Sunday, August 22, 2010

Capablanca's Chess Fundamentals

I had the pleasure of reading Ken Marshall's interview (forthcoming in Chess Life) with one of the oldest active players in the world, 95-year-old National Master and Hyde Park resident Erik Karklins.  When Erik was a teenager in Riga in the 1920s, he learned German so he could read and understand his first serious chess book, Capablanca's Chess Fundamentals.  Decades later in Chicago, Erik's son Andrew became interested in chess, so Erik gave Andrew a copy of Chess Fundamentals. The book seems to work: Andrew became one of the twenty strongest American players of the Fischer era.

Capablanca's classic is no longer in copyright: I hope to put a version of it on the Illinois Chess Association website.  In the meantime, I'll post selections here: the first selection appears below.

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