Secret Notes

David Bronstein, one of the world's strongest players in the mid-20th century, was also one of the most original of chess thinkers. Rapidplay tournaments, clocks with the addition of a certain time after every move, his own version of 'random chess' - these are just a few of the ideas to have sprung from his fertile imagination. After his refusal to join other Soviet grandmasters in denouncing Victor Korchnoi for his defection in 1976, David Bronstein was barred from travelling to the West for 13 long years. When the barriers finally came down in the late-1980s, he eagerly used his newly-gained freedom to travel to numerous countries in Europe, delighting chess enthusiasts with his original ideas and gaining new friends of different nationalities. This book is mainly an account of these travels, on some of which he was accompanied by his wife Tatyana Boleslavskaya, who adds her own intriguing impressions. Also included are games played in various tournaments, which showed that the old tiger had not yet lost his claws. Bronstein also looks back into the past, and in particular to a secret training match played with Victor Korchnoi in 1970, the games of which have never previously been published. Bronstein's co-author, Sergey Voronkov, is a well-known author and editor of numerous chess books and magazines.