World Champion, but not meant for someone trying to improve their chess or wanting a complete biography on the man. The Collected Works of
Wilhelm Steinitz, similar in some ways to The Steinitz Papers,
has a slightly different focus. Sid Pickard, the editor of The
Collected Works of Wilhelm Steinitz, begins the CD with a short
introduction, explaining that the “central idea of this project is to let
Steinitz speak in his own words.” To that end, like The Steinitz
Papers, the CD is filled with Steinitz’s own writings with few editorial
comments. However, unlike Landsberger’s collection, this CD focuses on
letting Steinitz speak mainly through his own games.
If your mouth is watering right now, let me give you the other side of the coin. Almost all of the material on this CD (save the jigsaw puzzle and screensavers) is public material. Since the editor has decided not to include his own annotations or comments save a few short introductions, it is really just a compilation of publicly available material. Now, to collect all of this in one place would take a considerable amount of effort. I tried myself to find much of it on the internet and was only partially successful. For example, finding annotated games of Steinitz is not hard. You can find all of the Lasker v. Steinitz 1894 World Championship games annotated right here on Chessville. However, I could not find an electronic copy of Steinitz’s Modern Chess Instructor, although it could be available somewhere. Still, to get all of this material in one place in an easy-to-read format is certainly worth a good deal. In the games included, Steinitz’s annotations are usually very detailed, although sometimes there are only a few sentences about an important position in the game. As I expected, his comments on the opening are a bit outdated, but still interesting to read. For example, Steinitz notes that in response to 1.c4, 1...e5 “is a very strange move”, noting that e6 or f5 is preferred (he might have been surprised to find this “reversed Sicilian” so popular today -- not to mention the popularity of the Sicilian itself). However, once you get past the opening, his insights are just as applicable today as they were in the nineteenth century. His book, Modern Chess
Instructor, was meant to be a “complete course for the beginning player,”
including how to move the pieces and set up the chess board. It is an
extremely basic book, and unfortunately not the most accessible book of its
kind. There are many more easily digestible books for the absolute beginner
that weren’t written in 1889. The book does have an in depth discussion of
many classical chess openings including the Ruy Lopez, Scotch Game, and
others of that genre. However, I would recommend the book as more of a
historical novelty than one for serious study. The rest of the CD is comprised of other articles written by Steinitz on chess theory from various magazines such as the one pictured to the right, and also includes writings by Steinitz on other notable events (such as the death of Anderssen). This entire database is almost all text, but there are a few pictures here and there that show how the original article appeared. The two screensavers included are fun to have -- I enjoyed one in particular that features stamps with Steinitz on them. I must say that I had a lot of fun doing the jigsaw puzzle on my computer, but it doesn’t have the easiest controls, and, to my disappointment, I didn’t get any kind of congratulatory note when I had finished the puzzle. (Yes, I’m quibbling about whether there is a tone or note at the end of the puzzle -- having grown up with Atari and Nintendo, I expect a visual or auditory reward after completing a game!) Putting the bells and whistles aside, there is no question that the usefulness of this CD to the developing player really comes in the form of the annotated games. For the amount this CD costs, though, I couldn’t recommend it to the average player. There is so much available on the internet and so many more useful books or CDs on improvement that the price is just too high. However, if you are a big fan of Steinitz, this may be everything you dreamed of. Chess history is often severely underappreciated. Any patzer knows who Kasparov or Anand is, but few could name the first World Chess Champion without thinking about it. In fact, many erroneously think that Bobby Fischer was the only World Champion from the United States, but William Steinitz beat him to it (Steinitz moved to the United States near the middle of his chess career). Ah, but the patzer responds, if Kasparov and Steinitz played chess today, Kasparov would crush him. This is probably true. Chess opening theory has advanced so much and become such a central part of high level games that Steinitz’s more-than-a-century-old knowledge would probably cost him dearly. However, you can’t know where you are going until you know where you came from, and both of these works provide a comprehensive view into William Steinitz’s insights into chess and his own interesting life.
|
The
|
||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
.jpg)
