As a great Soviet International Grandmaster, David Bronstein has long been recognized as the chess player with the most fertile imagination. He is also the originator of some of the most brilliant and provocative games. In addition, as 200 Open Games demonstrates, he is one of the most originator and stimulating of chess writers.
200 Open Games centers around the popular 1. P-K4 P-K4 opening (Bobby Fischer, for one, consistently chooses the king's pawn opening). "The author's idea," writes Bronstein, "is to show that quite a large number of similar games are in fact different in the way they have been created in the minds of the players. And although they are different, all these games, with their identical first move, still retain for a considerable time traces of one and the same inherited pattern. ..."
The 200 open games are grouped separately under the different "openings", concentrating on the Ruy Lopez. "The chess goddess Kaissa, foresaw endless discussion about the infinite nature of chess and in order to make it easier to find arguments, she invented the Ruy Lopez by way of proof," to quote the author. Bronstein avoids the conventional technical move-by-move analysis; the moves for each game are presented in full and there is a wealth of illustrative diagrams, but the lively and frequently amusing commentary analysis emphasize the ideas
behind the moves and the main feature of each game. As a result, the reader gets a real insight into the thinking of a brilliant grandmaster. He is also able to appreciate the way in which the original 1 P-K4 P-K4 move imposes its patterns on the subsequent game for a considerable time - and equally, the subtle ways in which very different games are created in the minds of the players.
David Bronstein, one of the world's strongest grandmasters, was challenger to Botvinnik for the world championship in 1951, and succeeded in tying the match 12-12. He has played in matches and tournaments against an impressive roster of international chess greats of our time. 200 Open Games is the first of his books to be translated into English.
