CompleteMartialArts.com - King's Gambit: A Son, A Father, and the World's Most Dangerous Game
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Manufacturer: Hyperion
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Average Customer Rating:  
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Binding: Hardcover
Dewey Decimal Number: 794.1
EAN: 9781401300975
ISBN: 1401300979
Label: Hyperion
Manufacturer: Hyperion
Number Of Items: 1
Number Of Pages: 448
Publication Date: 2007-09-11
Publisher: Hyperion
Release Date: 2007-09-11
Studio: Hyperion
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Spotlight customer reviews:
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Customer Rating:
Summary: Fascinating memoir about chess at the highest and lowest levels
Comment: After reading this most interesting book I'm not sure why Paul Hoffman thinks that chess is the most dangerous game. I think it's because he believes the game is addictive, not because some prominent players have been mentally unstable, including two world champions, the uncrowned Paul Morphy and the briefly crowned Robert J. Fischer. Both Americans deserve the epithet "the pride and the sorrow of chess," but I don't think we can blame chess for their mental problems. Both were clearly paranoid, and in Fischer's case we can say schizophrenic as well. And of course Alexander Alekhine was an alcoholic, and any number of chess players have been and are eccentric and/or socially backward, some in the extreme.
At any rate, this is simultaneously an emotional memoir about the author and his bizarre father, an excellent reportage on the contemporary game, and a well-researched mini history of the game. Hoffman, whose "The Man Who Loved Only Numbers" about the Hungarian mathematician Paul Erdos, became an unlikely international bestseller (see my review at Amazon), writes beautifully and doesn't mind exposing human foibles, although he is noticeably generous to himself and his friends.
Hoffman's chess rating as revealed on page 18 is 1915 (Class A, just below "expert," which is just below "master"), but in his encounters with some of the game's famous players in simuls and in offhand games, he appears to be stronger than that. As he notes, a Class A rating puts him in the top ninety-five percent of all US tournament players. (p. 18) So he is clearly strong enough to understand the world of competitive chess. And he does. He also understands the personalities and it is here that he shines. Whether he is writing about perhaps the greatest player of all time, Garry Kasparov, or about some nut job like the murderer Claude Frizzel Bloodgood III, who as a prisoner in 1970 or 1971 is said to have played 1200 postal chess games at once, Hoffman's prose is vivid and he makes the personalities come to life.
Kasparov doesn't fair entirely well, with Hoffman showing him to be mean spirited when he loses and vindictive. But Hoffman's friend, Canadian GM Pascal Charbonneau, for whom he served as second during the World Championship matches in Tripoli in 2004, shines forth as both well balanced and likeable, as well as being one heck of a chess player. Nigel Short with whom Hoffman spent some time, comes across as a bit juvenile and something of a sex addict, but relatively modest for a chess genius.
Stories, stories, and stories. Some of them like scenes from spy novels. Hoffman in Moscow under a KGB building, quaffing vodka and smoking a hookah pipe...In Tripoli being detained by Gadhafi's henchmen, fearing for his life, or at least worried that he might end up in a Libyan jail...In Washington Square Park, NYC, watching the hustlers and maybe being hustled.
There's an excellent chapter on women in chess where Hoffman devotes some revelatory ink to the American women stars, Jennifer Shahade, Irina Krush and others. By the way, why is it that chess players seem to have a disproportionate number of their names beginning with the letter "k"?--Krush, Kasparov, Karpov, Keres, Korchnoi, Kalvelak, Keene, Kieseritzky... Yes, I used to play the Boden-Kieseritzky Gambit. And I bet Hoffman did too, or does, since he loves gambits, although he doesn't mention it in this book. Maybe he's saving it for a surprise. Be forewarned: it's unsound, but you gotta love the name. And did you know that Hungarian whiz kitten Judit Polgar, the youngest of the famed Polgar sisters, became a grandmaster at the tender age of 15 years, four months and 28 days? It took the great Bobby Fischer 15 years, six months and one day to achieve the same title.
An interesting mini story in the book is that of Bruce Pandolfini who, although only a National Master (below International Master and Grand Master), parleyed TV exposure during the Fischer-Spassky titanic into a lucrative chess teaching career in which he made more money than just about every chess player who ever lived. Hoffman has him picking up a couple hundred grand a year teaching kids at upwards of two hundred bucks an hour the finer points of the Sicilian Defense or how to win a bishops of opposite color ending. (In my experience being two pawns up helps a lot!)
My favorite story in the book is a short one that appears in an endnote on page 412. It concerns Soviet GM Alexey Suetin who got an old Belorussian master as a second for opening preparations. Only trouble was that instead of helping Suetin, the old guy accurately predicted just what would happen to him against a couple of opponents. And so it did.
If this isn't the best nontechnical book on chess ever written it will have to do until the real thing comes along. You will be entertained even if you don't know your Alpin Counter Gambit from your Maroczy Bind. And if you do, you'll stay up half the night reading this fascinating tour through the land of pawn grabbers, Elo's and MCOs, mating nets, The Luzhin Defense (novel by Vladimir Nabokov, made into a movie) zugzwang, Grob's Attack, smothered mates...
Which reminds me of something. I once won a game against a chess master with a smothered mate--via the familiar 1. Nh6 (discovered and double check with knight and queen) 1....Kh8; 2. Qg8+ RxQ; 3. Nf7 checkmate!
I know, I know--another case of "Chess nuts boasting by an open foyer." But you could look it up. The score was published in Isaac Kashdan's Sunday chess column in the Los Angeles Times in the middle sixties when I was an undergrad at UCLA.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Great book
Comment: Reading this book made me want to read Mr. Hoffman's other books, which seem to be out of print.
I do not know what impression this book could make on someone who doesn't play chess. Myself, I can't imagine my life without chess.
So, if you play chess, love chess and it's history, it's hard to imagine you won't find this book interesting, entertaining and instructive.
At least one reviewer didn't like the fact that the relationship between the author and his father is the thread that leads through the book. It didn't bother me at all, in fact, it's what holds the book together.
Customer Rating: 
Summary: Grandmaster Psychosis
Comment: A very interesting read about top-level chess players. The author points out repeatedly that many of the Grandmasters in chess exhibit some pretty serious personality flaws that almost border on mental illness. I gather that the stress involved in their matches causes these problems to magnify. Paranoia being a primary concern of several players. If you thought Bobby Fischer was the only chess player with "problems" this book will make you rethink that view.
Customer Rating:
Summary: Pure scandal and very well written .
Comment: This is a very well written book and entertaining for chess fans.I really like the dynamics of the Father and Son relationship portrayed in this book ,the Father here is a real character,part pathological liar part comedian.A man who has to invent fantastic stories to compensate for a childhood of neglect,which I found sad.I knock a star off because of all of the exposed scandal of the chess world in this book. The story of the Libyan tournament is also very entertaining and well written. All and all an excellent read.
Customer Rating:
Summary: A Great Book On Chess Culture
Comment: The account of a man's journey through the chess world. Beginning as I young child, Paul Hoffman was fascinated by chess. He developed strong skills into college where he ultimately gave up the game he loved. Only after some years of adulthood, did he take up the game again. The book is the narrative of his adventures with chess. Along his journey he has played, met, and interacted with numerous grandmasters. His accounts of these men and women are interesting because of the strange personalities that chess seems to breed. Chess is a game for the genius as well as for the crazy. The book deals with his difficult past, his lying father, and his quest for completion. Anyone desiring to dig deeper into the chess culture needs to read this great book.
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