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The story of AlphaZero has a wider impact. Game Changer offers intriguing insights into the opportunities and horizons of Artificial Intelligence. Not just in solving games, but in providing solutions for a wide variety of challenges in society. Game Changer also presents a collection of lucidly explained chess games of astonishing quality. Both professionals and club players will improve their game by studying AlphaZero’s stunning discoveries in every field that matters: opening preparation, piece mobility, initiative, attacking techniques, long-term sacrifices and much more.

In The Longest Game Jan Timman returns to the Kasparov-Karpov matches. He chronicles the many twists and turns of this fascinating saga, including his behind-the scenes impressions, and takes a fresh look at the games.

The test positions in this instructive book cover the entire spectrum of what a modern club player should know. The reader is invited to find tactical blows, deep strategic manoeuvres, opening traps, standard endgame plans and other principles in action. The solutions rarely involve spectacular fireworks, as is the case in most chess puzzle books. Instead, you may be asked to find a quiet move or a reasoned evaluation. Solving the puzzles in this unusual and entertaining book is a most effective way to improve your chess. It will help you to develop a vital skill: the ability to take practical decision in critical moments.

Chess Pattern Recognition for Beginners

Pattern recognition is the engine of chess improvement: the more standard images you carry in your head, the faster you grasp a position and find the right plan. Arthur van de Oudeweetering’s earlier books on the subject became instant favourites — but they assumed you already knew the fundamentals. This book supplies those fundamentals, written for the ambitious beginner and post-beginner.

It teaches the essential patterns a developing player actually needs: how to develop and coordinate the pieces, how to manoeuvre pawns into strong formations, how to put pressure on the opponent and attack the enemy king, and how to execute the standard sacrifices that seize the initiative. The chapters are built around memorable, named images — the rook on the seventh, the bad bishop, the isolated pawn, the classic h7 bishop sacrifice — so the ideas stick.

Each part ends with exercises, and a foreword by grandmaster Vladimir Chuchelov frames the method. The whole approach is designed so that recognising a familiar pattern does the heavy lifting that calculation alone never could.

Study it and your results should climb noticeably. Ideal for improving beginners — and the perfect on-ramp to the author’s more advanced pattern-recognition books later.

Sielecki always clearly explains the plans and counterplans and keeps you focussed on what the position requires. Ambitious players rated 1500 or higher will get great value out of studying this extremely accessible book.

Better Thinking, Better Chess

Finding strong moves is not simply a matter of how much you know — often, more knowledge makes the choice harder by multiplying the directions your mind can wander. What really matters, argues grandmaster Joel Benjamin, is how you think. This book is his attempt to fix the thought process itself.

Years of coaching taught Benjamin that pointing out the move a student missed was only half the job; the real task was explaining why they failed to find it. A chess engine won’t do that — it shows the best move but not the flawed reasoning that led you astray. So Benjamin works on the reasoning directly, across every phase of the game.

The chapters span openings, endgames, tactics, grandmaster calculation and analysis, the handling of material versus initiative, the surprisingly difficult skill of winning a won game, and the dark art of swindling a lost one — closing with a chapter of practical "words of wisdom" for clearer thinking and a set of challenges.

A practical, experience-driven improvement book for club and tournament players who keep making the same kinds of mistakes and want to understand the habits of mind behind better moves.

International Master and experienced chess trainer Thomas Willemze is the handyman you are looking for. He tells you which are the most urgent problems that need fixing. In his no-nonsense guide, Willemze presents essential techniques on how to mobilize your pieces in order to gain the upper hand.

International Master Tibor Karolyi has studied Carlsen’s career and selected more than 90 of his best endgames. He reviews them in chronological order to show how Magnus developed his skills. His technique and his choices are being explained in a manner that is easy to understand for club players.

The Full English Opening – Mastering the Fundamentals by Carsten Hansen is the first one-volume guide to cover all major variations of 1.c4 while focusing on what really matters: understanding. Instead of drowning you in endless theory, Hansen takes you inside the core plans, ideas, and strategies that make the English Opening a powerful weapon. Drawing on decades of experience and inspired by legends like Viktor Kortchnoi, he equips you to build your own repertoire with confidence—so you control the opening, not the other way around.

Victor Bologan presents a complete Caro-Kann repertoire for Black that is much more than just a lucidly explained and highly playable set of responses. In many lines Bologan provides two options to handle the Black position.