Korchnoi Year by Year

Volume I (1945-1968)

Hans Renette, Tibor Karolyi

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Hardback

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English

Limited Liability Company Elk and Ruby Publishing House
15 July 2023

Biography: sport; History; Chess

Viktor Korchnoi (1931 to 2016) was a giant of the chess world with a career embracing seventy years and over 5,000 recorded games. He contested two world championship matches against Anatoly Karpov, coming within a whisker of being crowned World Champion in 1978. He was a world championship candidate, Soviet champion and Olympiad medal-winner on numerous occasions.

In this first of four volumes on Viktor Korchnoi's chess career, FIDE Master Hans Renette and International Master Tibor Karolyi deeply analyse 181 games and fragments up until 1968. This period encompasses his bitterly tough childhood involving the Second World War and poverty, the death of his father and grandmother, his mother's mental health problems and his loyal support from his step-mother, but also his chess beginnings and early coaches, his marriage and the birth of his son. We learn about his early rivalry with Mark Taimanov and Boris Spassky in Viktor's hometown of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), and his later rivalry with Mikhail Tal and Tigran Petrosian. He exchanged blows with Bobby Fischer on equal terms.

Korchnoi won three of his four Soviet championship titles during this period, for the first time in 1960, and according to Chessmetrics rating calculations he began a four-month stint as world number 1 in 1965. He played at the 1962 candidates tournament in Curacao and reached the 1968 candidates final versus Spassky. This volume concludes with two of Korchnoi's most impressive international tournament wins, at Wijk aan Zee and Palma de Mallorca in 1968.

The work is supplemented with a generous portion of photos taken in particular from Soviet-era chess publications and the Korchnoi family archive.

Hans Renette, a FIDE Master with two International Master norms, is a historian and chess coach. He has written chess biographies of the great players Emanuel Lasker, Henry Edward Bird, Louis Paulsen, Gustav Neumann and John Wisker. Tibor Karolyi is an International Master and chess coach who has written games collections of Magnus Carlsen, Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov, Bobby Fischer, Boris Spassky, Tigran Petrosian and Mikhail Tal, among many other chess books.

By: Hans Renette, Tibor Karolyi
Imprint: Limited Liability Company Elk and Ruby Publishing House
Dimensions: Height: 234mm, Width: 156mm, Spine: 30mm
Weight: 943g
ISBN: 9785604784938
ISBN 10: 5604784931
Pages: 552
Publication Date: 15 July 2023
Audience: General/trade , ELT Advanced
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active

Reviews for Korchnoi Year by Year: Volume I (1945-1968)

"""There are many amazing, eventful games in this collection... I felt that the highs and lows of the 25 years covered in this book would have made a complete and full career for many a chess player... A thoroughly enjoyable book! I can't wait for the next three volumes!"" - Grandmaster Matthew Sadler, New In Chess Magazine, September 2023 ""I have really enjoyed Karolyi's other books and this new work does not disappoint. The 550-page monster con-tains a few pages of introduction and context then 181 games or game fragments that lead us through Korchnoi's life. His biography is found within the annotations and be-tween the games. One excellent example from pages 340-1: 'but those present again saw how phenomenally Korchnoi performed in time trouble. Miroslav Filip, his vic-tim, saw him execute a dazzling combination with seconds on the clock-one which was rewarded with the 2nd-3rd beauty prize'... The book was a great way to get to know Korchnoi better through his ups and downs and also learn a bit about some of his peers and adversaries."" - Mark Capron, The Chess Journalist, October 2023 ""I cannot wait to see the future volumes in this series as the present book is fantastic. Highly recommended."" - FIDE Master Carsten Hansen, American Chess Magazine, July 2023 ""Elk and Ruby continue their admirable commitment to chess history with the first of four volumes on the man whose career outlasted all of his contemporaries, battled for success in the world chess championship across many decades and who was, without any shadow of doubt, one of the most brilliant and uncompromising players of all - the great Viktor Korchnoi... This is a highly recommended book and one of the absolute highlights of 2023. In fact, it is the best so far. Even the most diligent of Korchnoi fans will learn a lot from this book and don't forget - there are going to be three more volumes, with more than 400 games still to come. Exemplary work, even by Elk and Ruby's extremely exacting standards."" - Sean Marsh, CHESS Magazine, September 2023 ""as with all the historical books Elk and Ruby publish, this is of the very first rank... I have felt privileged to review many excellent books in this column during 2023. With Korchnoi Year by Year, Volume 1, I can say with confidence that we have saved the best for last."" - Ben Graff, Chess Moves, December 2023"