Learn from the legacy of one of the most talented players to ever grace the chess world.
All elements of the game explained in an easy-to-digest and highly entertaining fashion.
Dear readers, it is both our solemn duty and exceptional honour to present you a collection of Ivkov’s instructive explorations on various chess themes. In this book you will find a great number of intriguing anecdotes casting a new light on some of the greatest chess players of all time, and some lesser known heroes of our bellowed game. Also, this book can serve you as an inspiration to investigate a bit deeper in the areas of strategy, planning and tactics learning chess in the “good, old way” unpolluted by the excessive engine usage. Finally, you can simply browse through the material and enjoy solving numerous riddles, studies and puzzles, picking up bits of chess wisdom along the way.
We hope that you will find as much enjoyment reading this book as we experienced ourselves editing it for your pleasure.
Dear readers, the book in your hands is the second part of Ivkov’s “Chess Parallels”, the last book of his extraordinary career of chess player and analyst.
In this tome Ivkov deals with endgames and various types of queenless middlegame positions (early endgames). The examples he selected are both entertaining and highly instructive. Many of those jewels are not widely known, so a diligent reader should benefit quite a lot by examining them with patience and willingness to learn. Of course, the book could serve you well as a source of reference, as well as a collection of extremely interesting and captivating positions to delve deep into and put your brain to some severe tests! Either way, you are guaranteed to have a lot of fun and to pick up bits of chess wisdom on your journey through this book.
We hope that you will find as much enjoyment reading this book as we experienced ourselves editing it for your pleasure, since you are now well acquainted with Ivkov’s thought process and mastery by absorbing the material from “Chess Parallels I&II”
The chess world has witnessed a great number of wonderfully gifted attacking players, geniuses who have dazzled the chess public with their brilliant masterpieces. Everyone has their own favourites, and in Chess Secrets: Great Attackers, Colin Crouch chooses three of his own: Garry Kasparov, Mikhail Tal and Leonid Stein. World Champions Kasparov and Tal need no introduction, while Stein was a highly creative and intuitive player with the ability to destroy the world's best players with his vicious attacks. Crouch examines phases of these players' careers, compares their differing approaches and styles, and highlights key attacking themes including the idea of controlled risk - in some sacrificial attacks even the greatest players can't always see everything to the end. A study of this book will help you to enhance your skills in one of the most crucial elements of the game.
Chess students love a Puzzle Rush. And solving tactics puzzles certainly helps you improve your pattern recognition and will help you find good moves in tournament games. But there is a downside to most tactics puzzles — we always know who is supposed to win!
Chess in real life is different, not just because no one taps us on the shoulder and tells us to look for a tactic. Sometimes tactics work, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes your opponent has a few tricks up their sleeve, too.
This book shows the reality of chess tactics. It explores a chess player's challenges over the board: attack, defense, and counterattack! It exposes the actual give-and-take nature of chess tactics.
American grandmaster Joel Benjamin, a three-time U.S. Champion, was inspired by the 20th-century classic Chess Traps, Pitfalls, and Swindles by legendary chess authors Fred Reinfeld and Israel Albert Horowitz. With modern examples, Benjamin arouses the same spirit of fun and enjoyment. With a generous amount of puzzles in quiz form, this manual will help chess students sharpen their tactical skills and be ready to strike - or counterstrike.
Joel Benjamin is an American grandmaster and a three-time U.S. Champion. He became the youngest-ever U.S. chess master at age 13, beating Bobby Fischer's record. Chessboard Combat is his fifth book for New In Chess. Benjamin graduated from Yale University with a major in history.
Many players are serious about their chess but become stuck at a certain playing strength. It’s rarely a lack of talent or practice or opening knowledge that holds them back. Usually they get left behind because they don’t know how to make best use of the time they have available to study chess. This book addresses this problem and is your self-improvement plan. It shows you how to work on your own games to root out mistakes. It will sharpen your calculation of variations. You will be challenged to find the best middlegame strategy. Endgame technique is also covered in detail. All topics are discussed with numerous examples and puzzles from the games of modern players such as Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana and Viswanathan Anand. If you want your chess to leap forward it’s time to Coach Yourself!
