The second volume of Sergey Voronkov's epic psychological biography of the fourth world champion covers the period in which Alekhine played his strongest chess and was at his most dominant. The author draws on contemporary publications from countries throughout the world to craft a living history of Alekhine's thoughts, feelings, activities and career, as though viewed in a film.
The journey now takes us to his first years of exile in France, major international tournaments on both sides of the Atlantic, his rivalries with Rubinstein and Nimzowitsch, his training match with Euwe, the drama and tension of three world championship matches with Capablanca and Bogoljubov, and a host of simultaneous displays in the Americas, Europe and Asia. One area explored in particular detail is Alekhine's psychological approach to the match with Capablanca and how he adapted his style to win it.
84 games and fragments are presented, including 46 never before published in books, using contemporary commentary from the protagonists themselves and other well-known players, writers and journalists of the period. Extended commentary by Euwe, Nimzowitsch and Kmoch is prominent. The annotations are supported by modern engine analysis from International Master Dmitry Plisetsky.
This work is supplemented by over 100 photographs and drawings, many of which are also published in a book for the first time.
International Master Tibor Karolyi has written a three-volume series on Alexander Alekhine’s games with the most artistic beauty and instructional value. This is the first best games collection of the fourth world champion written in the era of modern super-computers enhanced by neural networks.
The series has been conceived as a companion to Sergey Voronkov’s Alexander Alekhine: The Russian Sphinx series. Karolyi’s first volume covers Alekhine’s early career to 1921, which is where the period covered by volume I of The Russian Sphinx also ends. As such, this volume contains 199 games and fragments played by Alekhine from 1902 to 1921.
Among the all-time greats, Alekhine had perhaps the greatest influence on the development and understanding of the game. The earlier world champions did not publish nearly as much, and nor did they handle the openings at such a high level, while the later champions no longer had the opportunity to discover as many new ideas.
Further, alongside Kasparov and Tal, Alekhine was one of those players whose style is almost impossible to imitate. At the same time, the author was surprised to discover how much Kasparov reminded him of the first Russian world champion. One example is how frequently both players operated on the edge of the board.
Another interesting discovery is that Alekhine often managed to exploit his advantage by attacking on both sides of the board even in closed positions. He was also an early proponent among elite players of long castling to attack more freely on the kingside.
An essential addition to any chess fan’s library.
¡Aprende grandes trampas, convierte las derrotas en empates y los empates en victorias!
Sergei Tkachenko, miembro del equipo ucraniano que ganó el 5º Torneo Mundial de Composición de Ajedrez en 1997 y que quedó segundo en 2000, 2004, 2013 y 2017, ha recopilado 100 estudios cuyo tema común es que las blancas terminan con un solo caballo en el final, pero logran ganar o empatar.
La mayoría de las soluciones no tienen más de seis movimientos, por lo que los jugadores experimentados pueden analizar las posiciones directamente a partir de los diagramas. Los principiantes en problemas de ajedrez también encontrarán útil analizar estos estudios. El diverso conjunto de ideas tácticas que involucran a un solo caballo en el final les permitirá comprender mejor la versatilidad del caballo.
Algunos de estos estudios son clásicos de épocas pasadas. Otros fueron publicados originalmente en la Unión Soviética o en países exsoviéticos. Varios son composiciones del propio Sergei Tkachenko.
Este es el segundo libro de una serie de estudios de finales de Sergei Tkachenko que publicará la editorial Elk and Ruby Publishing House.
Sergei Tkachenko, miembro del equipo ucraniano que ganó el 5º Torneo Mundial de Composición de Ajedrez en 1997 y que quedó segundo en 2000, 2004, 2013 y 2017, ha recopilado 100 estudios cuyo tema común es que las blancas terminan con un solo alfil en el final, pero logran ganar o empatar.
La mayoría de las soluciones no tienen más de seis movimientos, por lo que los jugadores experimentados pueden analizar las posiciones directamente a partir de los diagramas. Los principiantes en problemas de ajedrez también encontrarán útil analizar estos estudios. El diverso conjunto de ideas tácticas que involucran a un solo alfil en el final les permitirá comprender mejor la versatilidad del alfil.
