Best books by / about Karpov

[Ian Jamieson]

Hi.

I was showing a friend my chess book collection yesterday and I realised I have no books specifically by / about Karpov.

Can anyone recommend what they think are the best books by / about Karpov?

[Jonathan Bryant]

Can anyone recommend what they think are the best books by / about Karpov?

There are other more obvious places to start, but the Keene/Hartston book on the 74 Candidates' Final with Korchnoi shouldn't be overlooked. It's an instant, but by the standards of that genre a good one. Certainly infinitely better than some of the later books on World Championship matches that went out under RDK's name.

Very decent book, although the focus is more on Korchnoi than Karpov so perhaps not ideal for your purposes.

[Paul McKeown]

Anatoly Karpov's Best Games, written by Karpov himself. Batsford, 1996. ISBN 0 7134 7843 8. Quite a good read, interesting, well annotated games, albeit a tad self-congratulatory in places. Alternatively, I have heard that Kasparov's book on his immediate great predecessor is supposed to be good, although I don't have it myself.

[Paul Cooksey]

I'm part way through Tibor Karolyi's two volume Karpov's Strategic Wins, published by Quality last year. I'd recommend it whole heartedly. In fairness, it does not contain much biographical. Rather it is an experienced IM trainer trying to explain Karpov's play. His earlier book Anatoly Karpov, Engame Virtuso is good too. Perhaps a little more didactic.

I can't think of anything I'd recommend by Karpov himself. I think the received wisdom is that Karpov never had much interest in writing, and the quality of any book with his name on the cover is entirely dependent on the efforts of the co-writer or ghost writer

[Mike Gunn]

Karpov wrote a series of books on openings: The Open Game in Action, The Semi-Open Game in Action, The Closed Openings in Action and The Semi-Closed Openings in Action. English translations were published by Batsford in 1989. They constitute collections of GM games from the 80s with detailed discussion by Karpov of lines etc.

[Paul McKeown]

I can't think of anything I'd recommend by Karpov himself. I think the received wisdom is that Karpov never had much interest in writing, and the quality of any book with his name on the cover is entirely dependent on the efforts of the co-writer or ghost writer

I agree to a degree with Paul C, but I would say that the Batsford book I suggested above is, if not unputdownable in the way some well known books by Alekhine, Euwe, Tal, Bronstein or Fischer are, is still quite a reasonable read. I would give it a decent 6 out of 10.

I wouldn't recommend "Anatoly Karpov My 300 Best Games", Karpov and Amannazarov, Retorika-A, 1997, ISBN 9984-9229-0-1 at all, though. It is simply an annofritzed selection published Informator language-less style, complete with horrible photographs of Karpov playing snooker, tennis, etc., which leave you with the impression that Karpov struggled to actually lift the tennis racquet. The best parts of that book are the selection itself, presumably by Karpov himself, and the endgame selection at the end, which is worth studying. Best avoided - ask someone who has it which games Karpov selected, find them on your chess database and switch on your favourite engine. 3/10.

I have another book by an American publisher from the 1970s with an annotated collection of Karpov's games, but I can't seem to lay my hands on it. If it turns up I will let you know more, but I remember browsing it from time to time and thinking, "meh".

Karpov wrote a series of books on openings: The Open Game in Action, The Semi-Open Game in Action, The Closed Openings in Action and The Semi-Closed Openings in Action. English translations were published by Batsford in 1989. They constitute collections of GM games from the 80s with detailed discussion by Karpov of lines etc.

Yes. He also wrote "Winning with the Spanish" and "Beating the Grünfeld", both published by Batsford.

Beating the Grünfeld, Karpov, Batsford 1992, ISBN 0 7134 6468 2
Winning with the Spanish, Karpov, Batsford 1994, ISBN 0 7134 6471 2

Both contain a selection of annotated games in those openings, selected from lines that Karpov considered at the time to create the greatest difficulties for Black. The games selected include some of Karpov's own games, some even from his world championship matches against Kasparov. Both are again reasonable books, although from a theoretical point of view probably outdated, particularly the Grünfeld book.

[Mick Norris]

I read "Anatoly Karpov: Chess is My Life" 1 November 1979 Pergamon Press, ISBN-10: 0080231195, ISBN-13: 978-0080231198

I used it when doing a dissertation on Karpov in 6th form (I guess 1981)

I came into chess post Fisher, and Karpov was the best player - unfortunately, I attempted to copy him, which set my chess back for ages, well, permanently

If I had taken his advice to study endgames more, then who knows?

