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American Grandmaster: Four Decades of Chess Adventures (Everyman Chess)
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$ 20.71
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| Retail Value |
$ 24.95 |
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$ 4.24 (17%) |
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| Item Number |
310842 |
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Item Description...
Product Description
Joel Benjamin is one of the most prominent faces in the history of US chess. At thirteen years of age he broke Bobby Fischer’s record as the youngest ever national master, and this was followed by countless tournament successes. Perhaps most famously, in 1997 he hit the headlines when he became the chess consultant for IBM’s Deep Blue computer, which made history by beating World Champion Garry Kasparov in an epic encounter.
In American Grandmaster,Benjamin takes the reader on a journey through chess adventures spanning more than thirty years. Tracing through his own career, from being a prodigy in the ‘Fischer boom’ era thorough to an experienced Grandmaster with many titles, Benjamin is in a unique position to highlight the major changes that have occurred both in US and international chess throughout the last four decades.
This book includes:
*Instructive annotations of his favourite games
*Anecdotes and reflections from thirty years of US and worldwide chess events
*New perspectives on the legendary Kasparov-Deep Blue match
*Insights into how Grandmasters earn their living
*A deep look into the current major issues of chess
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Item Specifications...
Pages 272
Dimensions: Length: 8.98" Width: 5.98" Height: 0.87"
Weight: 0.57 lbs.
Release Date Mar 4, 2008
ISBN 185744552X
EAN 9781857445527
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Availability 2 units.
Availability accurate as of Jul 31, 2010 01:51.
Usually ships within one to two business days from La Vergne, TN.
Orders shipping to an address other than a confirmed Credit Card / Paypal Billing address may incur and additional processing delay. |
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Reviews - What do our customers think?
 | Top notch game collection Jul 4, 2008 |
| Everything you could want in a master game collection; great battles against many of the best players of the past 40 years; nicely selected games and diagrams; well-written and entertaining. GM Benjamin's love of the game and the top-level chess culture shines through. He brings his 4 decades of experience as a chess pro to life with colorful anecdotes and recollections of players and events. A gem, probably one of the top American chess memoirs ever written! | | | | Entertaining and Witty Memoir May 15, 2008 |
I had intended to buy Joel Benjamin's autobiography when it came out, but it fell off my radar screen. Seeing the two widely disparate reviews on this site, however (2-star and 5-star) prompted me to finally get the book so I could see for myself which reviewer was more accurate. After reading the book, I side squarely with the reviewer who gave it five stars. I have read many chess bios and auotbios, and Benjamin's book falls safely in the very top level of this genre.
For me, the most appealing aspects of "American Grandmaster" are Benjamin's humorous turns of phrase and his anecdotes that place you right at the scene of a long-completed tournament (for example, he describes a loss to future GM Grivas of Greece, then unknown to Benjamin, from the white side of the King's Indian. Grivas begins the post-mortem by announcing to Benjamin, "I am an expert in the King's Indian Defense.") Such minor braggadoccio will be well-understood by anyone who's played in chess tournaments.
Also appealing in a general way is the maturation of Benjamin from the semi-smartass twentysomething grandmaster who published the funny but often sophomoric (in a charming way) magazine "Chess Chow" to the more philosophical fortysomething grandmaster who forgives past slights (even giving Gata Kamsky his due) and mixes in his regrets and failures, often quite painful, in with his triumphs. It's disarming and fascinating (noting an early speculative knight sac, Benjamin comments: "I can only marvel at the optimism of my past self").
I have probably read forty chess biographies and I'm not sure any of them have been written in as charming a style as "American Grandmaster." Highly recommended.
| | | | American Grandmaster speaks volumes.. Mar 26, 2008 |
I have only positive things to say about GM Joel Benjamin's "American Grandmaster". It is one of only a few chess books that has held my interest from cover to cover -and I have almost 400 chess books in my library!
