The Games of Wilhelm Steinitz

It is well known that the surest way to improve one's skill at chess is to carefully play over the games of the great Masters. The greatest Masters, of course, are the World Champions, and the student is well-advised to select one from this handful of the best to model his play after. All the better if the chosen World Champion has provided deep and careful annotations for his best games to increase our understanding!

Here then are the collected games of Wilhelm Steinitz, whose teachings about chess transformed the "royal pastime" into a modern science. For the first time anywhere all of Steinitz's surviving games have been gathered into one volume, and in English algebraic notation for the modern player. Also for the first time Steinitz's own annotations have been assembled and translated, notes in which the World Champion guides us through a chess course never to be forgotten. Here the reader will find 1022 games of chess as it was meant to be played, and 227 of them (nearly twenty-five per cent!) beautifully annotated by Steinitz himself. A player' s index, career crosstable, and 243 diagrams complete the book.

Chess players of every level would benefit from a familiarity with the games of Steinitz, and "The Games of Wilhelm Steinitz, First World Chess Champion" is the perfect tool for doing so. More importantly, however, this book contains a lifetime of chess enjoyment, provided by the greatest figure in the history of the game - Wilhelm Steinitz.