A Century of Chess 1900-1909: The Book!

Dear Chess Blogging Community, 

I am thrilled to share that A Century of Chess: Book One: 1900-1909 is published and available for purchase on Amazon in both paperback and kindle. 

This really has been a labor of love and has been possible only through the community here.

The Century of Chess blog started here in 2021. It emerged out of the depths of the pandemic winter, when I was deeply depressed and trying to think through what to do with my life — and had the unexpected epiphany that a chess history blog was part of it. I’d been playing through historical games on my phone for a while, but I felt that I wanted to share what I was learning and to put it together in a systemized way. Since nothing could be more systemized than comprehensiveness, I found — to my slight horror — that I had committed to a project that would require writing about every single major tournament of the 20th century and about (sometimes more than once) all the leading players. In the absolute best case scenario, it would take about ten years, in which case there would still be the 19th century, let alone the 21st century, to catch up on. And all this would be without any obvious possibility to make any money whatsoever. 

But I found that, on a weekly basis, I just really looked forward to these posts. I looked forward to people from the community finding holes in my game analyses and errors in my history, to comments from people like simaginfan and kamalakanta who are maybe even more obsessed with chess history than I am, and to the occasional song and poem (!) from some of the more creative (and out-there) members of the community. I found myself getting a little twitchy and bored in the parts of the week when I didn’t post. 

I also found that I just never got tired of chess history. Each of the (long-dead) masters started to seem like friends. They had all contributed something completely distinctive to the game, they had dedicated their lives (often enduring real poverty in the process) to their art, and many of them had suffered immense tragedies across the tumult of the 20th century. I liked them all and enjoyed being in their company. 

I was lucky enough from the beginning to have chess.com’s encouragement for this project — Colin Stapczynski and Sam Copeland have been great — and then I was lucky to be connected to IM Cyrus Lakdawala and FM Carsten Hansen who wanted to publish a book. The book is far more consolidated than the blog. Game annotations are by Cyrus and Carsten, who are stronger players than I am and (at least in Cyrus’ case) have a far higher joke to annotation ratio than I do. The blog also dispenses with the more peripheral players and events of the era to focus on the major tournaments and on the contributions of the decade’s top ten players. 

You have all been so great in supporting this project. It would mean a lot if you’re able to buy the book. I believe — in all modesty — that it is a unique contribution to the literature of chess history. If you’ve enjoyed the blog, I’d ask you also to keep in mind that I’ve put many hours into this completely for free — and that the continuation of the print series depends largely on our ability to generate sales from the first volume. I hope some of you buy the book and enjoy it. I look forward to the volumes for the 1910s — and beyond! 

To share: here is the first post for the blog — starting in Paris 1900. Here is a discussion of my chess obsession on Substack. Here is a podcast interview on the book with Ben Johnson of Perpetual Chess. 

Best,

Sam