My Best Games, Updated and revised anniversary edition

En nyutgave av Korchnois egen partisamling, med ti nye partier fra de senere årene, tilsammen 55 spilt med hvit og 55 med svart. En svært prisgunstig bok utgitt i anledning 80-årsdagen hans.

Korchnois kommentarer er svært verbale, leseverdige, originale og dermed instruktive. Sosonkos forord introduserer denne boka på en glimrende måte. Sitatet hans av Lövenfisch virker ekstra relevant i forhold til Korchnois sjakk-partier og åpningsvalg: "If a player wants to play a new opening, this means that he is still developing."

Om utvalget av partier skriver Korchnoi illustrerende i sitt eget forord:

A young grandmaster compiling such a book would probably have to rack his brains over where to find a undred and ten games that he has won. But I had to choose these out of well over two thousand that I have won... Not everyone approved of my choice. Sometimes even teh translator of the books was surprised. I must tell the reader about the criteria by which I selcted these games.

The games cover a period of more than half a century - from 1951 to the year 2003. The first criterion by which I was guided was that the games should be more or less evenly spread over the different decades. I have played against players of four generations, and against hundreds of masters and grandmasters. My second most important criterion was definitely to give games against representatives of the four generations. And in general: the more opponents, the better!

In my career I have played dozens of diverse opening positions. There are many different aspects to chess, and I wanted to reflect this in my book. Avoid repetition! The greater the number of positions, dissimilar one the another, the better!

The fourth criterion - only the fourth - was the quality of the games. They should contain few bad mistakes, especially by me. However, they had to be fighting games, not those where the play is all one way. Well, and in a fierce struggle, mistakes are inevitable.

And one more thing. Chess is my life, and these games are fragments of this life. And, naturally, I wanted to accompany each such fragment with a conversation with chess enthuiasts. If during the course of a game I found there was nothing to disclose to the readers, I rjected it, however good the game!