How does one achieve the unique ‘sound’ and distinct technique that are absolutely necessary to become successful at the highest level? It can only be done via a deep understanding of the chess player’s personality and the unique talent that distinguishes him from other soloists. It is here that the role of a coach is of the utmost importance. First, it is necessary to understand the nature of your student’s chess talent, and second, it is important to identify the player’s character and personality traits. His style ought to be harmonious, so that the essence of the human being matches the characteristics of his chess talent. Since it is the same emotionless computer that is now in charge of the purely chess component, it falls upon the coach to deal with the chess player’s personality, mysterious and unknowable as it might be. Yes, a lot depends on the number and power of dependable cyber assistants, on the size and quality of various chess databases, on the enthusiasm of the seconds and on the ability to work with modern electronic gadgets, but at the highest level, almost all elite chess players have the same tools at their disposal. Thus, as always, everything is decided — as in the ‘good old days’ — by the player's talent, by his unique ability to create. The coach's task is to help his student develop this unique creative side to the maximum. It has so happened that in recent years I have been able to work closely with great chess talents who were at the same time outstanding personalities. I hope that an inside look at this kind of work will be of interest to both specialists and chess fans. I faced several ethical problems when working on this book. Many of the chess players who appear in these pages are still young; their whole life, including their sports career, lies ahead. That is why I tried to avoid purely personal details and did not reveal any professional secrets. I hope that these players, like me, will be curious to reflect on their own achievements and mistakes, and to take the reader on the difficult journey that allowed them to become prominent chess personalities.
Former Russian Champion Alexei Bezgodov explains for a wide range of players how they can employ the skills of former World Champion Tigran Petrosian to deal with adversity in their own games. The aim of this book is to help amateur players to improve the standard of their defensive play. In many training programs a serious analysis of the art of defense is missing. That is why most club players are much better at attacking than at coping with difficult positions. This book will point the way to finding creative solutions and save lots of points. Written by former Russian Champion Alexei Bezgodov, on a subject that has been neglected in many training programs: defense.
The seconds tick down relentlessly toward zero just as your game approaches the critical stage. Your higher-rated opponent is putting your game under severe pressure, so extreme accuracy is needed to hang tough and avoid falling into a losing position. What do you do now – should you exchange pieces to relieve the pressure, lash out with a sacrifice, probe for weaknesses in the opponent's camp, or maybe just give up and get a lesson on how to bring the point home? The answer is... none of these! At such do-or-die moments, says Steve Hrop, the first thing to do is to sit on your hands and take a few deep breaths. In Defending Under Pressure: Managing Your Emotions at the Chessboard, the author uses critical moments from his own tournament games (most of them against players rated above 2200) to describe the difficulties of thinking straight when the enemy is at the gates, and then outlines methods and techniques to clear your head, evaluate the position, and find your way to the best move. Techniques include how to avoid redundant pieces that critically limit your mobility; when visualization is more important than calculation; and “freeze-framing” positions to eliminate blunders. Save the draw – or turn a looming defeat into an astonishing victory – with the tips in this practical training manual!
"We talk a lot about defence in chess but rarely try to break this major notion down into elements that constitute it and, importantly, that we can systematically learn. This book does exactly that. It is suitable for players of all levels aiming to improve their game. It may be especially appropriate for coaches because of its systematized character." - GM Adrian Mikhalchishin
Do you want to do the same chess homework that world-famous grandmasters Fabiano Caruana, Robert Hess and Peter Heine Nielsen did in their formative years as chess players? This book will test you with hundreds of positions created by their coach Miron Sher (1952-2020). Just like Fabiano, Robert and Peter, you are not supposed to stop after the first move. You have to find the last move of the solution!
Miron Sher is one of those legendary coaches who got their chess education in the Soviet Union and in later years spread their knowledge in Western Europe and the United States. He was born in Ukraine, studied in Moscow, coached the Russian national team and emigrated to New York in 1997. There he taught at various schools and worked privately with dozens of students.
Dream Moves focuses on five themes that Sher considered important for chess improvement.
– An unprotected piece – the trigger to start thinking tactics!
– In-between moves – they help you spring a surprise on your opponent
– Open files – a fundamental element of chess strategy
– The 20% Rule – if your pawn has advanced to the 5th or 6th rank, moving it forward is quite often your best option
– Dream Move – dream about the final, decisive move, and you will find the way there
The book contains close to one hundred illustrated games and more than three hundred puzzles. Do as the legends did - and use these puzzles to sharpen your tactical skills and improve your understanding of chess.
Miron Sher (1952-2020) is chess grandmaster and legendary coach. He was born in Ukraine, won a dozen international tournaments as a player, and became famous as a trainer in the United States where he lived since 1997. In New York he taught chess at multiple schools, including the Dalton School, IS 318 and Stuyvesant High School. He worked privately with dozens of students such as Fabiano Caruana, Robert Hess and Peter Heine Nielsen.