Irving Chernev

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Irving Chernev (born January 29, 1900 in Priluki , † September 29, 1981 in San Francisco ) was an American author of chess books .

Life

He came from a Jewish family and emigrated to the USA in 1920, where he worked as a music teacher. He learned to play chess when he was 12 years old. Although he never achieved the championship title himself, he had an excellent knowledge of the chess scene and was personally acquainted with many top players. He had a large private chess library and said of himself that probably no other person had read as many chess books and replayed games as he did. He particularly admired the works of Siegbert Tarrasch , whose book Three Hundred Chess Games he called his Bible. He always carried a notebook with him in which he had noted interesting positions that he liked to demonstrate in front of an audience.

Chernev was a prolific writer and published more than twenty books on chess. The textbook An invitation to chess (1945), written together with Kenneth Harkness, was a great success with six-figure sales. The novel concept of this work consisted in depicting a diagram for each individual move so that it was possible to read it without a chessboard. His book Logical chess move by move (1957) was also very popular , in which 33 master games were explained move by move in such a way that even weaker players could follow the comments. A new edition of this work appeared in 1998 ( ISBN 0-7134-8464-0 ). He published several books with Fred Reinfeld , another well-known chess writer, including Winning chess (1948) and The Fireside book of chess (1949).

In the American chess magazine Chess Review , Chernev headed an irregular column about endgame studies since October 1937 . In 1947 he published the book Chessboard magic from this material , a sequel under the title 200 brilliant endgames ( ISBN 0-671-67284-3 ) appeared posthumously in 1989.

After his retirement, he and his wife Selma moved from New York to San Francisco, where they died of cancer at the age of 81.

literature

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personal data
SURNAME Chernev, Irving
BRIEF DESCRIPTION American chess author
DATE OF BIRTH January 29, 1900
PLACE OF BIRTH Priluki
DATE OF DEATH 29th September 1981
Place of death San Francisco