Appreciating Famous Games, by Ohira Shuzo. Ishi G25; 1977.

This is a collection of ten games from the classical era. The collection is targeted at people from 9 kyu to 4 kyu, so it's designed to be the first game collection that you read, and I think that it does that job well. The commentaries average out to 28 pages/game, and none of them is shorter than 20 pages, so they spend a lot of time explaining stuff. There's a bit of historical commentary as well, which is nice.

Tom Rose (BGA 4k) says:

I did not like Appreciating Famous Games at all. I rather got the impression that, far from trying to help me understand what was going on, the author was trying to undermine my confidence and enhancing the mystique of the ineffable excellence of the Japanese professional.

cover pic


david carlton <carlton@bactrian.org>

Last modified: Sun Aug 10 20:50:53 PDT 2003