Unlike the previous reviewer, I found the book not only extremely entertaining but also instructive. Anyone that has seen Joel's lecture series on ICC "Game of the Week" knows just how good an analyst he is, and in American Grandmaster he does not dissapoint.
An interesting selection of games that span his career containing opening novelties and surprises (from the bizarre Sjodin Gambit to main stream Sicilians and Indian Defenses), fascinating middlegame combinations (like HIS Mona Lisa!), and subtle and tricky endgames such as his critical encounter with GM Zagrebelney in the 1993 World Team Championship where the USA took home the Gold! Really, there is something here for everyone.
The Chapter on Deep Blue was very revealing and interesting but the closing chapter: "..the Current State of Chess in America" was especially thought provoking where he addresses some of the very real problems facing the future of American Chess -- and presents some interesting ideas such as substituting perks (lessons with GM's, etc.,) for some of the big prizes to class players like myself.
This perspective from one of Americas most prominent and well liked Grandmasters belongs in every chess players collection.
| | |  | Anecdotal Mess Mar 22, 2008 |
By way of establishing the context for my review, I am a USCF "class" player born in roughly the same generation as the author. I've played in several World Opens and other USCF tournaments over the years, including ones in which the author participated. I've never met the author, and have no previous opinion about him. I am not a good chess player, just a class "C," but I am a literate person who enjoys good writing about chess and thousands of other topics. I have a decent collection of some of the better books ever written on chess. The best ones bring together profound chess knowledge, thorough analysis, expressive writing, and excellent editing. Unfortunately, this book is poorly written, sloppily edited, and rather stingy on analysis.
As an example of the laziness which to my mind characterizes the creation of this book, although it contains an index of opponents, there is no index of openings. How difficult would it have been to provide an index of openings in the era of Chessbase and other openings databases?
There is no flow at all to the writing, and one learns very little about the author. Indeed, the book reads as if the author jotted down a note or two on a Post-It for each tournament or match in which he participated, and then threw them all in a shoe box, and sorted them out many years later to assemble the book. The book is broken into chapters which run chronologically within each chapter, but whose organizing principles are the types of chess competition featured in each, e.g. team chess, international circuit, US Championship, etc. The anecdotes are very trivial, for the most part, and do little to illuminate the personalities with whom Joel Benjamin interacted throughout his chess career. He occasionally takes shots at players he doesn't like, although there is sometimes very little explanation for his dislike. To take the example that I found most disturbing, one could consider several mentions of Sammy Reshevsky, a truly great player who played on equal terms against some of the towering legends in chess including Capablanca, Alekhine, Botvinnik, Fine, Flohr, Smyslov, etc. Reshevsky is treated like something rather less than an annoying gnat in a brief anecdote about a disputed draw proposal between Reshevsky and Benjamin's buddy John Fedorowicz. The one chapter which starts to get a bit past the merely anecdotal is "Blue Period" where the author recounts his role in the Kasparov-Deep Blue match of 1996.
Towards the end of the book, the author paints a very bleak picture of the state of American chess in general and professional chess in particular. His assessment is, in my view, correct. What he apparently fails to realize, like so many others who bemoan the state of "professional chess" in America is that American society has rendered its judgment on the matter: chess is best left as an amateur pursuit. Chess is a beautiful and noble game, but, in the end, it is a game, not a profession. It is said that even the great Paul Morphy's proposal of marriage to a Louisiana woman was turned down because he was "a mere chessplayer." (Morphy's Chess Masterpieces, Reinfeld and Soltis, 1974). Subsequent generations of chess enthusiasts should have taken the hint: find a career where you can earn a good living, and play chess on the side.
If you want a sparsely annotated collection of Joel Benjamin's best games, or if you want some behind-the-scenes reporting on the Kasparov-Deep Blue matches, this book might be worth picking up. But don't expect much more than that. | | | Write your own review about American Grandmaster: Four Decades of Chess Adventures (Everyman Chess)
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