For nearly forty years, FIDE Master David Lucky has been playing great players from around the world in chess tournaments. Along the way, he has won several brilliancy prize games, in addition to many other exciting games against Grandmasters, International Masters, and other champions. This book is a specially selected collection of 119 of his very best games. Included are wins against Grandmasters Walter Browne, Yuri Shabanov, Nick deFirmian, Michael Wilder, Igor Ivanov, and many others. There are a plenty of creative attacking games, and amazing combinations that were published in various chess magazines and newspaper columns. The book also includes an article about David’s discovery of a “missed win’ from the World Championship Match between Gary Kasparov and Nigel Short, together with another article about David’s discovery of a powerful move in a popular opening variation that was named one of the best theoretical novelties of the year by Chess Informant. This book should delight any Intermediate or better chess player (USCF rating of 1400+).
Joel Benjamin is one of the most prominent faces in the history of US chess. At thirteen years of age he broke Bobby Fischer's record as the youngest ever national master, and this was followed by countless tournament successes. Perhaps most famously, in 1997 he hit the headlines when he became the chess consultant for IBM's Deep Blue computer, which made history by beating World Champion Garry Kasparov in an epic encounter.
In American Grandmaster, Benjamin takes the reader on a journey through chess adventures spanning more than thirty years. Tracing through his own career, from being a prodigy in the 'Fischer boom' era thorough to an experienced Grandmaster with many titles, Benjamin is in a unique position to highlight the major changes that have occurred both in US and international chess throughout the last four decades.
This book contains games from every single female World Champion, as well as young up and comers, top seasoned professionals, streamers, and even a section at Beth Harmon from the recent famed Queen’s Gambit hit show.
This book is not just for girls and women, however. Any chess player can learn from these games and discover female chess history, both from the famous players in the past right up to the present day.
How have these games been selected?
It is at this point I can mention the real reason - my UK Girls chess project called ‘She Plays To Win’ (SPTW).
This group has officially been going since April 11 th 2020. I had the idea even a few years before, but I was not sure how it could be set up. The unfortunate events of worldwide lockdown provided the answer, as the switch to being online allowed me to offer zoom lessons for UK girls as well as weekly girls tournaments on the Lichess server. I do this for free and parents have never paid anything to get involved.
Each week I cover a top female player and we analyse the game. Over the past year I have built up a large collection of games and tactics, which I felt could be published. It is the most up to date collection about women’s chess covering a variety of ages and levels.
After nearly two years, I have nearly 500 girls across the UK signed up, and a further 200 girls in our new beginners programme. I hope this is just the beginning.
After all, on our official website www.sheplaystowin.co.uk the tagline reads ‘Every Girl in the UK should play and learn chess - the educational benefits are huge’.
I can announce that I personally will not take a penny from this book, as 10% of the proceeds from sales will go directly to the She Plays To Win charity in order to further the SPTW UK girls chess projects.
So not only can you benefit a lot from this book personally, your purchase will benefit UK girls chess immensely.
Chess Secrets is a series of books which uncover the mysteries of the most important aspects of chess, such as strategy, attack, defence, opening play, endgames, off-board preparation and mental attitude. In each book the author studies a number of great players who have excelled in such aspects of the game, greatly influenced their peers and inspired all of us.
In Great Chess Romantics, Craig Pritchett selects five players, whose chess artistry expresses a deeply personal commitment to the discovery and revelation of great new truths and beauty on the chessboard. Anderssen defined romanticism's inherently dramatic and correct combinational core. Chigorin championed this essence in splendid opposition to an emerging new classical consensus. Réti revealed the extraordinary power of new flank openings. Larsen confounded the overly sober, scientific Soviet schoolÌ at innumerable turns. In the computer age, Morozevich constantly discovers new depths to chess, while simply oozing exquisite strokes in his best games.
Chess Secrets is a series of books which uncover the mysteries of the most important aspects of chess, such as strategy, attack, defence, opening play, endgames, off-board preparation and mental attitude. In each book the author chooses and deeply studies a number of great players who have excelled in such aspects of the game, greatly influenced their peers and inspired all of us.
