An all-time classic, My System by Aron Nimzowitsch, has shaped generations of chess players. Its timeless ideas on positional play, pawn structures, piece coordination, prophylactic thinking, strategic maneuvering, and much more, are still invaluable today.
By studying My System, players will gain a deeper understanding of the game’s core principles and enhance their ability to assess positions, formulate plans, and execute winning strategies. The book is a must-read for aspiring chess players and seasoned competitors alike.
The Morra Gambit — 1.e4 c5 2.d4 cxd4 3.c3 — is one of those openings that club players love and serious study books tend to dismiss. Marc Esserman disagrees. An international master and the foremost English-language expert on the Morra, he has used this gambit to defeat multiple 2700-rated grandmasters, and in this book he makes his case that the resulting positions are genuinely dangerous for Black at any level.
White sacrifices a pawn on move three for rapid piece development and persistent attacking chances. Esserman covers all the main defensive tries Black can employ, explaining both the tactical themes and the positional resources when the attack does not land immediately.
Crucially, the Morra Declined is covered too — 3...Nf6 and other cautious tries — so you have a complete answer to 1...c5 without needing a separate Sicilian repertoire alongside it.
Esserman writes with personality and obvious enthusiasm for the opening. Intermediate players looking for a sharp, principled weapon against the Sicilian will find 360 pages of exactly that here.
This exceptional book completes the unique project where one of the greatest players of our time transforms her personal journey to the top into a roadmap for everyone who ever wanted to better themselves in the game of chess.
This ebook is a part of Bundle: Polgar Bundle
The French Defence is one of the most solid and strategically rich answers to 1.e4: Black accepts a slightly cramped position in return for a durable pawn structure and clear, long-term plans, usually centred on the counterstrike against White’s d4 and the eventual activation of the famously “bad” light-squared bishop. This book turns that defence into a complete, ready-to-play repertoire for Black.
The coverage is genuinely comprehensive. Every serious White try gets its own treatment: the space-grabbing Advance Variation, the Tarrasch with 3.Nd2, the sharp Steinitz and Classical main lines, the McCutcheon, the trappy Exchange and its symmetrical lines, and the quieter King’s Indian Attack and assorted sidelines. Across twenty-five chapters the reader is given a clear recommendation against each, with the strategic ideas explained rather than just the moves listed.
The emphasis is on understanding the resulting middlegames — the pawn breaks, the typical piece manoeuvres, and the endgames the French so often steers toward — so that you are equipped to play the positions, not merely reach them.
This is a serious, thorough repertoire book aimed at club players and above who want to take up the French as a lifelong weapon, or to deepen a defence they already trust.
Chess Training for Post-Beginners
There is a frustrating gap in most players’ development: you know the rules and you’ve picked up some tactics, but nobody has ever taught you how to actually think about a position. Experienced trainer Yaroslav Srokovski wrote this book to fill exactly that gap — a structured first course in positional understanding.
Across twelve focused chapters he builds the core skills of strategy from the ground up: how pieces become strong or weak, the use of open files and key squares, weak-square complexes and diagonals, queenside pawn majorities, the power of the passed pawn, weak pawns, the exposed king, the eternal good-knight-versus-bad-bishop questions, and the bishop pair in both middlegame and endgame.
The presentation is deliberately clear and compact, and every chapter ends with exercises so the ideas stick through practice rather than just reading. The two underlying skills Srokovski keeps returning to are the ones that decide most amateur games: how to assess a position honestly, and how to choose sensible long-term plans.
Pitched precisely at the post-beginner — the player ready to move beyond pure tactics toward genuine positional judgement.
How I Beat Fischer's Record
In 1991 Judit Polgar became a grandmaster at fifteen — breaking the age record Bobby Fischer had set decades earlier — on her way to becoming the strongest female player in history and a genuine threat to the world’s very best. This book is the first volume of her trilogy, and it is both a teaching manual and the story of how that prodigy was made.
Polgar builds the instruction around her own early games, organised by theme rather than by opening. The chapters work through the attacking and tactical tools that defined her play — tricks and traps, the mating net, trapping the queen, the zwischenzug, piece domination, exploiting a lead in development, and attacking the uncastled king — before moving into the art of simplifying and basic endgame technique.
Because the examples come from her own path to the top, the lessons carry the weight of real, high-stakes games, including victories over elite opponents such as Anand and Polugaevsky and a vivid tournament diary. You learn the ideas and meet the player at the same time.
A rich, motivating book for club players and improving juniors who want to absorb aggressive, concrete chess from one of its greatest exponents — equal parts instruction and inspiration.
Bent Larsen's Best Games
Bent Larsen (1935–2010) was one of the great fighting spirits in chess history — the Danish grandmaster who defeated every World Champion from Botvinnik to Karpov, qualified as a Candidate four times, and was chosen ahead of the entire Soviet team to play board one for the Rest of the World in 1970. This is the definitive collection of his finest games, annotated by the great man himself.
More than 120 games are presented, and Larsen’s notes are the heart of the book: lucid, sharply to the point, deeply instructive, and famously witty. He was as original a writer as he was a player, and his comments convey not just the analysis but the uncompromising, risk-embracing attitude that made him such a dangerous and beloved competitor.
The games are arranged as a career narrative, carrying the reader from his early Scandinavian successes through his astonishing run of five consecutive international victories in 1967, the Interzonals and great tournaments of the 1970s, and his encounters with Fischer, Spassky, and the rest of the era’s elite.
Part games collection, part autobiography, this is a book to study and to enjoy — ideal for any player who wants to learn attacking, independent chess from one of its supreme practitioners.
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