Botvinnik's Best Games 1947-1970

Book excerpt: Mikhail Botvinnik won the World Chess Championship in 1948 and held the title with two breaks until 1963. Botvinnik announced his retirement from chess in 1970. This book covers the entire period when Botvinnik waa World Chess Champion. Of the great postwar chess players, one figure stands out above all others - the Soviet grandmaster, Mikhail Botvinnik. With the exception of two one-year interludes this dedicated electrical engineer was world champion for fifteen years - from 1948 to 1963; on the second occasion that he regained his title - from Tal - he was in his fiftieth year. It was not, however, until 1970 that he announced his "official retirement" from international competition. "Chess." wrote Botvinnik, "is an art which illustrates the beauty of logic." He could not abide errors which spoiled the beauty of the game, and the secret of his success was thorough preparation and routine, which fully justified his own self-confidence - and which were systematically adopted by the Soviet school. In controlled positional play, Botvinnik was an incomparable virtuoso - as Bronstein, Smyslov, and Tal, among many others, discovered. Above all, he was a perfectionist. Prefaced by a short biography, this volume - the first ever published in English presents over 100 of Botvinnik's best games over the period 1947 to 1970. Nearly all the annotations are by Botvinnik himself, and they reveal the qualities that won him the champion's title. Botvinnik's Best Games is, perhaps, the outstanding collection of the decade.