As I say, he was never hugely strong as a player (although he took several notable scalps), but his gifts as a writer were something else again. He wrote only a small number of books, but all are masterly. His best games collection, modestly entitled Lacking the Master Touch, would be a shoe-in for my Desert Island selection. He also wrote two lovely general games collections, each on a specific theme - Grosse Remispartien (published in English under the title Draw!) is a collection of great drawn games, and includes some fantastic battles, whilst Damen sind Luxus ("Queens are a luxury") is a collection of outstanding games, in which queens were exchanged early (to the best of my knowledge, this has not been translated into English).
Heidenfeld, pictured in 1960 (photo: wikipedia.org)
I also have a couple of other books by him. Chess Springbok is the story of a trip he made to Europe in the early 1950s, to play several international tournaments, whilst Busts! is an intriguing little book, certainly the smallest in my collection - pages the size of playing cards, it presents a number of refutations of famous games and endgame studies. Some of his extensive game analyses in the series Lasker and his Contemporaries are also masterpieces, which bring to life some of the greatest games of Lasker's career (eg. the win against Capablanca from St Petersburg 1914, and the fantastic draw in game 7 of the match against Schlechter, surely the finest battle ever seen in a world championship match?).
As a player, Heidenfeld's victims included such strong masters as Najdorf. His biggest scalp, however, came in the following game, and enabled him to win an international tournament, in his adopted country, ahead of the ex-world champion.