Este es el tercer libro de una serie de estudios de finales de Sergei Tkachenko que publicará la editorial Elk and Ruby Publishing House.
¡Aprende grandes trampas, convierte posiciones perdidas en empates y empates en victorias!
Sergei Tkachenko, un miembro del equipo ucraniano que ganó el 5º Torneo Mundial de Composición de Ajedrez en 1997 y que quedó segundo en 2000, 2004, 2013 y 2017, ha recopilado 100 estudios cuyo tema común es que las blancas terminan con solo el rey en el final, pero logran empatar.
La mayoría de las soluciones no tienen más de seis movimientos, por lo que los jugadores experimentados pueden analizar las posiciones directamente a partir de los diagramas. Los principiantes en problemas de ajedrez también encontrarán útil analizar estos estudios. El diverso conjunto de ideas tácticas que involucran a un rey en el final les permitirá comprender mejor su potencial.
Este es el sexto libro de una serie de estudios de finales de juego de Sergei Tkachenko que será publicado por Elk and Ruby Publishing House.
Yuri Sakharov (1922-1981) was a leading Ukrainian chess player and coach from the 1950s until his death, ranked the world number 17 in 1968 according to Chessmetrics. Although little-known in the West as he rarely played outside the Soviet Union, he qualified for six Soviet championship finals, with a highest position of joint sixth in 1967. Sakharov won the Ukrainian Championship twice and deployed many opening novelties in his time. As he aged he increasingly turned to correspondence chess, where he won gold medals at the ICCF Olympiads as a member of the Soviet team in 1972 and 1976.
As we see in this book, he went toe-to-toe with greats such as Tal, Smyslov, Bronstein, Keres, Polugaevsky, Taimanov, Geller, Averbakh, Stein, Ivkov and Kotov among many others. He started out as a primarily attacking player whose games often involved the Sicilian (especially the Najdorf variation), King’s Indian and Ruy Lopez openings, but he later evolved into a more universal player with strong positional skills. Sakharov also coached or seconded many future or contemporary grandmasters, including Vladimir Savon, Gennady Kuzmin, Ruslan Pogorelov, Dimitri Komarov, and Vladimir Sergeev, as well as WGMs Lidia Semenova and Elena Sedina. As his own chess understanding matured, he focused his pupils’ attention on more solid openings, such as the Slav Defense and Nimzo-Indian.
However, as first detailed to Western readers in the third volume of Sergey Voronkov’s Masterpieces and Dramas of the Soviet Championships, based on articles by this book’s author Mykola Fuzik, Yuri Sakharov had a fascinating but tragic life-story. His father was executed in 1938 during the Stalin purges. Finding himself and his mother destitute under the Nazi occupation of Ukraine during World War II, he volunteered to work in Germany, although he later escaped and joined the US Army in a civilian capacity. During his time in Germany he found himself drawn into a tragic incident of which his contemporaries were almost certainly unaware. After his return to the USSR, a case was gradually built against him culminating in his arrest in 1951 followed by a trial in 1952 and imprisonment. Yet he survived five years in the Soviet GULAG system and emerged to play his best chess in his forties.
Ukrainian Candidate Master Mykola Fuzik has written a detailed account of Sakharov’s life and career based on many years of research. He previously published a biography of another leading Ukrainian chess player, Isaak Lipnitsky, with Elk and Ruby in 2024. The current book includes reminiscences of Sakharov’s pupils and other strong players who studied with him, such as double World Senior Champion GM Vladimir Okhotnik. 121 of Sakharov’s own games and fragments, as well as four games of his contemporaries that he annotated, are analyzed in this book. Many games are annotated by Sakharov himself and others by some of the strongest contemporary players of his time, including Korchnoi and Flohr, as well as guest grandmasters and the author. In particular, Ukrainian Grandmaster Vladimir Sergeev provided a significant portion of the annotations for this book as well as making important contributions on the biographical side.
