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Hikaru is a five-time US chess champion, ranked as high as second in the world with a stratospheric peak rating of 2816, the 10th highest of all time. He is also a top chess streamer with over a million followers across social media, consistently on the list of the five wealthiest gamers in the world. Nakamura has represented the US in 5 Olympiads, earning a team Gold and two Bronze medals.
“Naka’s” chess style is confrontational. He thrives on aggression, confrontation and complications, making him one of the most entertaining players in the world. In 72 fully annotated games, this book covers Hikaru’s most exciting and instructive battles against many of the world's top players. Opponents include world champions Carlsen, Kramnik, Anand, and Ding Liren, leading US rivals Caruana, So and Shankland, as well as other world-class players such as Short, Nepo, Gelfand, Karjakin, Topalov, and Kamsky.
2000 studies, themes, definitions and explanations
Solving endgame studies has become a major working tool in modern chess training combining the instructive with the enjoyable. Studies are highly recommended for refining calculating and tactical skills, deepening endgame understanding, as well as improving creativity and out of the box thinking.
The Anthology of Miniature Endgame Studies is the biggest selection of composed endings with up to seven pieces on the board, created by the world’s best composers throughout the past 150 years. The carefully selected studies are categorized into thematic chapters. The game-like positions highlight the power and typical qualities of each piece alone and in collaboration with other pieces.
From the foreword by GM Jan Timman: “Endgame studies are in fact an important factor in becoming a strong player. It is significant that both Garry Kasparov and Magnus Carlsen have a keen interest in endgame studies. It is praiseworthy that Chess Informant was ready to publish this important work. Afek is arguably the most qualified person to write it.”
Chess endings have an immediacy lacking in chess endgame or chess problems: endings are not theoretical or composed, but actual board positions, the point in every game when the superfluous falls away, leaving only the essential. José Raúl Capablanca (1888–1942) had no need for isolated artistic theory or compositions — he composed and created chess art as he played. All of his genius — intuitive, tactical, strategic, logical — all of his art shines clearest in his endings, as he himself was proud to declare, advising others to study them carefully. "In order to improve your game," he said, "you must study the endgame before anything else; for whereas the endings can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middle game and the opening must be studied in relation to the endgame."
The best way to follow Capablanca's advice is through this — the only book devoted to his great endings, 60 complete games emphasizing the grand finale but annotated throughout.
Irving Chernev communicates in his notes the mystery and wonder as well as the delight in discovering again and again the original, fertile mind of chess's greatest born player. "Virtuoso," "exquisite," "profound," "inspired," "elegant," and "fiendish ingenuity" describe match and tournament games and endings against Alekhine, Steiner, Marshall, Nimzowitsch, Lasker, Réti, and others, the best in the contemporary chess world. Capablanca's eleventh game in the 1901 Cuban championship (which he won, aged 12) "surpasses any accomplishment by such other prodigies as Morphy, Reshevsky, and Fischer." From age 12 through the last game in the book (nearly four decades later against Reshevsky at Nottingham, 1936), Capablanca fashions endgames in tense tournament atmosphere that seem like delicate, precise instruments dreamt at leisure.
Here then is the essence of Capablanca, analyzed for the instruction of players and the pleasure of chess connoisseurs. Included are indexes of openings, themes in the endings, and opponents, as well as a bibliography and record of tournament and match play. Capablanca: for players, the epitome of the endgame; for readers, a classic chess study.
Every chess player faces an opening dilemma: big main lines are complicated and time-consuming to learn, while easy-to-learn sidelines usually suffer from other defects. Finding the best of both worlds has been an impossible dream – until now!
Reimagining 1.e4 offers the Holy Grail of a simple, easy-to-learn White repertoire, which packs a punch against all of Black’s main defences. In some lines, White unleashes a surprise as early as move 3. In others, White follows the known paths for a little longer, but only when there are big rewards to justify a modest effort.