Latest in J.H. Donner

50 Must Reads

Jimmy Adams, Baden Baden 1925 International Chess Tournament: The Arrival of Hypermodern Chess (Yorklyn: Caissa Editions, 1991)   Alexander Alekhine, My Best Games 1924–37 (London: G. Bell and Sons, 1939)   Frank Brady, Endgame: Thee Spectacular Rise and Fall of Bobby Fischer (London: Constable. 2011) David…

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Work

‘Our activity, playing chess, is not work in the proper sense. Restoril It creates no value, it produces nothing. Remarkably, it is barely a means of providing work for others. Whoever hopes to make money out of us, condemns himself to a depressed trade ….

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The Dilettante

‘There is no need to play chess well at all. The dilettante who treats it almost completely as a game of chance doesn’t necessarily derive less pleasure from it than the grandmaster who strives for perfection.’  J.H. Donner NRC Handelsblad, 13 April 1981, reproduced in The King: Chess…

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Sports Writers

‘In other sports, the persecution of some players, coaches or officials by the press not rarely offers a sad spectacle. With chess, the main problem is that the game is too esoteric by nature to satisfy the interest of the public at large . ….

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Sarah Hurst: 20 Questions

Sarah Hurst was a regular contributor to CHESS magazine in the 1990s and also edited the British Chess Federation’s newsletter, ChessMoves. Her fine book Curse of Kirsan: Adventures in the Chess Underworld is now available on Kindle at a bargain price. Since 2002 she has been translating…

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The British School

‘The British School is characterized by a great show of brilliancy. No idea is too bizarre for them, no concept too fantastic. They are hard workers, to be sure, but rather bent on finding new sensational effects than on constructing something useful. For the main…

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A Game of Chance

‘The ultimate truth about chess is that it is a game of chance. All a chess player can do is react to opportunities and possibilities which are provided from outside and for which he can only hope and wait.’ J.H. Donner The King: Chess Pieces…

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Women Prefer Bridge

‘Games are the opposite of human contact . . . During their game, chess players are “incommunicado”; they are imprisoned. What is going on in their heads is narcissistic self-gratification with a minimum of objective reality, a wordless sniffing and grabbing in a bottomless pit….

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A Game of Chance

‘The ultimate truth about chess is that it is a game of chance. All a chess player can do is react to opportunities and possibilities which are provided from outside and for which he can only hope and wait.’ J.H. Donner The King: Chess Pieces…

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Americans Prefer Poker

‘The game of chess has never been held in great esteem by the North Americans. Their culture is steeped in deeply anti-intellectual tendencies. They pride themselves in having created the game of poker. It is their national game, springing from a tradition of westward expansion,…

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