Practical White Repertoire, Volume 2
This is the second volume of Alexei Kornev’s practical White repertoire with 1.d4 and 2.c4, and it is devoted to the defences in which Black fianchettoes the dark-squared bishop — the most ambitious, attacking replies to the Queen’s-Pawn game.
Kornev gives clear, complete recommendations against the whole fianchetto family: the Grünfeld (with the main 4.cxd5 and 5.e4 approach), the King’s Indian in all its branches, and the Modern, Pirc, and Philidor/Lion structures that arise when Black combines ...g6 or ...d6 with an early kingside fianchetto. Each is met with a coherent, unified plan rather than a patchwork of unrelated lines.
As the title promises, the emphasis is practical: the repertoire is chosen to be sound and genuinely playable for a club player, with the key plans and move-orders laid out clearly so you know not just the moves but the ideas behind them.
This is the middle book of a three-volume series: together with Volume 1 (the 1...d5 defences) and Volume 3 (the Nimzo-Indian and others), it forms a complete, classical 1.d4 and 2.c4 repertoire. Best suited to club players and above who want a principled, low-fuss way to meet the King’s Indian and Grünfeld.
Woman International Master and experienced children’s coach Anastasiya Geller has written a textbook for beginners teaching them the very basics of attacking the enemy king. The reader will learn how to find a simple check and fully master one of the most important tactical elements in chess – checkmate in 1 move! The reader also learns how to choose the best defense against a check.
The book contains 2000 exercises, most of which are checkmates in 1 move – from the simplest mates with one piece to mating using several tactical techniques at once. The first part of the book introduces the concept of check and shows the reader how to recognize a safe check, before teaching discovered check. The second part gradually introduces different types of mate in a logical sequence by the different pieces, beginning with the rook and then progressing to the bishop, queen and knight. The third part of the book explains how to checkmate in one move using key techniques: checkmate with capturing, checkmate with a pawn promotion, checkmate with protection (including checkmate with a pawn), checkmate with pinning, checkmate with a discovered check, and checkmate with a double check.
Most of the positions to be solved have been selected from actual games of the strongest grandmasters of the present and the great masters of the past. For beginner chess players, their parents and coaches.
This book in front of you assists all players in their efforts to improve, and along their way, our young chess guns provided fresh insights how to trap and trick your opponent in the opening and early middlegame. With the many computer-assisted learning tools available, the player’s capacity to improve is limitless. This book offers the reader an insider’s candid view of how to unbalance the game in the modern age of chess.
The second volume of Sergey Voronkov's epic psychological biography of the fourth world champion covers the period in which Alekhine played his strongest chess and was at his most dominant. The author draws on contemporary publications from countries throughout the world to craft a living history of Alekhine's thoughts, feelings, activities and career, as though viewed in a film.
The journey now takes us to his first years of exile in France, major international tournaments on both sides of the Atlantic, his rivalries with Rubinstein and Nimzowitsch, his training match with Euwe, the drama and tension of three world championship matches with Capablanca and Bogoljubov, and a host of simultaneous displays in the Americas, Europe and Asia. One area explored in particular detail is Alekhine's psychological approach to the match with Capablanca and how he adapted his style to win it.
84 games and fragments are presented, including 46 never before published in books, using contemporary commentary from the protagonists themselves and other well-known players, writers and journalists of the period. Extended commentary by Euwe, Nimzowitsch and Kmoch is prominent. The annotations are supported by modern engine analysis from International Master Dmitry Plisetsky.
This work is supplemented by over 100 photographs and drawings, many of which are also published in a book for the first time.
But let me now explain the idea of this second book. I will show you some 18 games with the more or less current trends in the double fianchetto. These games include some openings like the Tarrasch and the King’s Indian, just to name a few. The main part of the book is divided into exercises and solutions, with 110 positions taken from double fianchetto games. I have divided the exercises into chapters, with each chapter featuring games by players who have deployed the double fianchetto quite often. You will find a lot of typical motifs used by these players. The difficulty level ranges from very easy through to very tough, but I won’t give points for the solutions. The ideas vary from tactics to important strategic subtleties. The reader decides how honestly he or she tries to solve these exercises. It is also not necessary to solve all of them, but it is definitely important to think about these positions and take your time. The reader should gain an impression of the many ideas and structures which are possible in the double fianchetto positions.
This third volume in Mark Dvoretsky’s course is devoted to questions of strategy, and is aimed at improving the reader’s positional understanding. The author also examines a number of positions that lie on the boundary between the middlegame and endgame.
As in the other books of the series, he uses examples from his own games and those of his pupils, together with original analyses of episodes from other player’s games.
