Descripción

The Sinquefield Chess Generation While we were discussing the idea of the book, now over

some good food, I remembered that I had always liked to analyze players’ styles and preferences as

Botvinnik did in his preparations. When his secret notebooks were published, I was fascinated with

how he managed to extract precise  characteristics based on concrete examples. As a matter of fact,

Botvinnik also called these analyses “characteristics”. Here is an example of what he thought about

Tal’s play prior to the match in 1960 (my translation from Russian from the book “Botvinnik – Tal,

Return Match”): “The general tendency – to obtain positional advantage by lively play rather than

long maneuvering”.

 

Has Botvinnik’s way of analysis become a lost art? Now I had a chance to do it myself. By the time

dessert came, we had agreed on the concept. Some days later, I realized with horror the enormity of

the task that I had taken upon for myself. It took me a year and a half to complete the analytical work.

The Sinquefield Chess Generation–Young Guns at Work!

 

The main difficulty was that sometimes, the initial impression of a “characteristic” based on a game

was not exactly what I thought it was, as the deeper analysis unearthed details that changed the

picture. In such cases, I had to discard those examples and either look for others, or to conclude that

the “characteristic” was not clear enough to form part of the player’s profile.

 

The Sinquefield Chess Generation The idea was to write about the best players in the USA born

at the turn of the century. These players grew and blossomed thanks to the continuous and generous

support by the world’s biggest chess patron, Rex Sinquefield, and the Saint Louis Chess Club. Their

success changed the scenery of  American chess, set new standards and propelled the country as the

promised land for new talents.

 

Most of the players in this book turned 20 in 2020. I intended to analyze their styles while they were

still juniors and therefore, the latest games I consulted were from early 2020.

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