The Life And Games Of Carlos Torre

Serving as the translator for Gabriel Velasco’s Vida y Partidas de Carlos Torre was my first big job in chess book writing and editing, and one of my most enjoyable. Besides the interesting work of turning Spanish into English, it introduced me to Carlos Torre as a chess player and as a person. It has been twenty-three years since the first edition of this book went to press. It was well received critically, and I felt proud of what Dr. Velasco and I had worked hard to produce. Still, over the years, as my skill and experience with chess databases and analytical software increased, I realized it could have been much better. Better for one in its technical aspects, especially game annotations and notation. Also as I continued research into chess history (a lifelong interest), new things related to Torre would turn up, things that would have made worthwhile additions to the book. These kept accumulating in my files. But they just stayed there until I saw the film Torre x Torre, a documentary by Mexican film-makers, released in 2019. It inspired me to think seriously about a new edition. Dr. Velasco was unable to contribute further, and even went so far as to suggest that the new edition should be credited to me as sole author, but there is still enough of his original work here that I could not accept that.

Here is what has been added to this edition: More accurate and more extensive annotations, computer-assisted. Every game has been examined under Stockfish 14, probably the best analytical engine available for home computers at this time. For the first edition we had only Fritz 4 and 5, which compare to Stockfish like a Model T Ford to a Ferrari, and many games were given no computer examination at all. Thus owners of the first edition will find most annotations here substantially different (and substantially better). However, many general assessments and heuristic notes proved valid and have been retained. ¦ Torre’s own annotations to several games have been unearthed and added.