11.05.2005 Artur Jusupov on books

What are your favorite chess books? Did your preferences change over the years?

It is difficult to recall all my favorites from scratch... The taste is changing inevitably over the years, but that does not affect the books I like most. My favorite genre is world champions annotating their games: the collections of Alekhine, Botvinnik, Smyslov, Fischer, Karpov... However, the creativity of 'almost champions' is no less valuable – 'One hundred games' by Keres, selected games of Korchnoi. I found quite a few new ideas in Korchnoi's annotations!

I think that "My system" by Nimzovich and "International tournament of grandmasters" by Bronstein are classical books. I would like to highlight Soviet 'Black series' (biographies and selected games of top players – ed.) Recently I've read Tal's book – a collection of his magazine articles.

I guess I be unbiased when speaking about Dvoretsky's books, but I quite like them too, especially the most recent one, 'Endgame Manual'.

Do you make a distinction between 'interesting' and 'useful' books?

In my opinion if you don't enjoy a book, you don't have to read it. If a certain book does not impress me, then it is probably so poorly written that studying it does not make sense.

Of course, there is a great selection of applied books, like puzzle collections. These books are needed, but it is difficult to make an original work in this genre, so most of such writings look alike. I prefer to use Dvoretsky's books for my training and teaching, because of the baffling complexity of the exercises.

Everyone says that chess is changing. Does the chess literature change as well?

It is difficult to miss the changes. There are more publications now than before, but the quantitative progress did not turn into the qualitative. The only change is that now there are less analytical errors, because of computers. However, there is a negative side of a computer influence, too. I would like to criticize Kasparov's books a little, if you don't mind. I think it could be more exciting if Garry left out a computer and gave the readers his own view on chess problems of those games. The annotations of a world champion, even if not 100%-prefect from analytical point of view, are always more interesting than computer analysis. But this is my own opinion, and I do not thrust it.

Which chess books could be interesting for people that do not play chess, in your opinion? Could recruit new players?

I think the chess players' biographies could excite a general reader. Clearly written and nicely illustrated books for beginners attract more people into playing chess.

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Questions were asked by Misha Savinov.

This article is published with permission of Association of Chess Professionals