by GM Pal Benko and IM Jeremy Silman, 668pp., Hardcover (Siles Press 2003)

Opening Survey by John Watson, Foreword by GM Susan Polgar Grandmaster Pal Benko is a chess legend: A challenger for the World Championship, an innovator of many modern opening systems, a problem composer par excellence, and a father figure to his close friend Bobby Fischer, Benko has played and defeated most of the top players of the last fifty years. Pal Benko: My Life, Games and Compositions is a celebration of a great man's creative legacy. Its amazing collection of 138 deeply annotated games - which have been carefully prepared to be entertaining, enlightening, and instructive - is brought to life by Benko's memoirs of his early years in war-torn Hungary, a world of poverty, chaos, pain, and ultimately, personal triumph. His insights into famous grandmasters transform legends into real people with substance and personality, and his reminiscences of famous tournaments takes us on a journey through chess history unlike anything that's been published before. Interviews with GM Larry Evans, NM Ronald Gross, and Benko himself offer never-before-published anecdotes of Fischer, Reshevsky, Larsen and many others. A massive survey of Benko's openings (by John Watson) shows us the scope of Benko's theoretical contributions to the game. Photos abound, and 300 of Benko's chess compositions allow lovers of the game to become intimately acquainted with a strikingly beautiful aspect of chess that most have overlooked.