Capablanca game collection books

Is anyone aware of a collection of Capablancas games, annotated by the man himself, translated into algebraic? I have looked on amazon but I am having a hard time finding such a thing.

My Chess Career and Chess Fundamentals were both written by Capablaca and both included some of his games which he annotated.

The Immortal Capablanca by Fred Reinfeld contains a ton of Capa's great games, but they are all annotated by Reinfeld, not Capa.

Originally posted by chrspayn
Is anyone aware of a collection of Capablancas games, annotated by the man himself, translated into algebraic? I have looked on amazon but I am having a hard time finding such a thing.

Why does it have to be in algebraic? Descriptive notation isn't so bad once you get used to it.

Chernev and Reinfeld did two excellent books on Capa's games.

Capa's own books are good, but Capa was gifted so could not
fully explain why he was so good.

Chernev and Reinfeld were very good writers (and teachers).
I prefer these two to explain to the layman Capa's games than the great man himself.

The Unknown Capablanca by Hooper is a real eye opener.
It's has a lot Caps's games v Joe's in simultaneous displays.
He was a class one tactician and it's pity he did not use this
style sometimes in serious games.

I'd take Mr Hand's advice, learn descriptve. You can pick some
wonderful bargains and some excellent books in descriptive.

I have Immortal games of Capablanca by Reinfield. It's in descriptive notation but you can download the pgn's that are in the book online, so you don't even need to learn descriptive, although it's not difficult anyway.

I've got copies of 'The Immortal Games of Capablanca' by Reinfeld, which is good, but not algebraic.

I also have a copy of Winter's 'Capablanca. A Compendium of Games, Notes, Articles, Correspondence, Illustrations and Other Rare Archival Materials on the Cuban Chess Genius Jose Raul Capablanca, 1888-1942'. This has a lot of games annotated by Capablanca himself (from other sources, e.g. chess magazines of the time). A great, entertaining book, but not for those without disposable income. I'd drop the $$ on a copy of Fischer's 60 Memorable games first (I love that book, worth every penny). I agree with greenpawn, I wouldn't put Capa in with other great annotators. His games are beautiful, but his writings a little short of the game itself.

I have the algebraic reissue of Harry Golombek's Capablanca tome. It's fantastic andI recommend it highly.

Originally posted by chrspayn
Is anyone aware of a collection of Capablancas games, annotated by the man himself, translated into algebraic? I have looked on amazon but I am having a hard time finding such a thing.

Also, I'm not sure how useful it would be to you, since it's in DN and not very many games, but don't forget the out-of-print Dover reissue of "World's Championship Matches, 1921 and 1927". Capa lightly annotates the 1921 games, but not the 1927 games (which were annotated by others).

Can anyone tell if this: http://www.amazon.com/Capablancas-Hundred-Best-Games-Chess/dp/184382129X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219754286&sr=8-1


is the algebraic version or not, I am guessing it is because of the 2004 copyright date, but am not sure.

Originally posted by chrspayn
Can anyone tell if this: http://www.amazon.com/Capablancas-Hundred-Best-Games-Chess/dp/184382129X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219754286&sr=8-1


is the algebraic version or not, I am guessing it is because of the 2004 copyright date, but am not sure.

I'm not certain, but I suspect it is NOT in algebraic notation. The Batsford edition by Golombek and Nunn is in figurine algebraic, but there's no indication that this Hardinge Simpole edition is a copy of the Batsford edition. I suspect it's a copy of an older edition that was made in descriptive notation. Also, if you read the Amazon reviews, you'll see that they imply that the book is in descriptive.

Edit - BTW, for information, Hardinge Simpole books are "print-on-demand" books. I have one HS book, and it appears to simply be photocopy impressions of older books. And because it's a photocopy instead of an exact copy of the original, there seems to be a slight degradation of print quality, which is even more noticable in photos. Also, most (if not all) of the covers use the same generic graphic design, which is clearly not as desirable as the original cover graphics, imho.)

I suspect it is this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Capablancas-Games-American-Batsford-Library/dp/1879479478/ref=sr_1_20?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219769062&sr=8-20

It seems like algebraic collections of both Capablanca and Alekhine games are always both out of print and quite expensive

Originally posted by King Mob
I have the algebraic reissue of Harry Golombek's Capablanca tome. It's fantastic andI recommend it highly.

I too have this but in desciptive.
Winter states it has few errors in it - hope they cleared this up
in the algebraic version.

Originally posted by chrspayn
I suspect it is this one:

http://www.amazon.com/Capablancas-Games-American-Batsford-Library/dp/1879479478/ref=sr_1_20?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1219769062&sr=8-20

It seems like algebraic collections of both Capablanca and Alekhine games are always both out of print and quite expensive

I'm not sure what you mean here. For clarification, the link you give in this post is the American Batsford edition by Golombek, as edited by Nunn. This is the same book I referred to earlier that I stated is in figurine algebraic notation. (And I'm 100 percent sure of this.) Unfortunately, it's also out of print and expensive on the used book market.

However, it's not the book that I suspect the Hardinge Simpole book has copied. As I previously stated, I suspect that HS has copied an older, descriptive notation edition, although I haven't actually seen a copy of the HS book.

Originally posted by chrspayn

It seems like algebraic collections of both Capablanca and Alekhine games are always both out of print and quite expensive

Regarding Alekhine game books, you could always get the Skinner book. Yeah, it would cost you several times the cost of a normal new book, but then it would take you several lifetimes to get through. What a bargain! 😉

Originally posted by greenpawn34
I too have this but in desciptive.
Winter states it has few errors in it - hope they cleared this up
in the algebraic version.

I believe those errors have been corrected in the algebraic reissue. As I recall, Golombek's original analysis is always included but there are a couple of games where John Nunn disagrees with Golombek and includes his alternative analysis in a footnote.