Under game collections, one must add the “little red books”, Weltgeschichte des Schach, which have games of many of the great players, especially the world champions. It is said that the red book with Spassky’s games was always in Fischer’s hands before their match in 1972. I have the books with games by Lasker, Capablanca, Petrosian, and Spassky. There is a diagram every five moves.
There is a similar series that was put out by a Yugoslav publisher. They were slim volumes with a teal cover. Each little book had 100 or more games of each player. Mostly world champions, but others like Tchigorin and Rubinstein were part of the series. Must have a dozen or more of these. They cost about a dollar at the time I purchased them, about $4 in today’s money. A similar publisher, if not the same one, published an opening series with 100 theoretical games in each opening. Each book cost about 80 cents way back then.
The game collections for Gligoric and Portisch are almost theortical manuals for certain openings as these two European players were on the cutting edge, if not making opening theory, through their games. Other modern European game collections include bios or autobios of Max Euwe, John Nunn, Jan Timman, Jon Speelman, Michael Adams, Nigel Short, and Judith Polgar. There are lots of Tal game collections because of his general popularity. Also have two thick volumes, The Games of Tigran Petrosian with most of his tournament and match games, many of them annotated. Then there are the two biographies of Leonid Stein, one by Raymond Keene, the other by Eduard Gufeld. Other Russian player game collections include those for Mark Taimanov, Vladimir Kramnik, Alexander Khalifman, Iosif Dorfman, Victor Korchnoi, No collection of Soviet/Russian masters would be complete unless one has Nezhmetdinov’s Games of Chess, by Rashid Nezhmetdinov. He was a grandmaster in both chess and checkers. Extremely tactical in all phases of the game.
A recently published game collection, Lessons of a Grandmaster, covers games played by Boris Gulko. Annotated in a question and answer format Over time, I have collected some game collections by some lesser known players, like Dr. Joseph Platz, Viktors Pupols, and Billy Colias, players known more on a regional level for their tournament successes.
Speaking of American players, there are the game collections for Paul Morphy, Frank Marshall, Sammy Reshevsky, Robert J. Fischer, Arnold Denker, Joel Benjamin.
Here’s my list of three plus.
