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Here are 62 masterly demonstrations of the basic strategies of winning at chess, compiled and annotated by one of the game's most admired and respected writers. Each game offers a classic example of a fundamental problem and its best resolution, described and diagrammed in the clearest possible manner for players of every level of skill.

As Irving Chernev observes in the Introduction, "Who will doubt the tremendous power exerted by a Rook posted on the seventh rank after seeing Capablanca's delightfully clear-cut demonstration in Game No. 1 against Tartakower? And who will not learn a great deal about the art of handling Rook and Pawn endings (the most important endings in chess) after playing through Tarrasch's game against Thorold?"

Chernev's lively and illuminating notes on each game reveal precisely how Capablanca, Tarrasch, and other masters — Fischer, Alekhine, Lasker, and Petrosian among them — turn theory into practice as they attack and maneuver to control the board. Readers will find their techniques improving with each lesson as Irving Chernev dissects winning strategies, comments on alternate tactics, and marvels at the finesse of winning play, noting at the end of his Introduction: "I might just as well have called this collection The Most Beautiful Games of Chess Ever Played."

Elements of Positional Evaluation

Which side stands better? How much better, and why? Most players answer these questions with a loose bag of half-remembered maxims — and those vague principles often lead straight to inaccurate evaluations and bad decisions. This groundbreaking book by Dan Heisman sets out to put positional judgement on a firmer footing.

Heisman’s key move is to separate genuine "elements" from what he calls "pseudo-elements." The real elements — mobility, flexibility, vulnerability, centre control, piece coordination, time, and speed — are the lasting factors that determine how much a piece is actually worth in a given position. The pseudo-elements — material, space, king safety, development — matter too, but only as consequences of the real ones. Getting that distinction straight transforms how you assess a position.

From there he examines how each piece relates to the elements, and how static features (doubled, isolated, backward and passed pawns; open files; weak squares and outposts) feed into a sound evaluation. Now in its fourth edition, the book is as much a clarifying framework as a set of facts.

A genuinely original, thought-provoking read for the club player who wants to understand why a position is better, not just memorise that it is.

This ebook is a part of Bundle: Dan Heisman's Books

The book of a strong tournament is more than just a games collection. When its participants are the world's strongest players . . . the tournament as a whole represents a step forward in the development of chess creativity. We may take as examples of such tournaments the events at Hastings 1895, St. Petersburg 1914, New York 1924, Moscow 1935, and Groningen 1946. Beyond doubt, Zurich-Neuhausen 1953 deserves a place among them.

David Bronstein ventured this evaluation of Zurich 1953 just three years after the event, in the preface to the first Russian edition of this book. Since that time the 210 games of the legendary tournament have only grown in stature. Most knowledgeable chess players now rate it the greatest tournament since World War II, and possibly the greatest tournament of all time.

In the 1920s Jim Marfia, a talented amateur player, became determined to provide an authoritative English translation of Bronstein's book, a task which occupied him for several years. The complete record of the famous Zurich International Chess Tournament, 1953, is available in English for the first time.

Held to determine a challenger for then World Champion Botvinnik, Zurich 1953 attracted fifteen of the strongest players in the world: Smyslov; Geller; Boleslavsky; Bronstein; Najdorf; Szabo; Keres; Kotov; Gligoric; Reshevsky; Taimanov; Euwe; Petrosian; Averbakh; and Stahlberg.

Almost all the games were hotly contested, and many are masterpieces of the first rank. To mention Euwe-Smylov (round 3), Taimanov-Najdorf (round 4, winner of a brilliancy prize), and Keres-Reshevsky (round 11, one of the most reproduced and analyzed games in chess), is just to touch the tip of the iceberg; there are literally dozens of memorable, innovative games in this volume, including a substantial portion by the author, one of the game's greatest players, who finished tied for second with Keres and Reshevsky, behind the winner Smyslov.

Advanced players will want this book for the games alone. Beginning and intermediate players, concerned more immediately with instruction, will find David Bronstein's annotations not only perceptive and thorough, but also a veritable textbook on how to play the middle game.

100 Endgame Patterns You Must Know

When you recognise a pattern, you spot the key move faster, calculate more accurately, and remember what you studied far better. That insight drives this follow-up to Jesús de la Villa’s classic 100 Endgames You Must Know — but where the original covered theoretical endings, this book targets the phase just before them: the practical positions from which those endgames actually arise.

These are the recurring practical fundamentals that let you reap the benefit of theoretical knowledge — the distant and protected passed pawn, the breakthrough, king activity and the "bodycheck," reserve tempi, the opposition and corresponding squares, the good and bad bishop, blockades, and dozens more. De la Villa deliberately chose the 100 patterns with the greatest practical frequency, on the principle that studying a pattern only pays off if you will actually meet it.

Each is explained and illustrated with carefully selected examples, in the clear, myth-busting style that made the original a worldwide bestseller — proof again that the essential endgame is finite and learnable.

A high-value training book for club players and above. It pairs naturally with 100 Endgames You Must Know, but its practical focus makes it genuinely useful on its own.

Endgame Play - GM Preparation

Part of Jacob Aagaard’s award-winning Grandmaster Preparation series, this is endgame training pitched at the level where it actually decides games among strong players. It is not a theoretical manual of memorised positions but a workbook for building genuine endgame skill.

Aagaard introduces a small set of key endgame concepts and then puts the reader to work, with a large body of carefully chosen exercises drawn from recent tournament practice. The progression runs from pawn endings and simple minor-piece and rook endings through the notoriously tricky opposite-coloured bishops, challenging rook endings, queen endings, and on to tactical endings, fortresses, and strategic endgames — with a foreword by endgame authority Karsten Müller.

