“Levenfish’s life story and games are well worth reading about! As always with players of that generation, their early exposure to chess seems so haphazard and lacking in guidance, I find it hard to understand how they became such good players.
I enjoyed this book greatly. Levenfish’s play makes a very strong impression: dynamic, concrete and not afraid of complications. I’ll definitely write a number of his ideas in my thematic notebook!”
GM Matthew Sadler, New in Chess
“Besides many well-annotated games, Soviet Outcast: The Life and Games of Grigory Levenfish contains his reminiscences including his recollections of playing Alekhine dozens of training games when the future World Champion was on his way up just before World War One. There are many interesting tidbits sprinkled throughout this book including Levenfish’s insights on Rubinstein, Capablanca and Lasker… [This] is a great edition of a book that deserves to be called a classic.”
IM John Donaldson
“Soviet Outcast – the Life and Games of Grigory Levenfish is a modern rendering of Levenfish’s autobiography, bolstered with the inclusion of dozens of other games annotated by his own hand… My bias towards historical works may be showing, but for me, this is another winner from Quality Chess.”
John Hartmann, USCF (full review)
