Development of Chess Style

This is essentially a book on chess history, showing how different styles of chess play became popular and flourished and then faded in popularity, such as for example the Hyper-Modern Style of play that became “All the Rage” in the 1920s and 1930s. Former World Chess Champion Dr. Max Euwe traces the history of chess going through the games of the greatest players in history showing how the earliest recorded games show a wild attacking style. Later styles emphasized development, then pawn structure, then defensive play, then positional. Now primarily strategic planning is emphasized. Dr Euwe's thesis in his new book is that the evolution of the style of a chess player, during his formative years, runs parallel to that of the game itself since the dawn of modern chess in the seventeenth century. Forty-four great games, spanning the three centuries from Greco to Spassky, are analyzed in depth, always with reference to chess knowledge and practice current at the time. From the long history of master chess, Dr. Euwe has selected the great figures whose positive contributions to theory and dogma have influenced the methods of their successors and turned generations of players down new avenues of attack. Particularly admirable is Dr Euwe's thorough exposition of the origins of position play in the games of Steinitz. The detailed treatment given to nine of these games is a chess education in itself. And this is only one chapter. (In the very next, we see Steinitz beaten by a genius of a new kind.) All the rest is here, too - Philidor's pawn power, the combinative wizardry of Anderssen and of Morphy, whose influence was as long-lasting as his career was short-lived, the perfecting of technique in the years before the First World War, the iconoclasm of Reti, Nimzowitsch and Alekhine and the virile approach of the modern Russian School.