The emphasis throughout is on doing rather than reading: you train your calculation, technique, and judgement on real, difficult positions, the way a professional prepares. The exercises are genuinely hard, which is the point.

Best suited to strong club players, experts, and aspiring masters who want to turn endgame knowledge into practical strength. Demanding, rigorous, and highly rewarding for the committed improver.

This ebook is a part of Bundle: Grandmaster Preparation  

Boris Avrukh's original 1.d4 books — published by Quality Chess in the late 2000s — became known as "The Opening Bible" among serious club players, and the phrase "to Avrukh" entered chess vocabulary to mean obtaining a comfortable opening advantage through one of his recommendations. Both books were translated into several languages.

This volume is not an update of those works. As Avrukh explains in his preface, six years of top-level practice and computer scrutiny have rendered enough of his original analysis obsolete that a complete reworking was necessary. The earlier two-volume set has been reorganised into four volumes (1A, 1B, 2A, 2B); this is the first. Avrukh works as a trainer for some of the world's top players and has incorporated the novelties and improvements developed through that work throughout.

The opening moves 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 define this book's scope. The main focus is the Catalan proper after 3...d5, covered across 16 chapters that address every significant defensive try Black can employ — from the Open Catalan (taking on c4 immediately) to the various closed systems. The Bogo-Indian (3...Bb4+) and Benoni structures arising from 3...c5 are covered in the remaining nine chapters, completing White's coverage of all Black responses in this move order.

This is an advanced text with dense concrete analysis. It rewards serious study rather than casual reading. Volume 1B covers the Queen's Gambit systems.

The English Opening, 1.c4, is a great practical weapon for players of all levels. White dictates the opening from the first move, reaching positions where understanding themes and plans is more important than computer-generated analysis. Win with the English! provides a complete repertoire with 1.c4, showing how to meet every major option that Black may try.

Playing the English (2023) became an instant hit with professional and club players alike, generating rave reviews. GM Matthew Sadler noted that “on top of all that great explanation, the analysis is simply first class”, while IM John Watson stated: “Every experienced English Opening player will want this book.” Still, author Nikolaos Ntirlis was determined to raise the bar even higher.

Win with the English! builds upon Playing with the English by tweaking move orders, plugging gaps and steering the play in even more practically potent directions than before. This enhanced edition leaves the best parts of the original work intact, while offering all the fine-tuning needed to make this the ultimate 1.c4 repertoire.

Nikolas Ntirlis is an award-winning author, correspondence IM and openings advisor to various grandmasters. His books are loved by amateurs and grandmasters alike, with a stellar reputation for clarity, practicality and analytical precision.

Many players are serious about their chess but become stuck at a certain playing strength. It’s rarely a lack of talent or practice or opening knowledge that holds them back. Usually they get left behind because they don’t know how to make best use of the time they have available to study chess. This book addresses this problem and is your self-improvement plan. It shows you how to work on your own games to root out mistakes. It will sharpen your calculation of variations. You will be challenged to find the best middlegame strategy. Endgame technique is also covered in detail. All topics are discussed with numerous examples and puzzles from the games of modern players such as Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana and Viswanathan Anand. If you want your chess to leap forward it’s time to Coach Yourself!

In the Alapin System White's strategic idea is extremely simple. He prepares to advance with d2-d4, to build a solid pawn centre and then dictate the play. He will have to pay for this with the fact that his queen's knight has been deprived of the best square for its development, but it may have other suitable squares (in many variations this will be not the d2-square but a3). Secondly, it very often happens that after d4 cxd4 cxd4, White's queen's knight still gets access to its best square on c3. The modern evaluation of this system is that Black has comfortable enough lines in which he can obtain an acceptable game. The authors try to prove that not all of these lines are equally good.

Paul Morphy is a chess legend and without doubt one of the greatest players in the history of the game. His understanding of the game was years ahead of his time and in his era he was easily the best player in the world. His chess career was brief but brilliant and he influenced all the great champions who came after him. His legacy includes a treasure trove of wonderful strategic and attacking games which are highly instructive for all aspiring chess players. In this book, Grandmaster Zenón Franco examines in detail Morphy’s chess style, selects and studies his favourite Morphy games, and demonstrates how we can all improve our chess by learning from Morphy’s masterpieces. Move by Move provides an ideal platform to study chess. By continually challenging the reader to answer probing questions throughout the book, the Move by Move format greatly encourages the learning and practising of vital skills just as much as the traditional assimilation of knowledge. Carefully selected questions and answers are designed to keep you actively involved and allow you to monitor your progress as you learn. This is an excellent way to improve your chess skills and knowledge.

Planning is of crucial importance in chess and yet this is an area that has not been well discussed or explained to ambitious players who wish to improve. A very well known saying in chess is “Better a bad plan than no plan at all”. Playing without a plan – effectively staggering from one move to the next – is a recipe for disaster. It is essential to have some kind of idea of what you are trying to achieve and how to go about it. However, planning is not a straightforward matter. A good plan might be very short, lasting just two or three moves. Another plan might require almost an entire game to implement. A plan can be highly ambitious and complex or somewhat modest and simple. In chess, as in life, circumstances can change quickly and when they do, new plans are needed. How is a player expected to juggle all these different concepts while dealing with the immediate problems posed by the opponent’s most recent move? In this book, grandmaster and experienced author Zenón Franco explains planning in detail. He organises material in terms of: typical structures, advantage in space, manoeuvring play, simplification and, finally attack and defence. Using games played by elite players he explains how plans are formed and carried out in these different scenarios.