Capablanca's Best 100 Games

[leepenny2001]

Is anyone familiar with the book "Capablanca's Best 100 Games?" I've learned alot from this book and I would say Richard Reti's "Masters of the Chessboard", rates right up there with the best classical books. You can learn a lot from these books and they will help you game improve greatly. They make chess very easy to understand. Recommended!

[Crossroad]

I read "Capablancas Verlustpartien" (german title) by Dr. Fritz C. Görschen and the english title must be something like "Capablancas losses". I am not sure if it ever has been tanslated into the english language.

This books contains 36 losses of Capablance in tournament games and when I was young I read the whole book and I think it's very instructive (short variations). When Capablanca loses a game there certainly must have been a good reason for it and so I think the book is quite interesting. Also the book was written in the days when the authors didn't just let engines comment the games

[leepenny2001]

Wasnt 36 losses the total of Capablancas tournament losses?

[Crossroad]

I will tell you tomorrow after I checked the book for this information. Basicly I think yes, but I will check tomorrow.

[leepenny2001]

Chessgames.com gives this information on his total record. I will await for your answer on tournament loses.

Jose Raul Capablanca
Number of games in database: 712
Years covered: 1893 to 1940
Overall record: +331 -46 =255 (72.5%)*
* Overall winning percentage = (wins+draws/2) / total games
Based on games in the database; may be incomplete.
80 exhibition games, odds games, etc. are excluded from this statistic.

[Crossroad]

I checked it. The book (according to the author) contains all losses of Capablanca in tournament games. That makes 36 losses in his career. His second loss in a tournament game (against Juan Corzo 1901) was not recorded (maybe some chess fan still has that game?) so in the book are only 35 games.

I tend to believe that 36 is the correct number of tournament/match losses but of course, he lost some more simulta, exhibition and blitz games, etc. and those games are probably also in the chessgames.com database.

I start to like old tournament books, where the authors could not use an engine and the authors had to ask grandmasters or get comments out of other books. Compared to the new books those are really valueable

[leepenny2001]

Thanks Crossroad! I like the old books too.