The games and commentary are highly instructive – as Vladimir Okhotnik remarks at the end of one game: “I think that this game demonstrates Yuri Nikolaevich Sakharov’s strongest sides: serious home preparation, consistent game plans, and excellent conversion technique.”
This book is supplemented with a large number of photos never published before in the West.
Sergei Tkachenko, miembro del equipo ucraniano que ganó el 5º Torneo Mundial de Composición de Ajedrez en 1997 y que quedó segundo en 2000, 2004, 2013 y 2017, ha recopilado 100 estudios cuyo tema común es que las blancas terminan con una sola torre en el final, pero logran ganar o empatar.
La mayoría de las soluciones no tienen más de seis movimientos, por lo que los jugadores experimentados pueden analizar las posiciones directamente a partir de los diagramas. Los principiantes en problemas de ajedrez también encontrarán útil analizar estos estudios. El diverso conjunto de ideas tácticas que involucran una sola torre en el final les permitirá comprender mejor la versatilidad de la torre.
Este es el cuarto libro de una serie de estudios de finales de Sergei Tkachenko que publicará la editorial Elk and Ruby Publishing House.
Sergei Tkachenko, un miembro del equipo ucraniano que ganó el 5º Torneo Mundial de Composición de Ajedrez en 1997 y que quedó segundo en 2000, 2004, 2013 y 2017, ha recopilado 100 estudios cuyo tema común es que las blancas terminan con una sola dama en el final, pero logran ganar o empatar.
La mayoría de las soluciones no tienen más de seis movimientos, por lo que los jugadores experimentados pueden analizar las posiciones directamente a partir de los diagramas. Los principiantes en problemas de ajedrez también encontrarán útil analizar estos estudios. El diverso conjunto de ideas tácticas que involucran una sola dama en el final les permitirá comprender mejor la versatilidad de la dama.
Sergei Tkachenko, un miembro del equipo ucraniano que ganó el 5º Torneo Mundial de Composición de Ajedrez en 1997 y que quedó segundo en 2000, 2004, 2013 y 2017, ha recopilado 100 estudios cuyo tema común es que las blancas terminan con solo un peón en el final, pero logran ganar o empatar.
Con la excepción de tres estudios, no hay más de seis movimientos en ninguna solución, por lo que los jugadores experimentados pueden analizar las posiciones directamente a partir de los diagramas. Los principiantes en problemas de ajedrez también encontrarán útil analizar estos estudios. El diverso conjunto de ideas tácticas que involucran a un solo peón en el final les permitirá comprender mejor la versatilidad del peón.
Algunos de estos estudios son clásicos de épocas pasadas. Otros fueron publicados originalmente en la Unión Soviética.
The King’s Indian Attack, featuring White’s early kingside fianchetto and d3, while usually involving the e4 advance and often a kingside pawn storm, was one of Bobby Fischer’s favourite openings. It is simple to learn without the need to worry about huge blocks of theory and it is taught through 77 illustrative games.
That said, being simple to learn doesn’t mean that the opening doesn’t have its fair share of excitement – and complications. It certainly has – both tactical and positional – once you get into the middlegame, but there is very little that you need to learn by heart after you digest the key ideas from the book’s introduction and illustrative games.
This book features eleven games with Fischer as White.
The book recommends White’s best easy-to-remember set ups against all of Black’s main replies. The key material is delivered as follows:
Chapter 1: The Reversed King’s Indian
Chapter 2: The Reversed Pirc
Chapter 3: KIA vs ...d5 ...c6 and ...Bxf3
Chapter 4: KIA vs ...d5 ...c6 and ...Bh5
Chapter 5: KIA vs Reversed London System
Chapter 6: KIA vs French Defence
Chapter 7: KIA vs ...e5/...d6 Structures
Chapter 8: KIA vs Reversed English Formations
The author himself is a frequent practitioner of the opening. The book features nine games with Cyrus as White and another three as Black. Further, he has taught it to numerous students over the years. Other games feature elite players including Carlsen, Kasparov, Kramnik, Anand, Petrosian, Botvinnik, Gukesh, Ding, Nepo, Nakamura, Pragg, Svidler, Giri, Timman, Kamsky, Polugaevsky, Erigaisi, Lilienthal and Stahlberg.
