General Improvement

The publisher's foreword describes this as "Puzzle book meets The Master Game meets Science" — a reference to the 1970s BBC television series where grandmasters narrated their thought processes out loud as games were replayed. That comparison is accurate.

Philip Hurtado, a researcher with no prior chess book to his name, contacted Michael Adams via his website with an idea: present the same 40 positions to chess players ranging from complete beginners to Super-GM, record not just the moves they chose but their full reasoning as they worked through each problem, and use the resulting data to analyse scientifically what actually separates strong players from everyone else.

Adams — who left school at sixteen to pursue professional chess and became one of the world's top ten players — signed on, and his involvement grew considerably as the project developed. The format is straightforward: solve the puzzle yourself, then read the recorded thought processes of each solver, from club level up to Adams himself. What emerges is not a theoretical framework but observed reality: you see exactly where a 1500-rated player and a Super-GM diverge, in their own words.

The book ends with data-driven conclusions: candidate move selection, the art of falsification, and — the question Adams says he'd been asked a thousand times with no good answer — how many moves ahead a grandmaster actually calculates. An Eyetracker experiment, tracking where players of different strengths actually look on the board, adds a final dimension that no conventional chess book has attempted.

464 pages. Suitable for intermediate players and above.

The chess world has witnessed a great number of wonderfully gifted attacking players, geniuses who have dazzled the chess public with their brilliant masterpieces. Everyone has their own favourites, and in Chess Secrets: Great Attackers, Colin Crouch chooses three of his own: Garry Kasparov, Mikhail Tal and Leonid Stein. World Champions Kasparov and Tal need no introduction, while Stein was a highly creative and intuitive player with the ability to destroy the world's best players with his vicious attacks. Crouch examines phases of these players' careers, compares their differing approaches and styles, and highlights key attacking themes including the idea of controlled risk - in some sacrificial attacks even the greatest players can't always see everything to the end. A study of this book will help you to enhance your skills in one of the most crucial elements of the game.

I realize that this book will not cover all open wounds, nevertheless my aim to write a manual about defense which can help us defenders enduring the hardest difficulties in practice, seems to be achieved. Personally speaking this book helped me as a defender to approach a worse position in a much more objective way, optimally use all of my defensive resources available, both psychologically and technically, to set – even under the most dire circumstances – pitfalls, while keeping my nerves under control.

Magnus Carlsen’s mastery of the middlegame is astonishing, even by the standards of World Champions. But how did this power develop, and what can the rest of us learn from it? To explain the mysteries requires another elite grandmaster, and Ivan Sokolov is perfectly qualified for this role. Magnus Carlsen’s Middlegame Evolution allows the reader to celebrate the brilliance of the highest-rated chess player in history while learning from his example. With insightfully annotated games, Sokolov takes us inside the mind of a chess genius.

What is it that makes Magnus Carlsen the strongest chess player in the world? Why do Carlsen’s opponents, the best players around, fail to see his moves coming? Moves that, when you replay his games, look natural and self-evident? Emmanuel Neiman has been studying Carlsen’s games and style of play for many years. His findings will surprise, delight and educate every player, regardless of their level. He explains a key element in the World Champion’s play: instead of the ‘absolute’ best move he often plays the move that is likely to give him the better chances. Carlsen’s singular ability to win positions that are equal or only very slightly favourable comes down to this: he doesn’t let his opponents get what they hope for while offering them the maximum amount of chances to go wrong. In areas such as pawn play, piece play, exchanges as a positional weapon and breaking the rules in endgames, Neiman shows that Magnus Carlsen has brought a new understanding to the game. Neiman also looks at Carlsen’s key qualities that are not directly related to technique. Such as his unparalleled fighting spirit and his ability to objectively evaluate any kind of position and situation. Carlsen is extremely widely read and knows basically everything about chess. What’s more, as the most versatile player in the history of the game he is totally unpredictable. The Magnus Method presents a complete analysis of the skills that make the difference. With lots of surprising and instructive examples and quizzes. Examining Carlsen’s abilities together with Emmanuel Neiman is a delightful way to unlock you own potential.

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 seconds tick down relentlessly toward zero just as your game approaches the critical stage. Your higher-rated opponent is putting your game under severe pressure, so extreme accuracy is needed to hang tough and avoid falling into a losing position. What do you do now – should you exchange pieces to relieve the pressure, lash out with a sacrifice, probe for weaknesses in the opponent's camp, or maybe just give up and get a lesson on how to bring the point home? The answer is... none of these! At such do-or-die moments, says Steve Hrop, the first thing to do is to sit on your hands and take a few deep breaths. In Defending Under Pressure: Managing Your Emotions at the Chessboard, the author uses critical moments from his own tournament games (most of them against players rated above 2200) to describe the difficulties of thinking straight when the enemy is at the gates, and then outlines methods and techniques to clear your head, evaluate the position, and find your way to the best move. Techniques include how to avoid redundant pieces that critically limit your mobility; when visualization is more important than calculation; and “freeze-framing” positions to eliminate blunders. Save the draw – or turn a looming defeat into an astonishing victory – with the tips in this practical training manual!

I decided to write about something that I would be interested to learn myself. In this book: • I show what preparation for a game by a 2650 player looks like. In chess, we only see the game on the stage, and can only guess at what is hidden behind the scenes. Top players can't reveal this, nor can their seconds, so I decided – who, if not me? • I show my preparation for games, accompanied by analyses that I consider enough to apply the opening line. • I show how I outplay opponents, not with powerful opening preparation, but by leading them into positions that are pleasant for me or unpleasant for them. • I explain things that many players do not pay attention to in terms of opening preparation and preparation for an opponent.

The Fearsome Fascination of Kingwalks! Marching your king across the board – at times right through or into enemy lines – may be both exhilarating and terrifying. Nothing may be quite as satisfying as a majestic kingwalk across the board which brings you glorious victory. And nothing as tragicomic as a needless journey ending in epic failure. Chessplayers are fascinated by kingwalks, perhaps because of their inherent contradiction and even implausibility. The most important – and vulnerable – chess piece does something other than trying to remain safe. Topics include: Kingwalks to Prepare an Attack; Kingwalks in Anticipation of an Endgame; Kingwalks to Defend Key Points; Kingwalks to Attack Key Points or Pieces; Mating Attacks; Escaping to Safety Across the Board; Escaping to Safety Up the Board; Kingwalks in the Opening; Kingwalks in the Endgame; Double Kingwalks; and Unsuccessful Kingwalks. For sheer entertainment as well as instructive value, the kingwalk is transcendent!

"The Secret Ingredient" is a grandmaster guide to maximizing your chess results, focusing on key elements of practical play which have received little to no attention in previous chess literature. How exactly can we best make use of computers? What’s the ideal, step-by-step way to prepare against a specific opponent? How can we optimize our time management at the board? And what’s the one key skill that separates the best players from those who have yet to reach their full potential? GM Jan Markos sheds light on these topics and many more, helped by the world-class insights of his good friend GM David Navara.