My weekend reading

…was the new and absolutely delightful Judit Polgar: How I Beat Fischer’s Record.

The publishing house, Quality Chess, have come up with, well, yet another quality chess book.

The volume (the first of three) reads as an instructional manual, with a  number of personal annotations and helpful and not-overwhelming analysis. Some of her complete games are annotated towards the end, all up to and including the tender age of 15 years and a few months, when she became a Grandmaster (beating Bobby Fischer’s record by about a month). I can read through this without a chess board and play through most of the very enjoyable analysis in my mind, as there are lots of great diagrams so you don’t get lost. Judit doesn’t carry the ego that many male chess players do, so her comments are a true breath of fresh air – she is free to praise her chess rivals, for example - yet her brilliance is every bit as dazzling as the best male players, and she is clearly also an energetic and inspiring teacher.

This has to be one of my favourite chess books of late. Click here for a pdf sample