After watching Searching for Bobby Fischer perhaps ten or twenty times, the first true titan of American chess history I was introduced to was Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan. Not in person, of course. I’ve never met the man. My introduction came through his book, Play Winning Chess.

It was the first chess book my father ever bought me, and it opened a door that never closed. Many books followed. I can’t say I’ve ever worked straight through a chess book from cover to cover the way I did László Polgár’s Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games, but I read a substantial portion of Play Winning Chess and returned to it often.

To this day, whenever I hear the word chess, a single image still comes to mind: a blue book with a big knight on the cover!