Hans Bouwmeester

Het eindspel

In selecting the 101 studies in the collection the aim has been two-fold. First, to present to the chess public the quintessence of the most brilliant and artistic studies of the first half of the Twentieth Century; and, secondly, to demonstrate to the chess-player how useful many of the ideas contained in thse studies can be in over-the-board play. All these studies are miniatures - none contains more than ten pieces - to show the end-game ideas in their clearest and most brilliant form. Harry Golombek, the translator, has enlarged the original collection to include the best examples of all the various present-day schools of end-game composition. Hans Bouwmeester is a veteran Dutch International Master. He won some important first prizes in the 1950's and represented his country 7 times in the Chess Olympiads. in 1972 he became captain of the Dutch team. Bouwmeester, however, is primarily noted for his literary contribution to chess. An ardent student of the Dutch world champion Dr Max Euwe, Bouwmeester was editor of the celebrated Chess Archives and authored a number of important books on the End-game, of which this is perhaps his most notable. Harry Golombek was the king of chess writers. Chess correspondent for The London Times and The Observer, he possessed an unrivalled gift for transforming a chess game into an heroic saga with himself as the bard, singing the exploits of his chosen heroes of the mind. Several times British Champion, Golombek also played top board for England in the Olympiad and represented the British Chess Federation in the FIDE World Championship cycle. He was fluent in Russian and personally attended the World Chess Championships of 1954, 1957 and 1958 as a judge.

Modern End-Game Studies for the Chess Player

Max Euwe

Carel Benjamin Van Den Berg

Chess Archives is no longer published but in its day it provided the cutting edge of chess opening theory. It was published monthly by a team of Dutch chess opening analysts, headed by former World Champion Dr. Max Euwe. It was intended to be held in a loose-leaf ring binder. Every month new sheets would arrive. The reader was to insert the new sheets into spaces in the binder according to a coding system. In some cases the old sheets were to be removed and thrown away. Chess Archives was the first publication to introduce a numerical classification of openings. Nowadays, ECO provides the world recognized standard. Chess Archives introduced the system where you had to look at the list and get the Opening Key. For example, the Dragon Sicilian is 14a. If a new opening trick or trap were discovered, one could be sure it would appear soon in Chess Archives. Readers of established books like Modern Chess Openings could have an unpleasant surprise when a line the were playing had been refuted by new discoveries. That was unlikely to happen to any reader of Chess Archives because the new issues would always contain the latest stuff. Bobby Fischer was known to read and devour Chess Archives because he often played new lines that had just appeared in Chess Archives. In one famous game where his opponent had followed Chess Archives, Fischer had found a bust and refuted it in spectacular fashion.

Hans Bouwmeester

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