Study brings wisdom. Practice brings perfection This is the eagerly awaited follow-up to Johan Hellsten's acclaimed Mastering Chess Strategy. In this new book Hellsten focuses exclusively on opening play. He examines a wide variety of key subjects, including development, the centre, attack and defence, pawn breaks, typical mistakes and how to punish them, and opening preparation, providing the reader with a vital foundation in opening strategy. Just like his previous book Mastering Opening Strategy is a product of Hellsten's many years' work as a full-time chess teacher and is specifically designed as part of a structured training programme to improve strategic thinking. In addition to the many examples there's an abundance of carefully selected exercise games which allow readers to monitor their progress and put into practice what they have just learned. Following such a course is an ideal way for players of all standards to improve. Although designed mainly for students, this book is also an excellent resource for chess teachers and trainers. – An essential course in opening strategy – Contains over 350 pages of Grandmaster advice – Includes over 200 examples and exercise games
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.
TACTICS TRAINER AVAILABLE!
1001 Chess Exercises for Club Players
"Chess is 99% tactics" — the old saying holds not just for beginners but right through club level, where most games are still decided by who spots the combination. This book is built to sharpen exactly that, for players roughly in the 1500–2000 range.
FIDE Master Frank Erwich does something most tactics books don’t: he combines teaching with drilling. Rather than only explaining ideas or only piling up puzzles, he introduces each key tactical theme and then backs it with a large bank of exercises on that specific motif — so you learn the pattern and then groove it.
The 1001 positions are organised by mechanism: elimination of the defence, the double attack, discovered attacks, skewers and pins, trapping pieces, promotion, saving draws, mating attacks, and — unusually and valuably — a chapter on defensive tactics, where you must find the resource that saves you. A large mixed section at the end tests whether you can recognise the right motif without being told which it is.
A complete, well-structured tactics workout. Ideal for the ambitious club and tournament player who wants a single book that both teaches the themes and provides enough volume to make them automatic.
The Modern Gurgenidze
Most openings let White build a big centre before the fighting starts. The Gurgenidze does the opposite: with 1...g6 followed by a quick ...c6 and ...d5, Black challenges White’s centre from the very first moves. It is the brainchild of Georgian grandmaster Bukhuti Gurgenidze, sits somewhere between the Modern Defence and the Caro-Kann, and draws the battle lines immediately.
This is the first book devoted to the system, and it presents it as a complete, combative Black repertoire. The coverage is organised by how ambitiously White meets it — occupying the centre with two pawns, the aggressive three-pawn set-ups with f4, and the closed systems after 1.d4 — so the reader has a clear answer whatever White tries.
A word on the engine age: the author is candid that in some lines the computer will favour White on the screen. That misses the point. The Gurgenidze is a practical, fighting weapon designed to create the kind of unbalanced, double-edged middlegame in which a prepared human outplays an unprepared one — so a small nominal edge for White should not put you off.
A genuine surprise weapon for adventurous club players who want to seize the initiative with Black and steer opponents into unfamiliar territory at once.
The unique concept of Monster your middlegame planning received a very good feedback from our readers, therefore we decided to continue the series by keeping the same concept for endgames in two volumes. The author GM Efstratios Grivas is going through the most important endgame topics in a testing format, so the reader not only masters endgames, but also tests his actual knowledge.
This ebook is a part of Bundle: Monster Your Planning
Russian International Master Maxim Chetverik has written a strategy textbook containing 75 deeply annotated positional games that show players how to devise plans to handle a number of key strategic themes, such as when to open up the game, how to activate the pawn chain, how to carry out positional sacrifices and many others. Unlike most other textbooks, the strategic plans are viewed as battles where the plans of each player clash, and Maxim analyzes why one plan comes out on top. Also unlike most other textbooks, all example games are drawn from grandmaster play in the 21st century, some played in 2018, and consider the plans right out of the opening stage. This makes the book of particular value to players wishing to better understand the strategies that the openings they play may lead to, bearing in mind the author is an openings expert with ten openings books published. The majority of games are played by elite grandmasters, including Carlsen, Caruana, Anand, Kramnik, Karjakin, Giri, So, Vachier-Lagrave, Aronian, Mamedyarov, Nakamura, Gelfand, Svidler, Ivanchuk, Shirov, Leko, J. Polgar, Topalov, Kamsky, Morozevich, Korchnoi and Spassky. Chetverik introduces and illustrates the concepts of macroplan and microplan, which provide a simple structural framework for players seeking to devise plans in their own games. The macroplan is the specific way to achieve the required result (usually, a win), for example, the successful exploitation of a queenside pawn majority. The microplan is a way of solving a local problem that involves several moves, such as transferring a knight from a bad square to a good one. Ideally, a macroplan is a chain of sequential and carefully calculated microplans. This book is largely aimed at strong club players wishing to improve, or their coaches. The recommended Elo range is approximately 1,800 – 2,200, although it may of course be of interest to players a bit lower and a bit higher than this range.
