Chess Duels: My Games with the World Champions

by Yasser Seirawan

Four-time US Champion Yasser Seirawan provides a fascinating and highly entertaining account of his games and encounters with the world champions of chess including Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov, Bobby Fischer, Boris Spassky, Tigran Petrosian, Mikhail Tal, Vassily Smyslov, Mikhail Botvinnik and Max Euwe.

Having been involved in frequent battles against world champions over a 25-year period, Seirawan is in an ideal position to reveal how it really feels to be facing the legends of the game.

He describes and analyses, in depth, his most memorable encounters – both famous victories and painful defeats, against the best chessplayers of the last 50 years.

During this time Seirawan has also been highly active in off-the-board chess activities. This has brought him into close personal contact with many of these champions. In,"Chess Duels: My Games with the World Champions,"Seirawan recounts many stories involving these giants of the game - giving an intriguing insight into their personalities away from the board.

Genres: Chess, Nonfiction, Reference, Biography

432 pages, Hardcover

First published April 28, 2009

About the author

Yasser Seirawan is an American chess grandmaster and four-time United States champion. He is a published chess author and commentator. His peak FIDE rating was 2658, which he reached in November, 2011.

Reviews

[Alberto · Rating 5 out of 5]

Outstanding

The games are well annotated, and the anecdotes are entertaining and insightful. A much better read than the similarly themed Timman's Titans.

[Jesse Kraai · Rating 3 out of 5]

Did a video review here:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RG0FM...

[Alex Chua · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent chess book full of interesting games and stories.

[Serge Pierro · Rating 5 out of 5]

Back when I was an active tournament chess player, there was one publication that I considered a “must have” and that was Yasser Seirwan’s “Inside Chess”. This bi-weekly publication was my main means of getting the latest national/international chess news on a timely basis, along with interviews and analysis (pre-internet days). What made “Inside Chess” especially entertaining/useful were the excellent annotations by Yasser himself.

So it should come as no surprise that the book “Chess Duels” would feature many of the excellent insights provided by Yasser , as well as many interesting anecdotes that were as interesting - and sometimes, more interesting, than the games themselves! Yasser has a knack for being able to place himself “outside” the situation and provide excellent insight at the position at hand - even at the cost of exposing his own flaws. A strong player and humble man, Yasser is one of the best instructors/annotators out there, so this book will prove to be a treat to anyone who is not familiar with his work.

Oh... and as a bonus, all of the games are against former World Champions!

[Doug · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don’t think this was Yasser’s best work. I have read many of his books and loved them all. I found this book was a bit of a slog. His humor still came across and kept it interesting as was the history surrounding the games with the champions. But it soon felt like a slog about 1/2 way through and I lost interest in finishing it as I have “ Pawn Power” and “The First book of Morphy” on deck and will move to those. I may come back and finish this, but not right now, too many other good chess books waiting! It is a good game collection though.😎

[Dave · Rating 4 out of 5]

A memoir of an American GM, and renowned chess author, teacher, and commentator. A pleasure to read. Filled with engaging anecdotes and light game analysis.

[Peter Murphy · Rating 5 out of 5]

Yasser is the goat