The Original Arkhangelsk anti-Ruy Lopez weapon is reached through the moves 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6 5.0-0 b5 6.Bb3 Bb7. It has been played as Black by many great players, including Carlsen, Anand, Caruana, Svidler, Ivanchuk, Pragg, Vachier-Lagrave, Shirov, Adams, Grischuk, Topalov, Beliavsky, Firouzja, Mamedyarov, and Morozevich. The Original Arkhangelsk can lead to tactical fights and wild positions, where knowledge of theory is important for both sides – perfect for a repertoire where Black wishes to take control of the game and make use of attacking possibilities.
Such attacks at times include the ...d5 or ...f5 pawn breaks, or the ...g5-g4 battering ram. Black’s bishops often target the white king and f2 pawn from b7 and b6 as the centre opens, while the black queen and king’s knight may add to the attack from the f, g or h files. At other times Black may target White’s central d4 or e4 pawns, play on the queenside with ...Na5 (attacking White’s light-squared bishop), sometimes together with ...c5, or play to push the b-pawn. This flexible variation is equally effective in classical, rapid and blitz.
International Master Tibor Karolyi, former Hungarian national champion and previously coach of stars such as Peter Leko and Sofia Polgar, shows the reader how to get a fully playable position as Black with fighting opportunities through 166 games and several hundred fragments, as well as a number of suggested novelties. He demonstrates the key strategic and tactical themes that the sides will encounter, as well as 25 miniatures where Black got a crushing position out of the opening thanks to superior preparation. If you’re an ...e5 player looking for a theoretically sound and ambitious yet fun response to the Ruy Lopez, the Original Arkhangelsk offers a fully playable path to dynamic positions with real winning chances.
José Raúl Capablanca (1888-1942, World Champion 1921-1927) had a way of posting his pieces on exactly the perfect squares at the perfect time. For his opponents, it almost felt as if Capa’s pieces had a gift for condescension, since they had no need to look for opportunity. Opportunity instead came to them. The position’s optimal plan would magically and instantaneously arrange itself into coherent order within Capa’s chess mind.
Capablanca raised the bar on strategic understanding by at least one full generation. Only a handful of players in chess history were a generation ahead in strategic understanding: Morphy, Steinitz, Capablanca, Fischer, Karpov and Carlsen. The subject of this book and series is the third player on the list. While Capablanca was a player of his time, so advanced were his strategic ideas that he was simultaneously a person of our time as well.
There has never been a chess player who played blemish-free chess, yet some came close. At its best, Capa’s play appears free from obstacles of any kind. To players of that engine-free era, it sometimes felt as if Capablanca played perfect chess. The first time Emanuel Lasker met Capablanca and played blitz against him, he remarked that to his eyes, Capa never appeared to make a mistake.
Beginners often believe that quiet positions and endings are dead, lifeless realms. Play through Capablanca’s games and we see that they teem with life and possibility, since Capa saw hidden meanings in positions where his rivals were blind. He was especially deadly in quiet positions, since he had the unique ability to kill without seeming to strike a blow. By the time his opponents realized the danger, it was often too late to save themselves.
Few of us associate Capablanca with tactics, but maybe we should. He was one of the most tactically aware players of his era, rivaling both Lasker and Alekhine in this metric. Capa’s specialty was short-range combinations, which he almost never missed.
This series will be in three volumes covering the early years, Capa’s prime, and finally the later years. In this book, you will be presented with exercises which you can choose to do or not do. They include: combinations, calculation/visualization, planning and decision-making.
The present volume, number I, contains 156 freshly annotated games and fragments incorporating 168 exercises.
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