Friday, July 22, 2005

Lake Hopatcong 1926 in Spanish


Scott Massey, who is a well-known collector of chess books (and currently at work on a list of favorites for our site), found this Spanish tournament book on his shelf for me: Lake Hopatcong 1926 by Ricardo Alvarez Cela and Luis Eceizabarrena (Madrid 1973). It is part of a series of "Torneos Retrospectivos" (Historical Tournaments) that featured the success of the Spanish-speaking world's favorite chess son, Jose Raoul Capablanca.

I can read Spanish (I even passed a graduate exam in it without a dictionary), so the book is a great opportunity to brush up. I am finding it quite a treat. The authors offer an excellent and lengthy historical introduction to the event, much better than the contemporary book by Helms and Howell (since they presume that their readers are themselves contemporaries). And the notes, while obviously informed by the original tournament book, are often quite original, so they will be useful in annotating the games.

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