Jim West On Chess: Reviews of "King's Gambit"

Tuesday, October 9, 2007

Reviews of "King's Gambit"

Paul Hoffman's new book King's Gambit has received favorable reviews, not only in Entertainment Weekly, People Magazine, and Newsday, but in The New York Times as well.

I particularly enjoyed reading the excerpt on Kasparov's simultaneous exhibition game against Nelson Farber because I just played Farber this past Sunday at the Marshall Chess Club. It was a 70-move marathon. First I stood better. Then Farber missed a win. I reciprocated by missing a win of my own. Finally the game ended in a draw.

"My study of chess was accompanied by a strong attraction to music, and it was probably thanks to this that from childhood I became accustomed to thinking of chess as an art, and have never regarded it as anything else, for all the science and sport involved in it. And, moreover, an art which in some ways is closer to music than it is customary to think. Perhaps chess and music are drawn together by laws of harmony and beauty which are difficult to formulate and difficult to grasp, or perhaps by something else." - Vasily Smyslov