Are you a parent of a junior chess player who feels that because you don’t know how to play chess, you can’t help your child? Or are you an adult or junior chess player who has taken private chess lessons for years, but feels you haven’t been progressing?
In both cases, there can be a lot of reliance on a chess coach who has been given free rein with lesson content and direction. They probably have some sort of plan but it is likely to be a plan used for all their students. This is not ideal. More important is a well-thought out, individualized plan, that focuses on a specific player’s unique strengths and weaknesses. Formulating such a plan is crucial for making improvements.
Victoria Doknjas and her son John Doknjas are an ideal writing partnership to tackle this topic. John is a FIDE Master who has already established himself as an excellent and highly-respected author who understands the improvement process very well. Victoria has over a decade of experience navigating the competitive chess arena with her three master-level sons, including also running her own chess academy. Together they offer a unique and informative insight to those wanting to get more out of their chess studies, as well as presenting practical advice in areas including:
– Identifying important goals and how to work towards them.
– Understanding how to objectively analyse your games.
– Maximising the efficiency of software and engines for learning.
Reading this book can broaden your horizons in the essential areas of chess study, and ideally let you better evaluate what your chess coach is teaching you. And if you don’t have a chess coach, this book will provide you with an excellent foundation for serious chess study.
Schach mit neuem Schwung, die deutsche Übersetzung der vierten und vollständig überarbeiteten Ausgabe von Silmans legendärem "How to Reassess Your Chess", ist ein moderner Klassiker, in dem Silman sein bahnbrechendes Konzept der Ungleichgewichte auf eine ganz neue Stufe hebt.
Das Buch wendet sich an Spieler mit einer Wertungszahl zwischen 1400 und 2100 und an Trainer, die einen sofort anwendbaren Schachkurs suchen.
In diesem Buch nimmt der Autor den Leser auf eine Reise mit, die das Denken erweitert, die Grundlagen der Ungleichgewichte erklärt, dafür sorgt, dass jedes Detail der Ungleichgewichte verstanden wird und gibt dem Spieler/Schachliebhaber dadurch etwas, von dem er stets geträumt hat, aber immer für unerreichbar hielt: ein positionelles Grundverständnis auf Meisterniveau.
Ein Abschnitt über praktische Schachpsychologie (mit dem Titel ‘Psychologische Streifzüge’) präsentiert nie zuvor veröffentlichte Ideen über psychologische Prozesse, die Spieler aller Spielstärken an der Entfaltung hindern und verrät leicht umsetzbare Tipps und Techniken, die jedem helfen, diese weit verbreiteten geistigen/psychologischen Schwächen zu überwinden.
Hunderte von Partien, die durch anschauliche Erklärungen lebendig werden, und Geschichten, die humorvoll und lehrreich sind, erläutern die Themen des Buches auf persönliche und unterhaltsame Weise.
Wenn Ihnen die positionellen Meisterwerke der Schachlegenden immer unverständlich geblieben sind und Schachstrategie für Sie stets ein Buch mit sieben Siegeln war und Sie glauben, im Positionsspiel ein Bauer und kein Meister zu sein, dann kann Schach mit neuem Schwung Ihr Leben ändern.
Jeremy Silman ist Internationaler Meister und ein Lehrer und Trainer von Weltklasse, der im Laufe seiner Karriere das American Open, das National Open und das U.S. Open gewonnen hat. Er gilt vielen als der führende Autor von Schachlehrbüchern und hat über 37 Bücher geschrieben, darunter Silmans Endspielkurs – Vom Anfänger zum Meister, und Schach, aber richtig! – Die Überwindung des amateurhaften Denkens.
The book consists of 36 attacking games from the 21st Century divided into four chapters.
Mastering attacking play in chess is a dream that we all long to achieve, but of course the art of attack does not arise by itself.
Constructing positions which favour the attack is the most difficult task.
In this book we shall see games with brilliant finishes, but we shall also draw attention to the different phases through which the struggle passes, in order make such finishes possible.
