This collection of best games of Smyslov is probably the best collection of his annotated games in Descriptive Notation. This book was first published in 1958, the year that Vassily Smyslov was World Chess Champion. Smyslov was born on 24 March 1921. He won the two strongest chess tournaments of that decade, Zürich 1953 and Amsterdam 1956. He was a world champion candidate eight times in 1948, 1950, 1953, 1956, 1959, 1965, 1983 and 1985. He died in Moscow on 27 March 2010 at age 89.