Street Smart Chess is an expert guide to scoring more points at the chessboard. When does it pay off to play hard for a win? Or safe for a draw? And how do you adapt your playing style accordingly? GM Axel Smith answers these questions, and more, by using a world-class player as a model for each chapter. Learn how Magnus Carlsen grinds out wins from level positions; how David Navara beats lower-rated opponents, and how Baskaran Adhiban beats higher-rated ones! Or serve-and-volley in the opening like Peter Heine Nielsen. Playing well is a good start in chess, but you also need to be Street Smart.
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!
Opening preparation is essential, but for aspiring players understanding the middlegame is even more important.
Grandmaster and renowned chess coach Zenón Franco provides a training course designed to help all aspiring players to improve their chess. During each lesson, you are invited to play a 'game' in which you try to find the best moves at all the important moments. Points are awarded for selecting the best moves - and are deducted for selecting blunders! At the end of each lesson there is a points scale to indicate how well you have 'played'. This means you are able to accurately measure your progress as you work through the book. Readers are tested in all aspects of chess: attack, defence, counterattack, tactics, structures, strategy, endgames and so on. Following this interactive course of lessons is an ideal way to improve your game.
The possession of the bishop pair (vs. bishop & knight, or knight pair) is an important strategic element that may guarantee superiority and even determine the outcome of the game. In modern chess, the bishop pair has been established as a positional advantage in the majority of cases, and it’s very common nowadays to hear teachers tell their students ‘keep your bishops’ or ‘capture that bishop’.
In today’s chess, the importance given to this element has increased to the point that in some of the most popular opening variations, the main goal has become to gain the bishop pair. That is because the bishop pair can be a powerful advantage in any phase of the game. For example, it’s a lethal weapon in an attack against the king. It can also be very efficient in attacking weaknesses: one bishop can put pressure on the target, while the other attacks the defending piece. However, it is the endgame where it is particularly strong.
The new series of middlegame books by Adrian Mikhalchishin and Georg Mohr starts with a volume about the center.
The idea behind this book is for you to ‘play’ as in a real game, and it is my job to ensure you have a pleasant time while training. I suggest you take at least an hour and a half for each game and as your coach I will indicate when to guess the moves. Sometimes there will be suggestions — including tricky ones — to measure your concentration level. Th e ideas behind the moves are always explained.
Points are awarded for the ‘right answers’ as well as for some other moves, and at the end there is a general assessment plus a review of some of the things to be learned from the game. During my coaching period I was able to witness how motivating it is for kids to receive points for the right answers, their ‘lives are at stake’ when they try to find the answers, and it is a challenge much appreciated by them. Later I also noticed a similar effect with adults although, unlike the kids, the older students try to hide it.
The final score is not that important; it is not scientifically based. But of course the more points you get the better you ‘would have played’. The effort you put into trying to find the best move every time is what matters most. I firmly believe it really helps to learn a little more about playing chess with every game.
This handbook, probably the most thorough grounding in the history of teaching chess, was recently created for chess teachers at the DYSS, the special sports school for young talents in Russia.
In VOLUME 2 you are again handed basic and advanced tools to improve in a wide array of areas: assessing and handling pawn structures, employing positional and tactical means to improve your position, identifying weak spots, mastering attacking dynamics and more.
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Sun Tzu
Mostly basing my chess work on this statement of the great Chinese military theoretician, I have managed throughout my chess coaching career to implement many of his principles, and even establish them as being valid for the game of chess. I think the statement above should be taken as an axiom. Thus, strategy must be the leading chess topic, and definitely based on logic. Moreover, strategy must tower over all other chess topics and sub-topics; strategy is the ultimate chess idea and it sublimates and determines other principles.
How to learn strategy? Can it be learned? It can be, of course. And these volumes are the perfect guide to learn (or, more precisely, to learn to understand) strategy.
My idea is to throw light on all the strategic concepts in these volumes. To help you navigate more simply, I have divided all the material into two volumes. This first one is exploring the elements of strategy, explaining typical and essential principles in detail. The second one is about pawn structures. Of course, structures themselves actually mean nothing without recognizing patterns and principles from the elements (because pawn structures are used to determine the values of pieces, for instance). That is why volume two can be considered as an advanced level of strategy. Generally, examples will be based on material adopted from volume one and upgraded.
Volume 2 is divided into eight chapters. Unlike Volume 1, it is possible to mix the order in which you study these chapters, but not to study the games within each chapter out of order, since the examples build upon each other in complexity. I suggest that the chapter on “Passed Pawns” should be studied first, because many of the various middlegame structures can ultimately give rise to a passed pawn in the endgame. Work carefully through these examples, because masters use pawn structures even in the opening to predict the properties of endgames which can potentially arise – this is a widely neglected aspect and can be a strong weapon for you!