In 2018 DeepMind published the shocking results of their chess-playing artificial intelligence software, AlphaZero. Chess players looked in disbelief and immediately wondered how AI would affect the future of chess. Less than a year later, a whole new wave of chess engines emerged that were based on using neural networks to evaluate positions in a completely new way. This book is about the extraordinary impact that AI has had on modern chess.
The games of top chess players since the end of 2018 have reflected the use of these new engines in home analysis. They have significantly developed opening theory as well as the general understanding of middlegame concepts. By analysing these games with the help of neural network engines, FIDE Master Joshua Doknjas discusses numerous exciting ideas and examines areas of chess that had previously been overlooked. With thorough explanations, questions, and exercises, this book provides fascinating material for masters and less experienced players alike.
Joshua Doknjas is a FIDE Master from Canada who has enjoyed success competing internationally. He has won seven national titles for his age and tied for 1st in the 2019 U18 North American Youth Chess Championship.
The astounding success of How To Study Chess on Your Own made clear that there are thousands of chess players who want to improve their game. And chess players like to work on their training at least partially by themselves.
The bestselling book by GM Kuljasevic offered a structured approach and provided the training plans. Due to popular demand, Kuljasevic now presents a Workbook with the accompanying exercises and training tools a chess student can use to immediately start his training.
Most workbooks offer puzzles and puzzles only. But Kuljasevic has used his experience as a coach to create a broader and more interesting training schedule. You will be challenged by tasks like these:
– Solve positional play puzzles
– Find the best move – and find the mini-plan
– Play out a typical middlegame structure – against a friend or against an engine, carefully set a an appropriate level
– Simulation – study and replay a strategic model game
– Analyze – try to understand a given middlegame position
Volume 1 is optimized for chess players with an Elo rating between 1800 and 2100 but is useful for anyone between 1600 and 2300. Volumes 2 and 3 will serve the needs of beginners and more advanced club players.
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.
Aron Nimzowitsch is one of the most important figures in chess history. He was one of the World's strongest players and contributed enormously to the development of chess both through his games and his writings, which influenced many grandmasters who followed him. Nimzowitsch was a leader of the Hypermodern School, which formed revolutionary ideas on chess strategy to challenge previously held beliefs and created many new opening systems.
In this book, Steve Giddins selects and studies his favourite games by Nimzowitsch and examines Nimzowitsch's skills in the vital areas of attack, defence, strategy and endgame play. He demonstrates how we can all improve by learning from Nimzowitsch's masterpieces.
Move by Move provides an ideal platform to study chess. By continually challenging the reader to answer probing questions throughout the book, the Move by Move format greatly encourages the learning and practising of vital skills just as much as the traditional assimilation of knowledge. Carefully selected questions and answers are designed to keep you actively involved and allow you to monitor your progress as you learn. This is an excellent way to improve your chess skills and knowledge.
The Slav (1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6) is a great choice against 1.d4 for players who are after a solid position from the opening but one that also contains dynamic possibilities. The pawn on c6 guarantees Black a firm foothold in the centre but there is also the ever-present possibility to capture on c4 and possibly even try to hold on to this pawn. The Slav is ideal for combining reliability with a promise for dynamic counterplay in the middlegame.
In Opening Repertoire: The Slav, highly experienced chess author and coach Cyrus Lakdawala guides the reader through the complexities of the Slav and carves out a repertoire for Black. He examines all aspects of this highly complex opening and provides the reader with well-researched, fresh, and innovative analysis. Each annotated game has valuable lessons on how to play the opening and contains instructive commentary on typical middlegame plans.
Have you ever wondered why strong chess players immediately grasp what is happening in complex positions? The secret is pawn structures. The pawn structure dictates the game's flow, and different structures require distinct approaches. You can improve your game by studying a large variety of pawn structures and the Hidden Laws of Chess.
IM Nick Maatman invented the Hidden Laws of Chess as an instructional tool to help his students bridge the gap between the basic understanding of a club player and the next level of knowledge of Masters and Grandmasters. A grandmaster knows from experience what pieces to exchange when facing an isolated pawn, while a club player wonders if he should keep his rooks on the board - or not.
The Hidden laws go one level deeper than the basic laws on piece development, king safety or material balance. The Hidden Laws will uncover elements such as space, the quality of a pawn structure, and a doubled pawn's strength or weakness. Maatman will answer questions like: Are backward pawns the worst in chess? What is the value of a space advantage? Could doubled pawns be an asset? How can I win symmetrical positions?
Using his coaching experience and writing with a touch of science and philosophy, Maatman will guide any ambitious chess player to the next level. His book contains dozens of actionable tips, instructive games and carefully selected exercises.
Nick Maatman (1995) is an International Master, experienced chess coach, and training partner of Super-GM Jorden van Foreest. Maatman has won the Dutch U20 Championship and has beaten many strong grandmasters in tournament games. The Hidden Laws of Chess is his first book, but he expects many more to follow. He graduated from Groningen University in both Business and Philosophy.
The Grand Prix Attack is one of White's most aggressive ways of fighting the Sicilian. It leads to a sharp, complex battle in which White often launches a direct attack against the black king. The opening has become a powerful weapon in the cut and thrust of tournament chess, where victory is everything and draws are not enough. It has even gained the seal of approval from elite players such as Vishy Anand and Nigel Short, who have both utilized it with success.
In this book Gawain Jones, one of the world' leading experts on the Grand Prix Attack, provides everything you need to know about this opening. Using illustrative games and drawing upon his own wealth of experience, he introduces the key moves and ideas for both sides, taking care to explain the reasoning behind them - something that has often been neglected or taken for granted.
