Mikhail Botvinnik - Botvinnik: One Hundred Selected Games

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Table of Contents

Translators Note

THIS translation has been made from the first edition of M. M. Botvinniks Selected Games (Izbrannie Partii) 1926-1946, published at Leningrad in 1949; like that volume, it includes the World Champions introductory article on the Russian and Soviet school of chess, his six studies, and his article discussing the meaning of the word combination, as well as a table of his achievements in the various tournaments and matches he has played from 1923 down to 1948. I have added an alphabetical index of Botvinniks opponents in these 100 games, and an index of openings. It will be noted that games 72-78 are also to be found in Botvinniks Championship Chess, but in these cases the revised text of his 100 SELECTED GAMES has invariably been followed.

I must again acknowledge my great indebtedness to Miss Eileen Tranmer for her invaluable co-operation in checking moves and suggesting textual improvements.

S. G.

FOREWORD and THE RUSSIAN AND SOVIET SCHOOL OF CHESS

Foreword

I LEARNED to play chess at the age of twelve, while attending secondary school. My brain was fresh, it could take in an unlimited amount of the information, the elementary knowledge, which is necessary to the perfection of a players technique and to a masters creative activity at the board. On this preliminary task I had to spend four years, the period from 1923 to 1927. I won the title of Master in 1927, during the U.S.S.R. Fifth Championship tournament, held in Moscow; and one can say that this completed my first period of chess development.

If you are going to make your mark among masters, you have to work far harder and more intensively, or, to put it more exactly, the work is far more complex than that needed to gain the title of Master. To begin with, you find yourself up against experienced, technically well-trained tournament players. And then, if your advance is swift, others play against you far more energetically.

And, thirdly, every successive step up the ladder grows more difficult.

At this stage you have to learn how to analyse and comment on games, for that enables you to criticize your own failures and successes. You have to accustom yourself to practical study at home, you have to devote time to studies, to the history of chess, the development of chess theory, of chess culture.

Finally, you have to acquire more experience and, in few words, to grow a little older.

All this took me about six years (1927-33). It must not be thought that for those six years I occupied myself solely with chess. During this period I worked my way through the Leningrad Polytechnic Institute. There is no better place for learning to work independently and to extend your horizon than in a higher school (in my view, a higher education cannot but be beneficial to a chess master, even if it is not, strictly speaking, compulsory for him).

During this second period I learned to analyse and annotate games. In addition to regular work for the periodical, Chess Sheet (which later became Chess in the U.S.S.R.) I helped in the publication of several books: The Akkhine-Capablanca Match (1931) and a collection of the games played in the U.S.S.R. Seventh Championship (1932). In 1934 I did the annotations for the games of my match with Flohr (published under the title of Flohr-Botvinnik Match).

It was roughly about the years 1930 to 1932 that I began to make a practice of winning against masters.