The Grandmaster
The Grandmaster

Author: Brin-Jonathan Butler

Publisher: Simon & Schuster

Published: 2019-11-12

Total Pages: 224

ISBN-13: 1501172611

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“A bravura performance…An entertaining book” (Kirkus Reviews) about the dramatic 2016 World Chess Championship between Norway’s Magnus Carlsen and Russia’s Sergey Karjakin, which mirrored the world’s geopolitical unrest and rekindled a global fascination with the sport. The first week of November 2016, hundreds of people descended on New York City’s South Street Seaport to watch the World Chess Championship between Norway’s Magnus Carlsen and Russia’s Sergey Karjakin. By the time it was over would be front-page news and thought by many the greatest finish in chess history. With both Carlsen and Karjakin just twenty-five years old, it was the first time the championship had been waged among those who grew up playing chess against computers. Originally from Crimea, Karjakin had recently repatriated to Russia under the direct assistance of Putin. Carlsen, meanwhile, had expressed admiration for Donald Trump, and the first move of the tournament he played was called a Trompowsky Attack. Then there was the Russian leader of the World Chess Federation being barred from attending due to US sanctions, and chess fanatic and Trump adviser Peter Thiel being called on to make the honorary first move in sudden death. That the tournament even required sudden death was a shock. Oddsmakers had given Carlsen, the defending champion, an eighty percent chance of winning. It would take everything he had to retain his title. Author Brin-Jonathan Butler was granted unique access to the two-and-half-week tournament and watched every move. The Grandmaster “is not the usual chronicle of a world-championship chess match….Butler offers insight into what it takes to become the best chess player on the planet...A vibrant and provocative look at chess and its metaphorical battle for territory and power” (Booklist).

A cultural history of chess-players
A cultural history of chess-players

Author: John Sharples

Publisher: Manchester University Press

Published: 2017-08-15

Total Pages: 321

ISBN-13: 1526120550

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This inquiry concerns the cultural history of the chess-player. It takes as its premise the idea that the chess-player has become a fragmented collection of images, underpinned by challenges to, and confirmations of, chess’s status as an intellectually-superior and socially-useful game, particularly since the medieval period. Yet, the chess-player is an understudied figure. No previous work has shone a light on the chess-player itself. Increasingly, chess-histories have retreated into tidy consensus. This work aspires to a novel reading of the figure as both a flickering beacon of reason and a sign of monstrosity. To this end, this book, utilising a wide range of sources, including newspapers, periodicals, detective novels, science-fiction, and comic-books, is underpinned by the idea that the chess-player is a pluralistic subject used to articulate a number of anxieties pertaining to themes of mind, machine, and monster.

Counterplay
Counterplay

Author: Prof. Robert R. Desjarlais

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 2011-03-22

Total Pages: 261

ISBN-13: 0520948203

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"Chess gets a hold of some people, like a virus or a drug," writes Robert Desjarlais in this absorbing book. Drawing on his lifelong fascination with the game, Desjarlais guides readers into the world of twenty-first-century chess to help us understand its unique pleasures and challenges, and to advance a new "anthropology of passion." Immersing us directly in chess’s intricate culture, he interweaves small dramas, closely observed details, illuminating insights, colorful anecdotes, and unforgettable biographical sketches to elucidate the game and to reveal what goes on in the minds of experienced players when they face off over the board. Counterplay offers a compelling take on the intrigues of chess and shows how themes of play, beauty, competition, addiction, fanciful cognition, and intersubjective engagement shape the lives of those who take up this most captivating of games.

The Last Gamesman
The Last Gamesman

Author: Asa Hoffmann

Publisher: Gatekeeper Press

Published: 2022-03-16

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 1662922612

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The Last Gamesman is the story of Asa Hoffmann, legendary New York Chess player and master of Backgammon, Poker, Scrabble, Bridge, and Horse handicapping. Born into a privileged family of two attorneys, Asa was sent to the best schools including Horace Mann and Columbia University, but after a year at Columbia left school and his Park Avenue family home to make a living “hustling” chess and other games in the streets, parks and clubs of New York City. His character is portrayed in the book and film “Searching for Bobby Fischer”. Asa has made a living plying his skills in parts of eight decades, winning tournaments in every game he plays, his main game being Chess. Asa also teaches gaming theory, is the author of two Chess books and has been featured in movies and documentaries about Chess and in a feature article in the New York Times. He teaches chess in New York City. A teenage friend of World Chess Champion Bobby Fischer, Asa achieved the international chess title of FIDE Master and was ranked number 21 in the US at the age of 21. He has continued to play and win tournaments since the 1950’s and is now one of the top senior chess players in the country. In this volume Asa recounts the amazing and often humorous stories of the characters, the events, and the venues of the New York gaming world, many of which no longer exist but are worth memorializing. Asa’s co-author is his wife, Virginia Hoffmann, formerly ranked number 11th top female chess player in the United States.