The Everyman Chess Starting Out series has firmly established itself as the leading guide to studying openings for up-and-coming players. These books are distinguished by their easy-to-read layout, the lucid explanations of the fundamentals, and the abundance of notes, tips and warnings to help the reader absorb vital ideas.
Available via subscription
British Chess Magazine (January 2023)
“There can be no Plan B because there is no Planet B,” said UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon. We disagree when it comes to chess. In this book you will see analyzed not only 1.d4 b5 (the Polish Defense) but also the St. George Defense (1.e4 e6 2.d4 a6 intending 3...b5), 1.Nf3 b5, also 1.f4 b5 and, most shocking of all, 1.e4 a6 2.d4 b5. Grandmasters have lost to these systems; other Grandmasters even try them out themselves when they have the black pieces. No, an early ...b7-b5 is not Plan A. However, if you want to humiliate the opposition by being literally eccentric (off-center) and disrespectful ... Welcome to Planet B!
After studying this book, I feel that you should be comfortable using the Polish Defense in your games; it will boost your creativity and will allow you to notch unexpected victories... Although the Polish may not be ideal as a full-time weapon, its version of unorthodoxy will embarrass your opponents, especially if you are well-armed to endure the opening phase. The present work ensures that this is accomplished and gives you valuable tips for the middlegame as well. – Grandmaster Vassilios Kotronias in his Foreword
At the end of each chapter, there are fully annotated illustrative games, and at the very end of the book over a hundred unannotated games from recent practice have been added. In many respects, these represent the most important part of the book. These examples show what human players actually play and just how effective this underrated defense is.
Woman International Master and experienced children’s coach Anastasiya Geller has written a textbook for beginners teaching them the very basics of attacking the enemy king. The reader will learn how to find a simple check and fully master one of the most important tactical elements in chess – checkmate in 1 move! The reader also learns how to choose the best defense against a check.
The book contains 2000 exercises, most of which are checkmates in 1 move – from the simplest mates with one piece to mating using several tactical techniques at once. The first part of the book introduces the concept of check and shows the reader how to recognize a safe check, before teaching discovered check. The second part gradually introduces different types of mate in a logical sequence by the different pieces, beginning with the rook and then progressing to the bishop, queen and knight. The third part of the book explains how to checkmate in one move using key techniques: checkmate with capturing, checkmate with a pawn promotion, checkmate with protection (including checkmate with a pawn), checkmate with pinning, checkmate with a discovered check, and checkmate with a double check.
Most of the positions to be solved have been selected from actual games of the strongest grandmasters of the present and the great masters of the past. For beginner chess players, their parents and coaches.
When you are ready for a great fighting game in the Sicilian Defense, there are few things there are more annoying than facing the hatefully solid 2.c3 variation, the so-called Alapin Variation.
This is not a shady gambit but it is a weapon that has been used by several grandmasters, including World Champion Magnus Carlsen.
The gambit has the advantage of being unexplored and is still quite unknown. Therefore, this book constitutes the first work dedicated to this fun and tricky variation.
To get a good feel for the intricacies of the various lines, the authors took it upon themselves to play the opening in their online and training games where it proved remarkably effective.
In this work, you will find forty-four thoroughly analyzed main games with lots of explanations and additional analysis as well as a 'Quick Repertoire' that will allow you to play the opening in your games after a minimal amount of study time.
It is time to take your opponents out of their comfort zone and right into yours!
This tactics book by FIDE Senior Trainer Grandmaster Jakov Geller teaches the reader how to create mate threats and execute them using a mixture of combination techniques, as well as how to deploy all key defensive techniques to combat mate threats. Unlike most tactics books, the text provides readers with a detailed explanation of all elements of a mating combination, both individually and when combined with others. This knowledge enables the reader to identify tactical opportunities in their game and execute them or defend against them with confidence.
This book contains 1,000 carefully selected examples, of which 924 are exercises for the reader to solve. They begin with simple one-move illustrations of the concepts and then go on to more complex tests, with many featuring combinations of 5-6 moves and sometimes more. The book is split into 28 chapters, the majority of which focus on defending against mate threats. Nine defensive techniques are given their own chapters. With every new defensive technique studied, the combinations in subsequent chapters become increasingly diverse. The difficulty level of exercises in each chapter hence gradually increases.
This work is a direct sequel to the book 1500 Forced Mates published by the author with Elk and Ruby in 2021 and is intended for a wide audience of chess improvers.
The ambition of many chess players at various levels is to build a full and reliable repertoire against White’s major starting moves. This book is designed to provide exactly that: a complete list of variations needed to know in order to confidently meet 1.d4. The goal is to lift the burden of line selection and research off your shoulders and show you exactly what you need to know to get out of the 1.d4 openings at least equal with the black pieces.
I base the repertoire on the Nimzo-Indian and Bogo-Indian Defenses. The spirit of Indian Defenses is based on flexibility and harmony. As you will notice during the course of reading the book, the lines recommended here rarely end with huge imbalances or clear weaknesses for Black. Quite often White will get the bishop pair but will have to suffer pawn weaknesses or Black’s greater piece activity in return.
Most of the lines are positional, not tactical in character. That means that stepping out of the path outlined in the book should not get you in too much trouble, as long as your moves have solid positional foundations. While playing Black, you have to accept that occasionally you will not equalize, or get surprised or out-prepared. Learning the material from this book should sharply limit the extent of such instances, thus improving your overall results.
Finally, I have an important piece of advice: remember about color strategy! The Bogo-Indian is mainly based on dark-squared control, while the Nimzo-Indian does so on the light squares. In case you forget what to do, this may prove a very useful guideline when choosing a move.
I wish you pleasant reading and great results against 1.d4!