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TACTICS TRAINER AVAILABLE!

The upgraded 2024 edition of a modern classic

The best advice for chess players who want to improve quickly is: get better at tactics! Because the vast majority of amateur games is decided through tactics you will immediately start beating moreopponents when you improve your tactical skills.

Improve Your Chess Tactics presents more than 700 decisive combinations from tournament practice and is a self-tutor and a sparring-partner in one. Experienced Russian chess master Yakov Neishtadt has selected those examples that have the biggest instructional value for club players.

In the first part of the book Neishtadt teaches a systematic course on the most important tactical themes. The second part consists of an exam with hundreds of tests from real-life chess, in random order so as not to give unwelcome hints on how to solve them. The solutions are not just lists of moves, but include clear,witty and instructive prose.

Yakov Neishtadt (1923-2023) was a famous chess writed and historian. He published dozens of books, in his native Russia and abroad, and was editor-in-chief of the acclaimed Soviet chess magazine 64.

In blitz and rapid it is important to make the right decisions quickly and almost instinctively. That is why world-famous opening expert Grandmaster Evgeny Sveshnikov and his son, International Master Vladimir Sveshnikov, have created a chess opening repertoire for club players that is forcing, both narrow and deep, and aggressive.

In this book Victor Bologan covers all relevant lines with a well laid-out, clearly explained and eminently playable set of responses. He presents TWO different options against every main line: a common sense approach and an aggressive weapon.

Bologan's Ruy Lopez for Black

The Ruy Lopez is the most respected of all answers to 1...e5, and meeting it well is one of the harder tasks a Black player faces. In this companion to his acclaimed Bologan’s Black Weapons in the Open Games, Victor Bologan builds a complete, modern repertoire against the Spanish, drawing on the lines favoured by Magnus Carlsen and Levon Aronian.

Its most distinctive feature is choice: Bologan gives two viable options against every main line, so you can pick the style that suits you or keep opponents guessing. The coverage is thorough — the Exchange Variation, the many faces of the Closed Ruy, the Wormald and Steinitz set-ups with 5.Qe2 and 5.d3, the anti-Marshall systems, and the deeply analysed main lines after 8.c3 d5.

The book is also built for practical use. Alongside the deep theory there is a quick-start guide for newcomers, a "Fast Lane" giving the minimum you need to play the opening at once, a strategy section on the recurring structures and ideas, and clearly marked traps, tactical motifs, and move-order points.

A rich, flexible repertoire for club players and above who want to play 1...e5 and meet the Ruy Lopez head-on, with winning chances rather than just equality.

Mastering Chess Middlegames

Alexander Panchenko (1953–2009) was one of the most successful chess trainers the Soviet Union — and later Russia — ever produced, running a legendary school that specialised in turning talented juniors into masters. This book is the classic training course at the heart of that school, available in English for the first time.

Panchenko’s method was systematic: rather than scattering tips, he organised middlegame mastery into clear themes and drilled each one with explanation followed by positions to solve. The chapters march through the essential topics — attacking the king, defence, counterplay, prophylaxis, and the art of realising an advantage — and then through the practical handling of specific material situations: major-piece battles, two minor pieces against a rook, same- and opposite-coloured bishops, and the bishop-versus-knight struggle.

What made "Pancha" special was the combination of first-rate training material with genuine warmth and enthusiasm as a teacher; the aim throughout is not just knowledge but the ability to make good practical decisions at the board.

A proven, structured middlegame course for club players who want to train the way Soviet talents were trained. Work through the positions, not just the prose, and it delivers.

Sarhan Guliev presents a wide range of strategic manoeuvres that have been repeatedly employed by great chess players.

John Watson and Eric Schiller provide club-players with solutions to a huge selection of rarely-played or tricky chess openings. They concentrate upon ideas and strategy, with enough analysis to satisfy the needs of practical play.

When Viktor Moskalenko’s The Flexible French appeared in 2008 it became something of a cult favourite — praised everywhere as fresh, inspiring, and unusually fun to read. This is his full revision of that modern classic: same broad structure, but rebuilt around a decade of new theory, with hundreds of fresh ideas, improvements, and surprise weapons added.

It is a complete repertoire for Black after 1.e4 e6, organised by White’s main systems. The Advance, Tarrasch, Classical, and Winawer each get their own section, and a final part offers off-beat answers to the Exchange French, the King’s Indian Attack, and other sidelines that French players meet in practice.

What sets the book apart is Moskalenko’s style. Rather than dumping variations, he teaches the French as a living, dynamic opening — full of the counterattacking resources, pawn breaks, and piece manoeuvres that give Black the initiative. He writes with genuine enthusiasm, flagging the critical ideas and the traps in each line, and even points out resources for White along the way, so you understand both sides of the battle.

Best suited to club players and above who want a French repertoire built on understanding and active play rather than memorisation. If you already own the 2008 edition, this is a thorough update rather than a cosmetic one.