[Ian Jamieson]

Thanks for all the suggestions.

/edit I'd forgotten about Karolyi's books. /edit

I've got Kasparov's volume on Korchnoi and Karpov although I've read more of the part on Korchnoi than the part on Karpov.

Given this I've ordered a copy of Karolyi's Endgame Virtuoso book rather than his Best Games.

[John Upham]

Amongst others I have is:

"My 300 Best Games" (allegedly) by Anatoly Karpov, published by Murad Amannazarov in 1997, ISBN 9984-9229-0-1.

It is from the Chess V-I-P-'s series.

Essentially, a dump from Chess Informant with some monochrome images interspersed in a fairly random fashion.

There is a Foreword from AK so hopefully he had something to do with it. It commands a high price on abebooks.co.uk

[Paul McKeown]

John, that's the same one I panned above, giving 3/10. Can't think why anyone would want to buy "Essentially, a dump from Chess Informant with some monochrome images interspersed in a fairly random fashion.", never mind pay a high price for it!

[John Upham]

John, that's the same one I panned above, giving 3/10. Can't think why anyone would want to buy "Essentially, a dump from Chess Informant with some monochrome images interspersed in a fairly random fashion.", never mind pay a high price for it!

Apologies for not noticing which makes my assessment independently in agreement I suppose!

I suspect the high price a is a reflection of its rarity rather than its desirability.

[Geoff Chandler]

I had Peter Marklands book on Karpov (printed 1975).

It did little for me then but I did enjoy it and pretended I knew
what was happening. It was one of the first British Books published
in algebraic. (long algebraic...1.e2-e4 e7-e5) the notes if I recall
were in short algebraic. (was this the first UK book published in algebraic?)

David Levy's Book on Karpov from the same year in English descriptive
is one I still have. It's good, I've always found Levy readable.

As I write some lad in Peterborough is selling a copy on Ebay. £10 + £2.95

http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Chess-Book-Da ... 0870027950

'Anatoly Karpov, The Road to the World Chess Championship' (1976 descriptive.....cost 75p!)
by Robert Byrne Is good and I was playing over a few of the Spassky - Karpov games
from it just the other day.

I mention these three 1970's books because like Paul I despair at the computer generated
junk being churned out. These three have honest human sweat in the pages not cypher ink.

[Ray Sayers]

I'm part way through Tibor Karolyi's two volume Karpov's Strategic Wins, published by Quality last year. I'd recommend it whole heartedly. In fairness, it does not contain much biographical. Rather it is an experienced IM trainer trying to explain Karpov's play. His earlier book Anatoly Karpov, Engame Virtuso is good too. Perhaps a little more didactic.

I can't think of anything I'd recommend by Karpov himself. I think the received wisdom is that Karpov never had much interest in writing, and the quality of any book with his name on the cover is entirely dependent on the efforts of the co-writer or ghost writer

From what I have read, this sums it up perfectly.

I think I will try Karolyi's books.

I grew up when Karpov had been handed Fischer's title (I know, bear with me) and he was playing against Korchnoi. Of course, I was rooting for Korchnoi because of the whole East v West thing. I just dumped Karpov in the 'boring robot' drawer.

It wasn't until years later that I appreciated just how good Karpov was. I guess like most great players he made it look a bit too easy. But eventually I realised that if Kapsarov had not been around, there was probably no one who would take the world title off him for 20 years. And that's impressive.

So now I have been studying Kaprov's games.

[Jonathan Bryant]

Karpov wrote a series of books on openings: The Open Game in Action, The Semi-Open Game in Action, The Closed Openings in Action and The Semi-Closed Openings in Action ....

I was going to mention these. From memory - I stupidly got rid of my copies - these give a really good snapshot of the important games in world chess in the late 1980s. Certainly a lot of Karpov of games. I seem to remember a lot of copies of Open Games in Action available at the second hand book stall in foyer at the London Chess Classic last year.

That said, I find it hard to believe that Karpov had much to do with the writing of these books. I'm somewhat sceptical of some of the others listed in this thread too.

[Jonathan Rogers]

This is very impressionistic, but of the post war world champions, only Botvinnik, Fischer and Kasparov seem to have strong claims as serious writers/annotators (of course, if Bronstein had won in 1951 ...! and whether you count Khalifman as a world champion is a matter of chess religion). Some may suggest Tal but my impression is that he found serious writing a bit of a bore and would rather go for light hearted annotations, a la Larsen.