Grandmaster Preparation: Attack & Defence

Attack & Defense - GM Preparation

Part of Jacob Aagaard’s award-winning Grandmaster Preparation series, this volume tackles the dynamic heart of the game: the twin skills of attacking and defending. These are the moments when a game is won or lost outright, and they are notoriously hard to teach as a system rather than a set of disconnected examples.

Aagaard’s solution is to carve dynamic play into separate, trainable abilities — seizing and using the initiative, attacking the king, defending under pressure, and finding counterplay — and to set out the main principles governing each. By breaking the subject into clear components, he gives the reader a structured way to expand a part of chess that most players approach by instinct alone.

As throughout the series, the method is active rather than passive: the principles are introduced and then drilled through a large body of demanding exercises drawn from real play, so you build the skill by solving rather than just reading. The detailed solutions show how a strong player reasons through the chaos of a sharp position.

This is genuinely difficult, high-level material, best suited to strong club players, experts, and aspiring masters who want to sharpen the attacking and defensive sides of their game. A rigorous workout, and a natural companion to the other volumes in the series.

This ebook is a part of Bundle: Grandmaster Preparation