Every chessplayer, from beginner to world champion, loves to win a game with a brilliant attacking display. However many, if not most, attacks that end in victory do so due to inaccurate defence. This may be due to simple tactical miscalculation or perhaps a more fundamental misunderstanding of the important principles of defence. Furthermore, many attacks that are launched are simply unsound but succeed because many players feel uncomfortable when forced to defend, get flustered and make mistakes. In this book, highly experienced chess author and coach, Neil McDonald addresses these issues.
Defensive skill is crucial in chess. Good, accurate defence can win a game just as well as a fine attacking display can, so expertise in this department is essential for any player wishing to improve their game. With thorough explanations, questions, and exercises, this book provides fascinating material to enable you to hone your defensive skill and not feel intimidated when your opponent hurls pieces at your king.
Which side stands better? How much better? Why?
Most chess players rely on loosely knit, unstructured methods to evaluate chess pieces and positions. They learn positional principles which often lead to inaccurate evaluations and faulty decisions about how to proceed.
This ground-breaking book by best-selling chess author Dan Heisman addresses the evaluation and understanding of how static features affect the value of the pieces in a given position. Now in its fourth edition, emphasis is placed on the static evaluation of each piece’s value and its role in the overall position rather than the assessment of a specific position, but Heisman’s approach can also be applied to help evaluate entire positions by helping to answer the questions who stands better, by how much, and why?
This ebook is a part of Bundle: Dan Heisman's Books
Some players become good at chess, some very good, while others excel at the game. Jacob Aagaard identifies the key factors that separate the very strong players from the rest. He includes chapters on when to calculate, how to evaluate positions, how to study theory, how to study the endgame and when to force the position. Anyone who follows the advice in this book cannot fail to improve their feel for the game.
There are many differing opinions amongst the top players in the world of chess, but there is one thing upon which World Champions, Grandmasters and other experts all agree: the art of chess calculation is the absolute key to the success of a player. Master this discipline and you can surely expect your results to improve dramatically. And yet there have been very few serious attempts in the past by chess authors to delve into this delicate topic, perhaps not surprisingly given its complexity and difficulty. In Excelling at Chess Calculation, Jacob Aagaard tackles the subject matter head on, unravelling the many secrets behind chess calculation and arming the reader with the necessary tools to be able to calculate effectively at the chessboard. Aagaard pays particular attention to the searching practical questions like "when should you calculate?", "how can you discover candidate moves?" and "how long should you spend on critical moves?" A thorough study of this book will enable you to calculate with confidence in future games.
Being able to solve puzzles and combinations is one of the principal components of a successful chess player. But how can one improve on such an important skill? How can one acquire combinational vision? The answer lies within the pages of this book! Experienced chess writer Jacob Aagaard explains how tactical intuition and ability develops and uses pattern recognition to improve the readers tactical ammunition. Is also no secret that the continued practice of puzzles and combinations helps to sharpen the chess brain, and here there is a wealth of exercises and problems to solve accompanied by the full solutions and explanations. This book is a must for the serious competitive player.
Positional chess remains a mystery to many and yet an understanding of the finer points of the game so often makes the difference between two equally matched players. Improve your positional play and you will see chess in a totally new dimension! In this unique book, International Master Jacob Aagaard selects many original examples of positional chess, the créme de la créme of those that he uses for training and study. Aagaard also delves deeply into the ideas of positional evaluation and analysis.
This book will bring something new to your chess library. In our computer era, focus is usually on openings. Watching recent broadcasts, the new generation would rather choose games of a certain opening and look for an interesting idea or even a brilliant novelty. I offer, and recommend, a different concept altogether, based on the famous Soviet school of chess. The focus should be on understanding strategical concepts, principles and underlying logic. Fashionable opening lines will be forgotten (or re-evaluated) sooner or later, but understanding cannot be lost, and can be only upgraded. It is sad to see some players that are well equipped with opening lines, who are unable to realise a big positional advantage in an endgame. So, our advice is to concentrate on Strategy and Logic. This book is highly recommended for club players, advanced players and masters, although even higher rated players may also find it useful. There is no doubt that lower rated players will learn a lot about thinking processes and decision making, while some logical principles can be put to use by more advanced players too. The reader may ask: Why those games? The games presented in this book cannot be classified as the “best ever” (of course, such a classification is subjective). However, each game was chosen for its logic and instructive value. Of course, the author understands that readers’ opinion may differ. Either way, the games are useful for exploring many important points: How to evaluate a position and choose an appropriate plan? Where to attack? When to attack? When to exchange? How to realise an advantage?… Learning how to answer such important questions during your future games will improve your chess knowledge and technique considerably. Always try and introduce logic into your games – you will be delighted with the results! The author also chose some instructive games with the idea to illustrate some psychologically important moments in chess such as the counter-attack, zeitnot or realisation. The games are separated into chapters, each focusing on a topic. This should facilitate the reader’s navigation through the book.
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.
Magnus Carlsen is arguably the strongest player of all time. His dominance is such that every loss comes as a shock. They remind us that even he has his weak moments. In fact, identifying the root causes of his losses holds valuable lessons for all players. Cyrus Lakdawala’s search starts with a series of Magnus wins and draws to give the reader a feel for how incredibly difficult it is to beat him. The World Champion’s arsenal is awesome: a superlative ability to calculate, near-perfect intuition, probably the best endgame technique ever, a wide and creative opening repertoire, a willingness to unbalance the position almost anytime, and last but not least: his unparalleled will to win. How to Beat Magnus Carlsen has a thematic structure, which, together with Lakdawala’s uniquely accessible style, makes its lessons easy to digest. Sometimes even Magnus gets outplayed, sometimes he over-presses and goes over the cliff’s edge, and sometimes he fails to find the correct plan. And yes, even Magnus Carlsen commits straightforward blunders. Lakdawala explains the how and the why. It’s wonderful to have a World Champion who is not just incredibly strong, but who is also happy to experiment and take risks. That’s what makes Magnus Carlsen such a fascinating chess player. And that’s why he is the hero of this book. There is no doubt that Carlsen has examined all his losses under a microscope. If he benefits from this process, then so will we.