The Best I Saw in Chess - Stuart Rachels

This is a book about chess, illustrated with material from my games. The book
addresses so many topics in strategy and competitive play that it could be called a
‘complete chess course’, if that phrase isn’t taken too expansively.
A benefit of studying my games is that you’ve never seen them before. Which is
good. Less good is that you may not know me. So let me tell you about myself, to
begin our friendship while providing some context for all the chess to come.
I grew up in Birmingham, Alabama, and played 1,011 rated games from the
ages of 9 to 23, or from 1979 to 1993. My rating began at 1496 (USCF) and rose
steadily until it passed 2600 (USCF), when I was 20. I never played professionally,
and I retired upon entering graduate school. I wrote this book in my 40s in
Alabama.
The exhilaration of competition and the joy of mental absorption – that’s why I
played chess. I loved it. I still love it. My brother David taught me the moves
around my 8th birthday, and before I turned 12 (or more precisely: at 11 years, 10
months and 13 days) I became the Youngest Master in American history, when my
rating reached exactly 2200 before plummeting down into the 2120s. So I made
master about four years after learning the rules – or let’s say five, because I wasn’t
master strength until I was 12¾, when Dave Gertler and I shared top honors in the
1982 U.S. Junior Open. Up to then, I don’t think any American had made master
so quickly. In an earlier era, it took Bobby Fischer seven whole years (can you
believe that?!).*
* Fischer became a master at 13 and learned the rules at 5 or 6.
Why ‘5 or 6’? As an adult, Fischer said in an interview that he
learned at 6: see the documentary Bobby Fischer Against the
World (2011), at 10:38. Yet when he was just 15, Fischer wrote of
learning the moves ‘early in 1949’ – which suggests 5, since
Fischer was born on March 9, 1943: see Bobby Fischer, Bobby
Fischer’s Games of Chess (New York: Simon and Schuster,
1959), p. xi.
At 12 years and 9 months, I was the youngest U.S.
…