Lasker Move By Move Zenon Franco Everyman Chess PDF

Zenon Franco is a Paraguayan grandmaster who is an experienced trainer and has authored numerous books on chess. He represented Paraguay on top board in seven Chess Olympiads, and won individual gold medals at Lucerne 1982 and Novi Sad 1990.

Here is how Lasker: Move by Move is described on the publishers website:

“Emanuel Lasker was world champion for a remarkable 27 years (1894-1921) and is generally regarded as having been way ahead of his time in his understanding of chess. He primarily regarded chess as a fight and considered that the strongest move in a position was the one that created greatest problems for the opponent and not necessarily the one that was objectively ‘best’. His strengths included:

• His skill at accumulating small advantages with quiet manoeuvring.
• His astonishing ability to find tactical resources in defence.
• His uncanny knack of provoking errors in balanced positions.

“Lasker was, essentially, a complete chessplayer and his games feel thoroughly modern. Indeed many contemporary elite players (the most obvious one being the current world champion Magnus Carlsen) exhibit a very similar style. The Move by Move series provides an ideal format for the keen chessplayer to improve their game. While reading you are continually challenged to answer probing questions – a method that greatly encourages the learning and practising of vital skills just as much as the traditional assimilation of chess knowledge. Carefully selected questions and answers are designed to keep you actively involved and allow you to monitor your progress as you learn. This is an excellent way to study chess while providing the best possible chance to retain what has been learnt.”

The main content is divided by selected games as follows:

• 1889-1894 (92 pages)
• 1895-1900 (108 pages)
• 1901-1910 (99 pages)
• 1914-1925 (81 pages)
• Final Years: 1934-1936 (30 pages)

There is also a bibliography, preface, introduction, an index of openings, and an index of complete games. There are forty-six complete games and a range of opening systems represented, the most common of which is the Ruy Lopez and Queen’s Gambit. All of the games are wins for Lasker. He is on the white side of twenty-four of them. There are several game fragments and endings discussed as well.

There have been many books written on Lasker, seventeen are mentioned in the bibliography (a list Edward Winter describes as “desperately superficial”), with several quoted in the book. Franco writes, “As in my previous books in the Move by Move series, I shall give voice to the wisdom of other chess masters who have provided annotations, many very instructive, to Lasker’s games during the past one hundred years or more.” Yet, enjoyable as Lasker: Move by Move is, if you have some, or all, of these previous titles, you probably do not need this one.