This remarkable book is a tribute to a man who is probably the greatest chess coach of all time. Mark Dvoretsky was a fascinating, intelligent, honest, decent, hard-working and good-natured man who dedicated his life to chess and its players.
When Dvoretsky started coaching after a fairly successful career as a player, he became a kind of doctor who could quickly spot what his students needed help with. He made them better chess players but also better people. In this book, not only his most famous students Artur Yusupov and Sergey Dolmatov explain what made Dvoretsky so special, but also former World Champions such as Garry Kasparov, Vishy Anand, Veselin Topalov and Magnus Carlsen, and many others.
In addition to a wealth of delightful and often touching stories, Chess Coach contains 39 of Dvoretsky's games, which show what a strong player he was. They have been analysed by Dvoretsky himself and by many of his former students. Several interviews and articles complete this colourful compilation. One of Dvoretsky's own most famous books was called For Friends and Colleagues – as Garry Kasparov writes in his extensive foreword, this book is a worthy reply 'From Friends and Colleagues'.
Mark Dvoretsky (1947-2016) was known as ‘the strongest International Master in the world’ in the mid-1970s when he decided to pursue a career as a chess trainer. His students Artur Yusupov and Sergey Dolmatov became World Championship Candidates. A meticulous chess analyst, Dvoretsky wrote many highly acclaimed books, his most famous being Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual. He became so popular as a coach that dozens of world-class players repeatedly sought his advice.
‘Albin Planinc was born in the middle of the Second World War, on 18th April 1944, in the little village of Briše, near the small town of Zagorje ob Savi, approximately 30 kilometers from Ljubljana, the capital of Slovenia. He spent his childhood with his mother Ljudmila (unofficially Milka), a simple, uneducated woman who earned money from various unskilled jobs’.
This fascinating biography of over eighty-five annotated games and stories are being presented by grandmasters Georg Mohr and Adrian Mikhalchishin. It covers Planinc’ entire life and chess career, including his most fascinating games. This fitting tribute of a forgotten chess genius should be found in anyone’s chess library. Thanks to this colorful book Albin Planinc will continue to inspire us all and will keep his spirit alive.
The Benko and Blumenfeld Gambits have, for decades, been known as ways for Black to fight for the initiative.
While the Benko Gambit has its foundation in positional ideas, the Blumenfeld Gambit is more of a traditional gambit: play for a lead in development, a broad center, and ultimately an attack.
In this book, FM Carsten Hansen covers one hundred miniature games (games that are decided in 25 moves or fewer) across all variations of the Benko and Blumenfeld Gambits: The material is split up into the following chapters:
– Chapter 1: 4.Nf3
– Chapter 2: 4.Qc2, 4.a4 and other 4th Move Options
– Chapter 3: 4.cxb5 a6 5.Nc3
– Chapter 4: 4.cxb5 a6 5.b6
– Chapter 5: 4.cxb5 axb5 5.f3
– Chapter 6: 4.cxb5 a6 5.e3
– Chapter 7: 4.cxb5 a6 5.bxa6 – 5th and 6th Move Alternatives
– Chapter 8: Accepted – White plays a quick e2-e4
– Chapter 9: Accepted – Fianchetto Lines
– Chapter 10: Blumenfeld Gambit: 5.Bg5 & Minor Lines
– Chapter 11: Blumenfeld Gambit: Accepted
– Chapter 12: The Dzindzi-Indian
Throughout the book, there are hundreds of puzzle positions for both players, where you will be challenged to find the best move or to figure out why a certain move does or does not work.
If you play the Benko or Blumenfeld Gambits (or both), this book will help you be better prepared to recognize tactical patterns for both sides.
Andrew Burnett is a Scottish FM who has represented his country on numerous occasions. He is the author of cult classic Streetfighting Chess and his love of the Dragon opening stretches back to his teenage years when he was looking to escape from 1.e4 e5! He is currently working on the third – and final – volume of DragonMasters.
When 1975 dawned, the Sicilian Dragon, the most ferocious and exciting of openings the chess world had ever known, was on its knees begging for mercy.
Anatoly Karpov had just slain Viktor Korchnoi and Fischer’s contemptuous approach – “open the h-file, sac, sac, mate!” – seemed to have spelled the Dragon’s end. But already in the background there were acolytes attempting to repair the damage, to replace the beast’s scales and recharge its fiery breath.
DragonMasters 2 covers the tempestuous two decades that followed, pitting the world’s deadliest attackers against each other: tactical brutes such as Planinc and Velimirovic, Miles and Mestel, Short and Tiviakov – all choosing sides in the greatest opening debate of all.
Would the sword-and-spear DragonSlayer followers of Karpov and Fischer prevail once again? Or would the reinvigorated DragonMasters prove that myth and legend could survive in a modern setting? The final answer would arrive at the very top of the world...
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