In Giants of Innovation, Craig Pritchett selects five chess legends whose play exemplifies outstandingly innovative attributes. Wilhelm Steinitz established the essential ground-rules for modern positional chess. Emanuel Lasker pioneered a new kind of total all-out battling chess. Mikhail Botvinnik taught us how to prepare and successfully play an entire range of complex modern opening systems. Viktor Korchnoi set particularly high standards in the art of defence and counter-attack. Vassily Ivanchuk, a modern byword for ingenuity and surprise, excels by constant creation.
Read this book and enhance your own skills. Understand how to inject more innovation into your own games.
In Heroes of Classical Chess, Craig Pritchett selects five great players whose style exemplifies classically direct, clear, energetic, tough, ambitious yet fundamentally correct chess playing attributes. Pritchett studies the major contributions they have made, compares their differing styles and discusses the critical influences they have had on the development of chess, on their peers and on all our games.
Read this book and enhance your own skills. Understand how to play in a classical style and win more games.
Ljubomir Ljubojević belongs to a generation of extraordinary chessplayers, whose most outstanding representative is Anatoly Karpov.
Ljubojević reached number 3 in the world rankings and a potential candidate for the world title.
The book consists of forty of his best games, played between 1970 and 2008, annotated in the “Move by Move” format, with questions and exercises, a method which is effective both for training and teaching.
At the start of his career Ljubojević was notable for his dynamic and original style but his play gradually became more rounded and positionally refined.
As usual, Franco is keen to highlight the practical aspects of competitive chess, since we are playing, not against computers, but against human beings like ourselves, who make mistakes, like or dislike the position, get tired etc.
Vasily Smyslov, the seventh world champion, had a long and illustrious chess career. He played close to 3,000 tournament games over seven decades, from the time of Lasker and Capablanca to the days of Anand and Carlsen. From 1948 to 1958, Smyslov participated in four world championships, becoming world champion in 1957.
Smyslov continued playing at the highest level for many years and made a stunning comeback in the early 1980s, making it to the finals of the candidates’ cycle. Only the indomitable energy of 20-year-old Garry Kasparov stopped Smyslov from qualifying for another world championship match at the ripe old age of 63!
In this first volume of a multi-volume set, Russian FIDE master Andrey Terekhov traces the development of young Vasily from his formative years and becoming the youngest grandmaster in the Soviet Union to finishing second in the world championship match tournament. With access to rare Soviet-era archival material and invaluable family archives, the author complements his account of Smyslov’s growth into an elite player with dozens of fascinating photographs, many never seen before, as well as 49 deeply annotated games. German grandmaster Karsten Müller’s special look at Smyslov’s endgames rounds out this fascinating first volume.
International Master Tibor Karolyi and FIDE Master Tigran Gyozalyan have written a comprehensive two-volume treatise on the life and games of Tigran Petrosian, who was world champion from 1963-1969. The present Volume II takes the reader on a journey from Tigran’s victory in the 1963 world title match against Mikhail Botvinnik, when he firmly established himself as the best player in the world, through his next two title matches against Boris Spassky in 1966 and 1969 and subsequent candidates matches against Bobby Fischer, Victor Korchnoi and other world-class players of the era. It covers all his tournaments and matches of the second half of his career, ending with his final games in 1983.
Karolyi and Gyozalyan provide deep modern analysis of 175 full games and fragments, and summarise almost all known games played by Petrosian in the period. They also provide considerable background colour on each game, with round-by-round analysis of tournaments and matches in which they were played. Many of these games have not previously been analysed in detail in modern books, and those that were have nevertheless been subjected to considerably improved analysis.
Petrosian’s opponents in Volume II include world champions and challengers Kasparov, Karpov, Fischer, Spassky, Tal, Smyslov, Botvinnik, Korchnoi, and Bronstein, as well as leading players such as Timman, Larsen, Reshevsky, Beliavsky, Polugaevsky, Portisch, Romanishin, and many others. There is a special focus on his coaches Suetin and Zaitsev.
