E-Books durchsuchen

Maneuvering: The Art of Piece Play

Some of the hardest moments in chess come when there is no forcing line and no obvious plan — when the position simply asks you to improve your pieces. This book is the legendary trainer Mark Dvoretsky’s study of exactly that skill: manoeuvring, and the art of finding the best squares for your pieces.

Piece play is one of the subtlest aspects of positional mastery, and Dvoretsky approaches it the way he approached everything — through carefully chosen, demanding examples and a great deal of active solving rather than passive reading. The material ranges across every phase, from opening manoeuvres through richly complex middlegames to queenless positions and endgames, showing how the same principles of piece improvement run throughout the game.

As always with Dvoretsky, the solutions are detailed and honest: he lays out the reasoning, the candidate moves, and the way a strong player actually arrives at the right regrouping, rather than simply presenting the answer.

This is advanced training material, best suited to strong club players, experts, and above who want to deepen one of the defining skills of high-level chess. Demanding, but among the most rewarding work a serious improver can do.

John Shaw’s aim, stated plainly in his preface, is to supply a top-class White repertoire after 1.e4 — one effective all the way up to grandmaster level, but with a workload an ambitious club player can actually manage. This first volume handles the Caro-Kann, 1...e5, and the various minor defences; a second volume completes the repertoire against the Sicilian and French.

Shaw’s selection principle is sensible: where two lines are equally good he picks the one demanding less memorisation, but where one option is clearly best he recommends it even if it requires serious study. And because 1.e4 players, as he puts it, tend to have “dark intentions against the black king,” the choices throughout are active and space-gaining, chosen to create attacking chances.

The two main battlegrounds set the tone. Against the Caro-Kann he gives the Advance Variation, meeting 3...Bf5 with the aggressive 4.h4 to seize space and harry the bishop. Against 1...e5 he chooses the Scotch — a forcing, challenging system that sidesteps the heavily-analysed Berlin and Marshall of the Ruy Lopez. The Petroff, Scandinavian, Philidor, Alekhine (with a principled 6.Nxf7 sacrifice), Pirc, Modern, and assorted gambits are all given clear, explained recommendations.

At 632 pages this is a thorough, fighting repertoire rather than a shortcut, illustrated throughout with deeply annotated games. Best suited to intermediate and advanced players who want a 1.e4 repertoire they can rely on for years.

Gormally shares the inner workings of the chess world – a world riven with insecurities, strange social customs and petty rivalries, while casting his analytical eye on topics as disparate as eccentric waiters, strange Amsterdam zoos and inspiring mountain passes.

The readers will see 50 incredible tense battles with many beautiful ideas, sacrifices and hidden motifs.

This book aims to offer an active Black repertoire against The English Opening 1.c4, the Reti 1.Nf3, and their siblings that arise after 1.g3. More importantly, it tries to offer not only variations, but also a philosophy of how to treat such openings.

Bf4 in the Queen's Gambit and the Exchange Slav

Grandmaster Alexey Dreev is one of the leading experts on the quiet, pressing systems where White develops the dark-squared bishop to f4, and this book is his detailed guide to using them as a complete White weapon against two of Black’s most solid defences.

The first half covers the Exchange Slav (1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6 3.cxd5 cxd5 4.Bf4) — an opening often dismissed as drawish, which Dreev shows to be a genuine tool for posing problems. The second half applies the same Bf4 idea to the Queen’s Gambit Declined, in both the Petrosian and Classical Variations, where the bishop’s early development sidesteps Black’s most comfortable set-ups.

Dreev’s treatment is thorough and concrete: he maps out the many move-order branches, explains the recurring plans for both sides, and supports the analysis with complete illustrative games. The recurring theme is how White can keep a small but lasting initiative in positions Black expected to be safe.

A specialist, theory-rich repertoire for ambitious players who want a sound, low-risk way to fight for the advantage with 1.d4 against the Slav and the QGD.

The idea of the Miniatures series is to present a mix of interesting miniatures, combinations, instructive mistakes along with some accompanying opening theory putting everything into context This volume is dedicated to Sicilian Najdorf.

Few books have shaped modern chess strategy as deeply as Aron Nimzowitsch's My System. Chess Praxis is its practical sequel — the book where Nimzowitsch shows his theories at work.

In Chess Praxis, Nimzowitsch revisits his core principles — centralization, prophylaxis, overprotection, restriction and blockade — through deeply annotated games from his own tournament career, demonstrating his methods against world-class opposition.

About the Author:

Aron Nimzowitsch (1886–1935) was one of the strongest players of his era and one of the most influential theoreticians in the history of chess. A leading figure of the hypermodern school alongside Réti and Tartakower, he challenged the classical orthodoxy of his day and replaced it with a new vocabulary of chess concepts — many of which remain core teaching ideas a century later.

The readers will see many complex endgames with dozens of useful and beautiful ideas, which could be used in our own practical games.

There are plenty of fighting draws as well, where both players are trying their best in order to win the game, but it finally ends in draw. This kind of extremely tense battles is exactly what the book is about.