62 brilliant games involving the best players in the world,
Igor Stohl has selected 62 outstanding games from recent years and analysed them in painstaking depth. Here he presents his findings to chess enthusiasts, who will find the games entertaining and the annotations both instructive and illuminating. Stohl is an outstanding theoretical expert, so the opening phase of each game reads like a lesson in the key strategic aspects of the opening chosen, with a critical survey of modern trends. The middlegame is dissected and the critical decisions subjected to keen scrutiny – we are invited inside Stohl’s laboratory to join him in the quest for the truth. The endgame phase, if reached, is handled with similar erudition, with insights into the grandmaster’s approach to questions of technique. Following each game there is a discussion of the most important lessons to be learned.
The expanded and revised new edition of this award-winning work features 12 new top-level games from the period 2000-2007 annotated in great depth – about 15% new material. There are also corrections to the existing notes and a revised Introduction.
About the Author
Igor Stohl is a well-known grandmaster from Slovakia. He plays in several national leagues and is a noted opening theoretician. His thorough annotations frequently appear in Ceskoslovensky Sach, Informator and ChessBase Magazine. The first edition of Instructive Modern Chess Masterpieces won the United States Chess Federation Cramer Award for Best Book.
Reviews
“The reader will have to work very hard to get the most out of GM Stohl’s magnificent annotations (some of the variations are very long) but the extra effort will be well rewarded by a greater understanding of extremely high level chess. It’s a serious book for serious players; elephants will bathe for months – if not years – in its deep waters but gnats should look elsewhere for fear of drowning.” — Sean Marsh, marshtowers.blogspot.com
“GM Igor Stohl truly looks in-depth at all key aspects of the game!” — John Elburg, chessbooks.nl
“The first edition of this book was … very well received and won various awards. The new edition has been substantially expanded and, in addition to the 50 games of the original work, now contains 12 games played subsequent to the first edition. As well as these additional games, the author has revisited his original annotations. Though Stohl’s emphasis lies mainly on the later stages of the game, he has also provided a lot of background material on the openings of the chosen games. In summary, it would be very hard to beat this volume for depth of annotation and the care that has gone into its production. It constitutes a modern classic.” — John Saunders, BCM