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Petrosian is a positional gem that one can learn much from!

Nicely designed book, with high quality paper and cover. Most of the games are annotated by Petrosian himself, and he does a nice job balancing variations with simple explanations and his personal reflections during the games. My only gripe is that it was not available in Kindle format.

If you love chess history and want to improve your chess, this is the book for you. Tigran Petrosian is often the forgotten world champion. This book shows you how to win, the way most amateurs win in weekend tournaments. The grind it out round by round style. Occasionally a flashy combination, but usually improving your position move by move.

Excellent book of Petrosian's coverage of his games and their annotations.

"I consider chess to be art first and foremost." - GM Tigran Petrosian (World Champion 1963-1969)I really loved studying this book. Maybe I'm especially biased because as a youth I was heavily influenced by Petrosian's teacher Nimzowitsch, but going through the annotations on why Petrosian made positional decisions was really exciting and inspiring for me. I really appreciate the aesthetics in Petrosian's games, his harmony and consistency of purpose in the positional crushes are incredible. The more I study advanced authors (such as Aagaard and Dvoretsky), the more I realize how crucial prophylactic thinking is. Petrosian based his whole style on prophylactic thinking - what a role model! There are 111 annotated games in this book, most light enough for a master to go through in ten to fifteen minutes each. The biographical sections are interesting but short, and the annotations are fresh. You can notice Petrosian's evolution as a player both in the games and the annotations because Petrosian annotated most of the games after he played them and did not alter the annotations later.Unfortunately, around 1/4 of the games were not annotated by Petrosian, but experienced GMs still annotated them so you can expect insightful comments and analysis. The analysis sometimes has oversights because Petrosian wrote this book before the computer era, but the 'Quality Chess' editors computer checked this book and added some corrections as editors notes and as an appendix at the end. The 'Quality Chess' editors only changed enough variations to add instruction; the changes were rare and not invasive. In my opinion, the most important part of this book is Petrosian's general comments on why he played specific positional moves and strategies.As should be clear from other reviews, Petrosian's comments might be too vague or confusing for most U1800 players. The U1800 assessment is generous, judging by the reviews, it seems like a 2100 player was often confused. I generally found Petrosian easy enough to understand, but I'm a NM with a chess.com blitz peak of 2588; weaker players might want to take the other reviews about Petrosian being challenging to understand for club players into consideration. With that in mind, it seems like the target audience for this book is primarily 2000+ USCF/FIDE players aiming to learn more about Petrosian and improve their positional game. Club players can also benefit from this book, but probably not much lower than 1600. I highly recommend this book for advanced players.

I haven’t read the book yet but I’m giving it 5 stars bc of the cool snake on the cover

Basically this is a games collection with commentary written by Pertrosian.It shows his development from early years. Thus, part of the historical value.It's a nice games collection, with the players thoughts as they occurred to him at the moment (more or less). He did have opportunity to change is analysis but chose to keep the original thoughts for historical purposes. The reality is that most communist era chess writers assumed their readers had a certain level of aptitude to figure things out themselves. My feeling is they deliberately kept things "close to the chest" to keep their competitive advantage... and this trait (make the reader work for themselves) was highly valued.However, if you want to learn how to play like Petrosian, then be prepared to do your own homework and theorizing. Which is what strong players would do naturally on their own, but this is a very advanced book. If you want a book that is easier to read on Petrosian's style, check out "Petrosian's Legacy" published by his widow. It is a sneaky book in how practical it is, if you are willing/able to shovel through the manure. Still, even that gives interesting historical perspective.So if, "place all your pieces on white squares and control the dark squares" is a bit thin on specifics for you, don't feel bad. Mortals have been trying to decipher this strange genius for a long time now.The one thing that was interesting to me was how he played the openings (and the reason I purchased the book). Granted today's computers have shredded more than a few of his ideas... but looking down the wrong end of the barrel of a Queen battery or choking on a pawn on the 6th rank; is way different than the cold all knowing calculation of the computer beast (so humans can be given grace in those lines).So buy it for the interesting insight into the mind of a rare world champion. Just don't expect something that will completely restyle your game and make you suddenly great.(I have an international rating of a bit over 2100.)

Lets use an example here. There may be a 50 move game that is well annotated until you reach the last 20 moves. Then there's no commentary on that last twenty moves. It was as if they were in a hurry to get the entire game in. I wish they would have made comments on the entire game. Not the first 30 moves. Of the games I looked at they were all the same. Very little commentary at the end of each game.

I received a discount on this book. It arrived by the guaranteed delivery date, and it arrived in good condition. So I am happy with my purchase.This book has a good binding. I can open it to Chapter 9, which is roughly halfway through the book, and lay it down on a table, and the book stays open by itself. That is really nice.

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I HAVEN'T READ IT YET, I HAVE TO WAIT UNTIL I HAVE TIME TI SIT DOWN, PRBABLY NEXT WEEKENT TO START STYDYING THIS BOOK. I HAVE BEEN THINKING ABOUT THIS BOOK FOR A LONG TIME, AT LAST I HAVE IT NOW! THANK YOU FOR MAKING THIS HAPPEN AMAZONI

Pas moins de 111 parties commentées par le 9ème champion du monde, agrémentées de nombreux diagrammes très clairs. Ajoutons à cela 10 parties (en annexe) passées au crible par un ordinateur et le non moins spécialiste Karsten Müller. Comme d'habitude, Quality Chess a frappé fort avec ce livre remarquable. Je reste persuadé qu'un tel ouvrage devrait figurer dans la bibliothèque de tout joueur passionné par le noble jeu.Il n'y a pas à hésiter, et je recommande vivement l'achat !

Excelente livro do grande petrosian. Indicado para amadores e mestres!!Partidas de xadrez ricamente analisadas pelo ex campeão mundial de xadrez!