Sergei Tiviakov was unbeaten in a streak of more than a hundred chess games as a professional player. Who better to share the secrets of Rock Solid Chess and the activity and value of pieces than Tiviakov?
The highly acclaimed first volume of his chess strategy trilogy dealt with pawn structures. In this second volume, Sergei moves on to discuss piece play and unique chessboard situations. Topics covered include the bishop pair, opposite-coloured bishops, centralization and the almost-ignored question of when and whether to castle.
Tiviakov also demonstrates how the value of pieces can vary drastically depending on their exact position. He shows how the entire assessment of a position, and the correct strategy for playing it, can be changed by moving a single pawn from one square to another.
In the final chapters, Tiviakov discusses how to play cramped and passive positions, how to play for a win with Black and how to choose your strategy, based on the opponent’s style and other psychological factors.
Illustrated with examples from classic games and from his own games, and supported by instructive exercises, Volume Two of Rock Solid Chess offers invaluable and unique instruction on topics not covered in traditional textbooks. These strategy lessons will significantly improve your chess and are suitable for all readers, from club players to grandmasters.
Sergei Tiviakov is a grandmaster, Olympic gold medallist, three-time Dutch Champion and European Champion.
Yulia Gökbulut is a FIDE Women's Master, chess author and sports writer from Turkey.
Daniel "Danny" Gormally (1976) became an International Master in 1997 and a Grandmaster in 2005. He was born in South Shields and was brought into the game of chess by his father at the age of 7. Besides distinguished tournament results he played for the England national team in European Championships and Chess Olympiad. Danny Gormally is also an acclaimed chess author and analyst.
Danny Gormally is a Chess Grandmaster stuck in a fugue state. He has forgotten how to analyse - blinded by the brilliance of chess engines, every time he gets stuck he turns on the machine. In this book he attempts to discover his love of analysis and the game of chess by attempting different methods of analysis and calculation. He asks what separates the analysis methods of an amateur player with a Grandmaster, and further still what separates the very best players from super computers. It all culminates in the mind-bogglingly complex "Impossible quiz" where some of the most skilled players in chess are confronted by extremely complex positions.
If that sounds off-putting it shouldn't be - Gormally breaks down the material in a way that is comprehensible to any amateur player.
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This award-winning instructional series is at the Fundamentals level, which shows players the basic ideas on the road to mastery, using carefully selected positions and advice, plus test puzzles.
Artur Yusupov was ranked No. 3 in the world of chess from 1986 to 1992, just behind the legendary Karpov and Kasparov. He has won everything there is to win in chess except for the World Championship and is now a chess trainer. He has worked with players ranging from current World Champion Anand to local amateurs in Germany, where he resides. He has worked with players ranging from World Champion Anand to local amateurs in Germany, where he resides.
Boost Your Chess 1 continues Artur Yusupov’s Fundamentals series, helping players to build their skills on solid foundations. Yusupov guides the reader towards a higher level of chess understanding using carefully selected positions and advice. This new understanding is then tested by a series of puzzles.
Artur Yusupov was ranked No. 3 in the world from 1986 to 1992, just behind the legendary Karpov and Kasparov. He has won everything there is to win in chess except for the World Championship. In recent years he has mainly worked as a chess trainer with players ranging from World Champion Anand to local amateurs in Germany, where he resides.
Winner of the 2009 Boleslavsky Medal from FIDE (the World Chess Federation) as the best instructional chess books in the world (ahead of Garry Kasparov and Mark Dvoretsky in 2nd and 3rd place).
Build up your Chess with Artur Yusupov is for chess players who want to build their skills on solid foundations. Yusupov guides the reader towards a higher level of understanding using carefully selected positions and advice. This new understanding is then tested by a series of puzzles.
Artur Yusupov was ranked No. 3 in the world from 1986 to 1992, just behind the legendary World Champions Karpov and Kasparov. He has won everything there is to win in chess except for the World Championship. In recent years he has mainly worked as a chess trainer with players ranging from World Champion Anand to local amateurs in Germany, where he resides.
Having you ever been tortured at the chessboard? If so, then you have probably been a victim of pressure play.
Elite players are brilliant exponents of pressure play. In situations where they have either a tiny advantage or no advantage at all they are highly adept at constantly setting problems for their unfortunate opponents. The position on the board may appear lifeless but they can probe and find plans and regroupings that will constantly ask their opponents difficult questions. These can be countered only by continual alert and accurate defence and we all know how difficult and wearing that can be.
The arch exponent of pressure play is world champion Magnus Carlsen. Carlsen is superb in this area of the game and consistently defeats world class opposition from simplified positions where he has no advantage whatsoever. How does he do it?
In this book, the highly experienced author and coach Neil McDonald analyses the finest examples of pressure play. In doing so he teases out the fundamental concepts that enable players like Carlsen to torture their opponents mercilessly.
– Paralyse the enemy pieces.
– Target the weakest squares on the board.
– Increase and exploit a space advantage.
Master pressure play and it will be your opponent on the rack, not you.
The best chess training closely resembles the activity you're training for. This book provides you with an essential component - decision-making in the crucial positions of a real game of chess, played by club players rather than grandmasters. You have to answer the same questions that you face when you stare at the chess board and have to find a move.
Amateur games can be very instructive. Studying the games of top players will undoubtedly help you to improve. However, it is often more enlightening to make decisions or see mistakes at a lower level, as they are easier for most of us to relate to.
