Looking for Trouble
Almost every tactics book trains the same thing: here is a position, find the win. But half of practical chess is the opposite skill — spotting what your opponent is threatening before it lands. This book, now in a revised and enlarged third edition, is built around that neglected half.
Award-winning instructor Dan Heisman presents more than 300 problems in which your task is not to attack but to identify and meet a threat — in the opening, the middlegame, and the endgame. Recognising the danger is the first and most commonly skipped step, and training it directly does more to stop you losing than any number of "white to play and win" puzzles.
The problems are organised by phase and graded for difficulty, with Heisman’s trademark clear, patient explanations that suit players of a wide range of strengths. A bonus section on famous threats from master play adds some enjoyment to the workout.
For the many players who keep getting hit by things they "didn’t see coming," this is a direct and unusually practical remedy — a defensive-awareness course rather than another tactics anthology.
This ebook is a part of Bundle: Dan Heisman's Books
Chess master, author, and renowned teacher Dan Heisman shows you the whys and the hows of annotating your games. Using entertaining clashes from four decades of tournament play, Heisman traces his own development as a player and analyst, illustrating how his method works in practice.
Who says that you can’t learn from the games of amateurs? With approximately 99.5% of U.S. Chess Federation (USCF) members being amateurs (rated under 2200), there is much wisdom to be gained from studying their games. In fact, learning from amateurs' typical mistakes can often be more informative and relevant than learning from the subtle errors of grandmasters.
In this book, a renowned chess instructor, Dan Heisman, presents 30 games played by intermediate-level players, offering a rich variety of lessons in competitive play for all amateur chess enthusiasts.
A key focus of this book is time management, with many games time-stamped to showcase how long it took the players to make their moves. By analyzing the players' decision-making processes, Heisman provides valuable insights into the pitfalls of playing too fast or too slowly, helping readers avoid similar mistakes in their own games.
Additionally, the book emphasizes the importance of recognizing critical positions and making informed decisions, further enhancing players' strategic vision.
For amateur players seeking to enhance their chess skills, The World's Most Instructive Amateur Game Book is a valuable resource to gain insights from fellow enthusiasts and take their gameplay to new heights.
While good opening preparation is important, it is often the proper middle and endgame execution that dictates the game outcome. In Techniques of Positional Play, authors Valeri Bronznik and Anatoli Terekhin focus on 45 key practical methods that every aspiring player must know. From concepts like restricting enemy pieces, creating space, navigating pawn structures, leveraging rook pawns, seizing open files, and more, these skills, while often intuitively understood, can be honed through deliberate study to enhance strategic vision.
Most of these techniques are easy to understand and memorize. Bronznik and Terekhin do not burden the reader with deep analysis and only present those variations that are necessary to get the point. Additionally, the book includes a special training section where the players can test and reinforce their skills and positional understanding.
There are many ways to study and improve at chess, but some are more effective than others. GM Axel Smith, the author of Pump Up Your Rating, is a master at teaching his students how to make the most of their training. In this book, he dives into the technical and psychological aspects of chess and shows readers the best practice techniques and strategies for rapid improvement.
Smith covers many areas of chess from openings to middle and endgames, focusing on active learning acquired through ample training exercises and clear explanations.
Pump Up Your Rating is particularly great for intermediate to advanced players looking to overcome a plateau and increase their rating.
It is very important for the practical player to train his or her ability, understand when to rely on intuition, rules of thumb and more general positional considerations, when to try to solve problems by calculating variations to the end and how to manage time to avoid time pressure.
Have you ever wished for a “formula” to help you decide what move to make in any given chess position?
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