Review: Mr. Blackburne's Games at Chess (e-book)

Written by Denis Markov

I just decided to write a review of the E-Book, I got thanks to WCN Community website. Many people asked me, what this E-Book actually is, does it worth buying and so on. Here is my opinion.

"Mr. Blackburne’s Games at Chess"
By Joseph Blackburne
Format: E-Book // Chessbase Database (Chesscentral)
$19.95 at Chesscentral.Com

As Mark Dvoretsky once told, chess classics need to be studied. One of world’s most famous (if not just ‘most famous’) chess coaches told, that actually ‘classical’ period begins from Steinitz, who discovered some very important principles of modern chess and became the first one to play according to some rules, not just rushing into attack from the very first move.

So when we have Joseph Blackburne, we talk about this ‘early classics’ period. The end of 19th century was the time, when both positional and ‘madly attacking’ old-style chess not only existed, but continued to fight.

Blackburne for sure was mostly the old-school player. He was always known as one of the best attackers of his époque. But it doesn’t mean we must forget his games. I have two arguments to support my point of view.

First of all, this old-school guy actually defeated Steinitz, Anderssen, Tchigorin, Pillsbury, Janowski, Winawer and many others good players. So in my opinion it is better to call his chess not ‘madly attacking’, but ‘intuitive’. The difference between these definitions is clear: Blackburne felt the game just good enough to defeat best players of his time. So it is not berserker chess, it is chess based on feelings, on sensitivity. That’s the chess which is played according to some principles too, but these ones, being different from Steinitz’s ones, weren’t formulated: they were just somewhere deep inside his mind and soul.

And now the second argument. Studying chess, we sometimes forget about it’s beauty. Studying openings, working with computer, playing fast internet chess – all that pushes chess beauty out of the attention. Blackburne’s book actually gave me feeling of chess beauty for some hours, during which I studied the games. Yes, these games do not look like modern ones and there are lots of dubious moves, but, well… they are great! Combinations look just great enough to print positions on sheets on paper and show to your friends, who also like chess. Sometimes they are not 100% correct and I would say that opponents helped Blackburne a lot creating such masterpieces. But anyway it is a great pleasure to watch 20-moves combos with half of chess set sacrificed.

So what is actually this E-Book? In 1899 Joseph Blackburne himself wrote a book called “Mr. Blackburne’s games at chess”. So that’s what it is. Games from Blackburne’s book were transformed into ChessBase format and some text prefaces were added.

If I had a choice between paper copy of the book and electronic one, I would prefer an E-Book. Why? Because it solves not only mine huge problem: lack of time. I would never have a time to overlook more than 400 games reading the book and moving pieces on the chessboard. And I think that’s very common: not every chess amateur can play whole games in his mind.

Considering these games as mostly ‘for fun’ (you will not find any new opening theory there, won’t you?), it is very important. You have a chance to study them all and enjoy them without spending too much time and having possibility to ‘bookmark’ any games you like to check them again later.

Of course, as any ChessBase database, this one offers you such pleasant possibilities, as sorting games according to names, dates, openings and so on.

The only price for this very comfortable form of games representation is the fact that this E-Books needs some special software. To view database you need either ChessBase or ChessBase Light. The second one is totally free and can be downloaded without any problems. To those ones, who used it some years before and didn’t use it in last time: ChessBase Light was always known as ‘bunch of bugs’, but now it works just great and it became much more friendlier in what in concerns user interface.

If you have full version of ChessBase (last one is version 9, but 8 or 7 would be also fine), it is even better because of some additional possibilities and functionality. Me, I used this E-Book with ChessBase 9.0 and it worked just great. Being curious I tried ChessBase Light – and again no problems.

So, well, that’s all what I wanted to tell. This E-Book maybe won’t teach you any new opening moves, it won’t give you any knowledge on deep positional play, prophylactic thinking and so on – but it will give you lots of fun and it actually will make you to remember, that chess is a really beautiful game!


Denis, thank you for this excellent review! I`m sure many people will find it very usefull!