Attention has been paid not only to what happens on the board but also, wherever possible, to the influence of the analysis engines not only on a player’s preparation for the game, something that has become more important in these early years of the new century, but also on the practical context of the game.
The games are prefaced by brief biographical information and a short description of the events of the game.
After each game some lessons are highlighted.
“And the Rest Is Just a Matter of Technique...”
How often has this comment been appended to a game move or variation? As many players know, it really may not be all that easy to figure out what is meant by this familiar phrase.
After the untimely passing of legendary instructor Mark Dvoretsky, Artur Yusupov was given access to Dvoretsky’s famous card files. With the core material based upon these files, the former top ten grandmaster – and perhaps the most successful of all of Dvoretsky’s students – put together this book, modifying and refining the content as needed.
The book begins with a “theoretical” explanatory section. This is followed by 102 practice positions, which increase in in difficulty. Good technique for gaining an advantage is useful in all areas of the game, so there are positions from the opening, middlegame, and especially the endgame – not only from practical games but also from various studies.
The comments to the solutions are very detailed, explaining not only the main line but also the supplementary side variations. Yusupov thought it important to demonstrate the logic in the search for a decision and to show how a chessplayer can come to the right conclusions at the board.
Dvoretsky’s master student Artur Yusupov has done a great job in selecting and presenting the material so that this book “feels” like another genuine Dvoretsky work. This book is a real gem and I hope that it gives you as much pleasure as it has given me. And that from now on, when you have an advantage, the rest really will be, well, just a matter of technique... – From the Foreword by Grandmaster Dr. Karsten Müller
Are you ready for new strategic insights about thirty-five of the most fascinating and complex chess games ever played by World Champions and other top grandmasters? Grandmaster Matthew Sadler and renowned chess writer Steve Giddins take a fresh look at some classic games ranging from Anderssen-Dufresne, played in 1852, to Botvinnik-Bronstein (1951) and Geller-Euwe (1953). They unleashed the collective power of Leela, Komodo and Stockfish to help us humans understand what happened in games of fan favourites such as Boris Spassky, Mikhail Tal, Bent Larsen and Bobby Fischer.
The first chess engines improved our appreciation of the classic games by pointing out the tactical mistakes in the original, contemporary game notes. But the expertise of Matthew Sadler is to uncover the positional course of a game with the help of the second generation of chess engines that emerged after 2018.
This book will change your perception of these games’ strategic and technical patterns. You will, for example, learn to appreciate and understand a classic Capablanca endgame. And a classic Petrosian exchange sacrifice. And a winning, and then losing, king-hunt endgame between Spassky and Tal. You will see how Larsen already understood the strength of the h-pawn march far before AlphaZero’s revelation. The engines offer new strategic ideas and plans that human players have yet to consider. Even the ‘the best ever anti- King’s Indian player’, Viktor Korchnoi, would be amazed by the engine’s unique ideas about White’s breakthroughs on the queenside.
The most instructive games are often those which are more strategic and technical. Using modern engines, the authors have re-engineered a wonderful collection of classic games, generating dozens of positional chess lessons that will help every club player and expert to improve their game.
GM Matthew Sadler is the world’s strongest amateur chess player, a New In Chess magazine contributor, and co-author of the prize-winning books Game Changer: AlphaZero’s Groundbreaking Chess Strategies and the Promise of AI and Chess for Life.
FM Steve Giddins is a prolific chess writer and journalist. He compiled and edited The New In Chess Book of Chess Improvement, wrote books on Nimzowitsch, Alekhine and Bronstein, and co-authored The Lasker Method.
How often have you seen a game like this?
The hero has no advantage whatsoever but somehow manages to keep setting the opponent problems. Their opponent goes slightly astray and suddenly hero has a tiny advantage. It’s not much but now that they have a little something to work with, they are in their element. They play accurately and remorselessly and make life incredibly difficult for their opponent. Suddenly, and almost imperceptibly, their advantage increases. Further tiny inaccuracies follow, hero turns the screw and bags the full point. Their opponent is left shaking their head, wondering where on earth they went wrong.
