Re-Engineering The Classics: A Silicon Reappraisal of Thirty-Five Classic Games

Are you ready for the truth about forty of the most fascinating and complex chess games ever played by World Champions and other top grandmasters? Grandmaster Matthew Sadler and renowned chess writer Steve Giddins take a fresh look at some classic games ranging from Anderssen – Dufresne, played in 1852, to Botvinnik – Bronstein (1951) and Geller – Euwe (1953) played a century later. They unleashed the collective power of Leela, Komodo and Stockfish to help us humans understand what really what really happened in these games of World Champions and fan favorites such as Bent Larsen, Michael Basman and Tony Miles.

The first engines improved our understanding of the classic games by pointing out the tactical mistakes in the original, contemporary game notes. But the expertise of Matthew Sadler, in his third book on the us if engines to deepen our chess understanding, is to uncover the positional course of a game. The modern engines, who came alive after 2018, can change our whole perception of the strategic and technical pattern of a game.

You will for example earn to appreciate and understand a classic Capablanca endgame. A classic Petrosian exchange sacrifice. A winning, and then losing, king-hunt endgame between Spassky and Tal. You will see how Bent Larsen already understood the strength as the h-pawn march far before that was revealed by AlphaZero. We will see new strategic ideas and plans that human players had not previously thought of. Even the greatest King’s Indian player ever, Viktor Korchnoi, would be amazed by the engine’s unique ideas on how break through on the Queen side.

The most instructive games are often those which are more strategic and technical. That is why the modern chess engine is such a helpful tool to enrich our understanding. With these engines the authors have re-engineered a wonderful and highly entertaining series of games, generating dozens of positional chess lessons that will help every club player and expert to improve their game.