Reviews for Curacao 1962: The Battle of Minds that Shook the Chess World

The average rating for Curacao 1962: The Battle of Minds that Shook the Chess World based on 2 reviews is 4.5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2015-02-22 00:00:00 Amy Martin You have to love Jan Timman's analysis of chess games. Timman has been one of the best annotators and analysis experts for a long time. You get the feeling Timman knew most of the players - the comments and quotes (especially Korchnoi, of course) are priceless. He also refers to several other books players wrote later in their life. After winning the world championship in 1960 and the losing it in 1961, Tal is still in prime form. Bobby Fischer is fresh from winning the Interzonal tournament and at just 20 he is considered a favorite. In the end, Fischer finishes in the middle of the pack. How could this be? Fischer wrote an article for Sports Illustrated titled "How the Russians Fixed World Chess" in which he accuses the Soviet players of conspiring against them. In this book you do see an incredible number of short Grand Master draws between the Soviets (five of the seven players). Going over the games it looks like Tal (a rebel for sure) would have nothing to do with any plan, if there was one. Korchnoi, seems to collapse after the six-day rest break at St. Martin. What really happened? Who knows? The facts are too few, but it has the makings of a cold war movie. After this tournament, Fischer drops out of world chess for a long time, and the rules for how the challenger to the world champion would be selected were changed. Thus the title of the book. Despite many short draws, there are some great games in this book. The pictures and stories make you feel like you are following the tournament as it happened.

Review # 2 was written on 2013-07-16 00:00:00 Cailla Marie Thomas Timman does a wonderful job analyzing the games as sporting struggles and in the context of the times (i.e. the Soviet players' detente). One thing is clear Petrosian was clearly playing at a level above everyone else.