Thomas Willemze has carefully selected thirty games that illustrate an important theme, for example:
– Dealing with irreversible moves
– Rerouting your rooks
– Aligning your bishop and pawns
– Converting a long-term advantage
– Taming the London
Willemze is a master at choosing just the right positions to help you improve your chess knowledge and understanding.Amateur games can be very instructive. Studying the games of top players will undoubtedly help you to improve. However, it is often more enlightening to make decisions or see mistakes at a lower level, as they are easier for most of us to relate to.
Thomas Willemze has carefully selected thirty games that illustrate an important theme, such as the centre, king safety or a space advantage. Willemze is a master at choosing just the right positions to help you improve your chess knowledge and understanding.
Thomas Willemze is an experienced chess trainer and International Master from the Netherlands. All thirty games in What Would You Play have been published in New In Chess magazine. Willemze has written five books for New In Chess, all of which are available as courses on Chessable.
Given the changes in the chess world over the last few years I feel that we badly need an update of how to prepare and out-prepare your opponent during a chess tournament.
The pandemic giving rise to vastly underrated junior and amateur players. Online chess taking a much more prominent role. Accusations of cheating making the headlines. Social media being used as a tool to educate the chess masses. All these have lead to a different landscape, but some things stay the same. The player who is willing to analyse and work on chess harder than the rest will still separate his or herself from their peers. In my view, at least 90 percent of success in tournament play will come down to how good your calculation and analysis is. Because that is the bread and butter of tournament play. This is what I will try to get across in this book, that a chess player will often stand or fall on the quality of analysis and I will discuss the positive and negative role that working with computers has on a players overall strength. I will also try to explain why my chess fell into a torpor because of an over reliance on computers and how I have recently come to realize that technical deficiencies have often held me back from reaching the higher echelons of the game. And in doing so, and looking at the chess world and trying to explain it from my point of view while following my own progress and that of others I will try to put together a tournament battle plan.
In a world awash in educational chess content, knowing how to study the game most effectively can be challenging.
As the Perpetual Chess Podcast host, USCF Master Ben Johnson has spent hundreds of hours talking chess with many of the world’s top players and most accomplished trainers. In the popular Adult Improver Series, he has spoken with dozens of passionate amateurs who have elevated their games significantly while pursuing chess as a hobby.
Guests like former World Champion Viswanathan Anand and YouTube Stars IM Levy Rozman and GM Hikaru Nakamura have shared insights and told memorable stories. And Ben has learned just as much from the many dedicated amateurs who applied their considerable professional (non-chess) experience to their chess learning.
In Perpetual Chess Improvement, Ben looks for common ground and shared principles in all chess advice given on the podcast. Chess players do not always agree on the best improvement methods, so he even adjudicates a few disagreements! The book will show you the following:
– How to approach and study different aspects of the game, including openings, endgames, tactics, tournament games, and speed chess.
– How to find a chess coach and a like-minded chess community.
– How to properly utilize all the powerful chess study tools available.
– Instructive chess positions illustrate the topics discussed.
The guests shared a wealth of beautiful stories, and chess study advice on the Perpetual Chess Podcast. This book compiles the highlights and will help you make a holistic plan for your chess studies.
Ben Johnson is a USCF Master and accomplished chess coach. In 2016, he started the Perpetual Chess Podcast, the most successful chess podcast, with over five million downloads and streams in over a hundred different countries - and counting. Ben grew up in Philadelphia and lives in New Jersey with his family. Before dedicating his life to chess, he was a professional poker player and a stock trader.
This second-volume workbook in Davorin Kuljasevic's How to Study Chess on Your Own series is optimized for chess players with an Elo rating between 1500 and 1800 but is helpful for anyone between 1200 and 2000. The astounding success of his How to Study Chess on Your Own made clear that thousands of chess players want to improve their game and like to work on their training at least partially by themselves.
Kuljasevic has used his coaching experience to identify the typical mistakes of club players and create a broad and exciting training schedule to address them. Tasks like these will challenge you:
- Solve visualization puzzles
- Find the best middlegame move - and find a hidden tactic
- Evaluate a critical piece-trade decision
- Analyze a practical endgame position
With these exercises and tools, any chess student can start training immediately.
Davorin Kuljasevic is an International Grandmaster born in Croatia. He graduated from Texas Tech University and is an experienced coach. His bestselling book Beyond Material: Ignore the Face Value of Your Pieces was a finalist for the Boleslavsky-Averbakh Award, the best book prize of FIDE, the International Chess Federation.
Improve Your Chess Now is a modern chess classic and one of the most inspiring chess improvement manuals. Adult improvers frequently name this book as one of their primary sources in the popular Perpetual Chess Podcast of Ben Johnson.
The author is an American grandmaster now living in Norway. With infectious enthusiasm, Tisdall covers a wide range of topics, including visualization and calculation, pattern recognition, the psychological aspects of chess, the art of defence and the wisdom of blindfold chess – all still relevant more than 25 years later.
The 1997 classic is reprinted with a modern design and a new foreword by the author.
Jonathan Tisdall (1958 in Buffalo, New York) is an American-Norwegian Grandmaster and experienced international journalist, covering many World Championship matches, and is a regular contributor to New In Chess magazine.
In this long-awaited second Thinkers-book of International Master, Armin Juhasz, the reader is invited to take a seat in his classroom and follow his useful guidelines how to improve your practical play.
The emphasis is on general principles that readers will be able to use in their own games, and detailed analysis is always given where it is necessary. Each game and fragment contain many lessons and practical tips, guiding the reader through the most important ideas in each phase of the game. This book illustrates an increasingly prevalent and successful style of play, a method that begins by slowly accumulating small but permanent advantages. The author does a very good job of explaining the key points of the game in such a way that the reader is given a true account of what is happening and not some watered down version. Translating the muddy world of modern master chess into something that is understandable to the layman, is a skill Armin mastered.