Seven years after his acclaimed and bestselling The Kaufman Repertoire for Black and White, Grandmaster Larry Kaufman is back and presents a completely new White repertoire with 1.e4 aiming for an objective advantage in the simplest practical manner. The Black repertoire from his previous book has been thoroughly revised and updated, with some crucial chapters replaced. This is the first opening book that is primarily based on Monte Carlo Search, a revolutionary algorithm that has made chess engines much stronger and more geared towards practical, human chess. The highly original analysis has resulted in many improvements on existing theory.
One of the most challenging tasks in a chess game is to find the correct strategy. It is far easy to attack too randomly, to miss a vital opportunity, or even choose the wrong plan altogether. These are all mistakes frequently seen by even quite strong players. Your Chess Battle Plan focuses on how Magnus Carlsen and other great masters decide on the best strategy in a position and then find the right ways to implement it. Clear advice shows you how to hone in on the most relevant features of a position in order to decide what your general plan needs to be. Factors that are addressed include when to exchange pieces, when to make long-range manoeuvres, when to offer sacrifices and how to identify and focus on key squares. Your Chess Battle Plan will get you thinking along the right strategic lines and using your pieces and pawns in a much more efficient and skilful manner.
“And the Rest Is Just a Matter of Technique...”
How often has this comment been appended to a game move or variation? As many players know, it really may not be all that easy to figure out what is meant by this familiar phrase.
After the untimely passing of legendary instructor Mark Dvoretsky, Artur Yusupov was given access to Dvoretsky’s famous card files. With the core material based upon these files, the former top ten grandmaster – and perhaps the most successful of all of Dvoretsky’s students – put together this book, modifying and refining the content as needed.
The book begins with a “theoretical” explanatory section. This is followed by 102 practice positions, which increase in in difficulty. Good technique for gaining an advantage is useful in all areas of the game, so there are positions from the opening, middlegame, and especially the endgame – not only from practical games but also from various studies.
The comments to the solutions are very detailed, explaining not only the main line but also the supplementary side variations. Yusupov thought it important to demonstrate the logic in the search for a decision and to show how a chessplayer can come to the right conclusions at the board.
Dvoretsky’s master student Artur Yusupov has done a great job in selecting and presenting the material so that this book “feels” like another genuine Dvoretsky work. This book is a real gem and I hope that it gives you as much pleasure as it has given me. And that from now on, when you have an advantage, the rest really will be, well, just a matter of technique... – From the Foreword by Grandmaster Dr. Karsten Müller
The Grünfeld Defence is well known to be one of Black’s best and most challenging responses to 1.d4, and has long been a favourite choice of elite players including Kasparov, Svidler, Caruana, Vachier-Lagrave and many more. As with many openings, however, it can be difficult to navigate the ever-expanding jungle of games and theory. Playing the Grünfeld offers an ideal solution for practical players. Alexey Kovalchuk is a young Russian talent with expert knowledge of the Grünfeld, and in this book he shares his best ideas to form a complete, coherent and combative repertoire for Black. In addition to theoretical soundness, efforts have been made to avoid variations leading to early forced draws, as well as those in which Black allows his king to be attacked at an early stage.
To guide your thinking during a game, you should be able to fall back on a reservoir of typical ideas and methods. That is exactly what this book offers, with Zlotnik’s legendary study material about the middlegame, modernized, greatly extended and published in the English language for the first time. Accessible to a wide range of players, it grants access to a body of instructive material of unparalleled quality, collected during a lifetime of training and coaching chess. A large collection of carefully chosen exercises will help you drill what you have learned. Written by one of the world’s most prominent chess coaches, the former director of the legendary Chess Department of the INEF College in Moscow
Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual - FastTrack Edition
Since 2003, Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual has been widely regarded as the finest single volume ever written on the endgame — but at 400-plus pages of dense analysis, it can intimidate. This FastTrack Edition is the answer: a streamlined route into the same material, designed to get you to practical endgame competence faster.
The original always used bold type to mark the text every player simply must know. This edition builds on that idea, foregrounding the essential knowledge — the key theoretical positions, rules, and methods — so you can absorb the core of each topic without first wading through the deepest variations. It is a parallel edition rather than a replacement: the same Dvoretsky wisdom, repackaged for efficient study.
Coverage spans the whole subject in the classic Dvoretsky order: pawn endings, knight and bishop endings, the notoriously tricky opposite-coloured bishops, rook endings (the heart of practical endgame play), queen endings, and general endgame principles. New introductory material by Karsten Müller and Alex Fishbein, and a foreword by Ian Rogers, frame the edition.
Best suited to club players who want the indispensable endgame knowledge in a more digestible form — and a strong on-ramp to the full Manual later.
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