An added bonus is the inclusion of rare photos taken from private collections in Georgia and Armenia, many of which have never before been published in the West.
For nearly fifty years grandmasters and amateurs alike have been making their annual pilgrimage to the World Open. Legendary organizer Bill Goichberg created the model of this iconic event in American chess: large entry fees, large prizes, and no-frills. Every year around the 4th of July, Philadelphia is the scene of countless epic battles at the board.
Joel Benjamin and Harold Scott examined hundreds of games and conducted a series of interviews with what they call the Heroes of the World Open, players who won the tournament on multiple occasions. What they wanted to investigate was: why have some players been so consistent in their efforts, always battling for the top prizes? Benjamin and Scott discovered that many different paths were taken on the road to victory, but that the Heroes definitely had one common factor: their fighting spirit!
The authors present the history of the World Open from its humble beginnings to the juggernaut it has become today. There are many entertaining stories and scandals that the reader will enjoy. This rich book holds a fantastic collection of the very best games that were crucial in deciding the outcome of the tournament as well as a selection of exciting tactics. Winning the World Open is as entertaining as it is instructive. Not only the many thousands of players that participated will find it an irresistible read.
Rashid Nezhmetdinov (1912-1974) played fearless attacking chess. With his dazzling style, the Soviet master already was a legend during his lifetime, but international fame largely eluded him. Only once did he get permission to show his exceptional talent in a tournament abroad.
Five times Nezhmetdinov was chess champion of the Russian Federation. In the 1961 Soviet Championship, he won the ‘Best Game’ prize for a spectacular win against... Mikhail Tal who praised his opponent for his ‘amazing creativity.’ Other stars that ‘Nezh’ defeated in grand style included Spassky, Polugaevsky, Bronstein, and Geller.
His games, full of tactical pyrotechnics, are his legacy and have reached an ever-growing audience. Nezhmetdinov’s shocking strategic queen sacrifice, in 1962 against Chernikov, as shown on Agadmator’s YouTube channel, has become the best-watched chess video of all time with millions of views.
In this book, Cyrus Lakdawala pays tribute to the genius of the enigmatic Nezhmetdinov, a Tatar who grew up as an orphan in the part of the Soviet Union that is now Kazakhstan. In more than one hundred impressive and instructive games and positions, Lakdawala shows how Nezhmetdinov fought for the initiative, how he bluffed and sacrificed, and how he kept his cool to out-calculate his opponents. Lakdawala’s lucid writing perfectly matches the power of ‘Nezh’s’ moves. This wonderful collection celebrates Nezhmetdinov as the Greatest Attacker in Chess.
The material is divided into four chapters, and two parts, depending if we have an endgame with queens or rooks on the board. I have decided to keep the focus on endgames because in middlegames, some other factors may simply prevail. In endgames, the importance of having a knight against a bishop just increases! For easier understanding, I suggest that before studying any example, you should determine which side will prevail and you can find the solutions yourself. Of course, you can work directly from the book and even skip some examples, and you can analyze them in random order.
In the book, you will find Capablanca’s famous postulate about the queen and knight cooperating better than the queen and bishop, and some exceptions as well. For first time, you will hear of my audacious “postulate” that a rook and knight will “more often” prevail over a rook and bishop combination. I know this may sound absurd. I know Tal and Fischer would have disagreed and probably would have been indignant to hear this. I know many strong players would rather have a rook and bishop combination, basing their approach on the past masterpieces of these giants. But what about Rubinstein, and especially Karpov and Andersson – these masters had a great influence on my style and my coaching methods. Furthermore, I have based my “postulate” on statistics that I obtained after deeply searching for examples for this book. I hope it will reopen a debate about this material balance. My opinion is made, and I would like to apologize to all “bishop fans”.
I have decided to use actual words instead of symbols to explain my ideas, methods and plans. I think that it should be right in this computer era that is full of numbers, digits, etc. that words and sentences from the coach are simply irreplaceable to explain strategy and endgames.
I am sure that this book will demystify that “eternal battle” and help you to broaden your horizons. I am sure you will find a lot for yourself in this book.
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