One of the best tournament books you will come across and presenting some fascinating games played played at the Australian Chess Championship 1980, held in Adelaide. There are wonderful biographies of some of the leading players and the annotations are excellent in giving a sporting sense of the tournament by representing the thoughts of the players during the game rather than the usual data-dump we would get these days (2020). I had the privilege to play against Hjorth in a tournament in the mid-1980s (I lost, of course) and have played Rogers and Johansen in simuls (losing, of course) and I found them all to be wonderful individuals, smart, gifted and jolly well grounded; no chips on their shoulders weighing them down and warping their personalities. I was saddened that Hjorth passed away recently, a great talent. The 1980s was a golden period for Australian Chess. The book is dedicated to the memory of Purdy, another great name in Australian and world chess. ( )

We grow old. Ian, the precocious boy who wrote this, is now our first, retired hurt, Grandmaster. Greg Hjorth, one of the young talents he portrayed back then, dead a few days ago. Age 47. No warning. Me, turning back to chess, trying again, hoping to become half as good as I was.

I've read this book a hundred times. It is accompanied by the best photos, taken by Hayden Barber, no mean player himself, but who as the pictorial custodian of the period did such a splendid job. He knew the secret of how to take good chess pictures, he said to me once. Indeed he did.

Admission: though I've read this over and over again, I can't think of a reason why anybody other than an Aussie chess groupie would.

Retraction: Oh, but still, some bit of me says, not true, not true, read this. Anybody with the teensiest interest in chess could read this and it would make their heart beat a bit faster and make them so pleased that it was chess and not dancing they embraced in their youth.

I did things as a kid that made me so much a part of them that I ceased to exist. We all do, I dare say. For me it was reading and playing the violin. Neither of these, though, came close to the infinite beauty of chess.

It isn't just a game, you know. But I don't know exactly how to explain just exactly what it is.



( )

We grow old. Ian, the precocious boy who wrote this, is now our first, retired hurt, Grandmaster. Greg Hjorth, one of the young talents he portrayed back then, dead a few days ago. Age 47. No warning. Me, turning back to chess, trying again, hoping to become half as good as I was.

I've read this book a hundred times. It is accompanied by the best photos, taken by Hayden Barber, no mean player himself, but who as the pictorial custodian of the period did such a splendid job. He knew the secret of how to take good chess pictures, he said to me once. Indeed he did.

Admission: though I've read this over and over again, I can't think of a reason why anybody other than an Aussie chess groupie would.

Retraction: Oh, but still, some bit of me says, not true, not true, read this. Anybody with the teensiest interest in chess could read this and it would make their heart beat a bit faster and make them so pleased that it was chess and not dancing they embraced in their youth.

I did things as a kid that made me so much a part of them that I ceased to exist. We all do, I dare say. For me it was reading and playing the violin. Neither of these, though, came close to the infinite beauty of chess.

It isn't just a game, you know. But I don't know exactly how to explain just exactly what it is.



( )