The revolutionary Wilhelm Steinitz(1836-1900) considered himself to be in the vanguard of an emerging, late-19thcentury ‘Modern’ school, which embraced a new, essentially scientific vitalityin its methods of research, analysis, evaluation, planning, experiment and evenbelligerent fight.Steinitz, who dominated the chess world inthe shadow of a more directly attacking, openly tactical and combinative,so-called ‘romantic’ age, established a much firmer positional basis to chess.A pivotal change!This book follows that story, both beforeand beyond Steinitz’s early ‘modern’ era, focusing closely on the subtly variedways in which the world’s greatest players in the last two centuries have thoughtabout and played the game, moving it forward. The author reflects on all sixteen ‘classical’world champions and others, notably: C-L. M. de la Bourdonnais, Adolf Anderssen,Paul Morphy, Siegbert Tarrasch, Aron Nimzowitsch, Richard Réti, Judit Polgar andthe contemporary Artificial Intelligence phenomenon, AlphaZero.Be inspired by this exploration of the ‘modern’game’s roots and trajectory!