This is the squeeze and the great champions have been capable of squeezing opponents to death. José Capablanca, Tigran Petrosian, Anatoly Karpov and, in the current era, Magnus Carlsen are legendary in this respect.
How do they do it? How do they set problems in apparently sterile positions? How can they continuously manage to defeat world class opposition from positions that others would simply give up as drawn?
In this book, Cyrus Lakdawala explains the mechanisms commonly used in squeeze plays. Using examples from the world’s greatest strategic masters he unpicks the secrets of the squeeze.
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.
Vinay Bhat rose through the ranks of American chess in the 1990s and 2000s, overcoming plateaus, competitive challenges, and academic and professional commitments, before achieving the highest title in chess. Follow Vinay’s path to improvement and the struggles he had to go through, to carve out your own path to improvement and achieve your chess goals.
How I Became a Chess Grandmaster is a personal story that entertains as it instructs. With numerous photographs and anecdotes, you can follow the inspirational rise of a young player from novice to Grandmaster.
Vinay Bhat became a National Master at the age of 10 and an International Master at 15 – at the time the youngest American IM since Bobby Fischer. He later went on to gain the ultimate title of Grandmaster in his mid-twenties.
The distinction between strategy and tactics is one of the first things any chess player learns about, but have you ever heard about statics and dynamics before? Did you know that nearly every critical decision you take in a game of chess is governed by the rules of the so-called static/dynamic balance? If not, for the sake of your own chess development, you might want learn more about it from this very book!
In ‘Supreme Chess Understanding: Statics & Dynamics’, GM Moranda meticulously explains rules governing the physics of the game, focusing in particular on the interplay between static and dynamic factors. In today’s dog-eat-dog chess world it is namely not enough to know the general principles, but rather to grasp when, how and why can these be bent... or even broken. Thanks to the knowledge gained by studying this work, navigating through the maze of positional transformations is going to become a piece of cake!
The 65 carefully selected exercises are going to make your chess senses tingle with learning excitement. Apart from that, you shall also benefit from the massive amount of practical advice and psychological tips provided by the author. Finally, the book’s quiz format will make the study process not only fruitful, but above all fun!
Boris Zlotnik is an extraordinary trainer and coach. He was the director of a legendary chess school in Moscow before he emigrated to Spain in 1993. Ten years later, the super talent Fabiano Caruana moved to Madrid with his entire family to live near his trainer Zlotnik.
As a former coach of U.S. Champion Caruana, Zlotnik knows how top players work on their chess improvement. And his experience with club players allows him to translate that understanding into practical lessons for amateurs about highly original subjects like creativity or 'putting up resistance' - topics seldom touched on in other chess manuals.
Zlotnik covers a wide variety of topics and uses a wealth of material. Readers will love this new book, as they did his first book, Zlotnik's Middlegame Manual. 'A brilliant, important and extraordinarily instructive book', said Florian Jacobs, the book reviewer for the Max Euwe Center in Amsterdam. 'This is how probing, rich and motivating studying chess can be.'
Sergei Tiviakov was unbeaten for a consecutive 110 professional chess games as a grandmaster, a record that has only been broken by World Champion Magnus Carlsen. Who better to teach you rock-solid chess strategy than Tiviakov. He was born in Russia and trained in the famous Russian chess school. In his first book, he explains everything he knows about the fundament of chess strategy: pawn structures.
If chess players trust that their knowledge of opening theory and tactics is enough to survive in tournament play, they are mistaken. Once you settle down for your game and the first moves have been played, you will need a deeper understanding of the middlegame. And one of the most challenging questions is: how to navigate different pawn structures?
Sergei Tiviakov gives you all the answers in this first volume of his highly instructive series on chess strategy. 'Tivi' is famous for his deep chess knowledge and rock-solid positional play. He has gathered a rich collection of strategic lessons he has been teaching worldwide, drawing mainly from his personal experience. The examples and exercises will improve your chess significantly and are suitable for any reader from club player to grandmaster level.
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”