Modern Chess

The revolutionary Wilhelm Steinitz (1836-1900) considered himself to be in the vanguard of an emerging, late-19th century Modern school, which embraced a new, essentially scientific vitality in its methods of research, analysis, evaluation, planning, experiment and even belligerent fight. Steinitz, who dominated the chess world in the shadow of a more directly attacking, openly tactical and combinative, so-called romantic age, established a much firmer positional basis to chess. A pivotal change! This book follows that story, both before and beyond Steinitzs early modern era, focusing closely on the subtly varied ways in which the worlds greatest players in the last two centuries have thought about and played the game, moving it forward. The author reflects on all sixteen classical world champions and others, notably: C-L. M. de la Bourdonnais, Adolf Anderssen, Paul Morphy, Siegbert Tarrasch, Aron Nimzowitsch, Richard Rti, Judit Polgar and the contemporary Artificial Intelligence phenomenon, AlphaZero. Be inspired by this exploration of the modern games roots and trajectory!