The Ruy Lopez is arguably the most classic of chess openings. White immediately starts the battle for the centre, fighting for the initiative. This strategic clarity has made the Ruy Lopez, or Spanish Opening, an eternal favourite with chess players at all levels. Inevitably, this popularity has also led to a wealth of opening theory. In this book, Fabiano Caruana takes you by the hand and lays out a complete and practical White repertoire for club players. He avoids complicated chaotic lines, but doesn’t shy away from sharp battles. Caruana loves to find and use the tactics to punish Black for risky choices. This one-volume and crystal-clear repertoire covers fifteen main variations, from the classical lines to the anti-Marshall (8.a4), and from the Schliemann (3…f5) to the Modern Steinitz. In an easy-to-grasp manner Caruana explains general characteristics, such as permanent weaknesses long-term goals, and is always looking for an advantage for White. The insights of the World #2 in this classic opening, will not only greatly improve your results in the Ruy Lopez, but also sharpen your general chess knowledge. Inspired by Caruana’s ChessBase Series Navigating the Ruy Lopez.
Every player who meets 1.e4 with 1...e5 needs a reliable response to the Ruy Lopez, and The Berlin Defence is an ideal solution. Ever since Vladimir Kramnik used the Berlin to shut down Garry Kasparov’s best efforts in their 2000 World Championship match, practically all of the world’s top players have successfully incorporated the “Berlin Wall” into their repertoires. GM Michael Roiz presents a complete repertoire for Black after 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 Nf6, offering top-class antidotes to anything White may try. From the famous Endgame Variation to recently fashionable tries such as 4.d3, Roiz combines cutting-edge analysis with insightful positional guidance.
Coffeehouse Repertoire is a 1.e4 player’s dream: an arsenal of ideas from a world-class grandmaster to surprise and confound your opponents, combining coffeehouse trickery with complete theoretical soundness. In Volume 2, GM Gawain Jones shows how to fight for an advantage against 1...e5, plus the French, Pirc, Modern, Philidor and other miscellaneous Defences, using lines which feature a potent combination of surprise value, objective soundness and practical effectiveness.
The seconds tick down relentlessly toward zero just as your game approaches the critical stage. Your higher-rated opponent is putting your game under severe pressure, so extreme accuracy is needed to hang tough and avoid falling into a losing position. What do you do now – should you exchange pieces to relieve the pressure, lash out with a sacrifice, probe for weaknesses in the opponent's camp, or maybe just give up and get a lesson on how to bring the point home? The answer is... none of these! At such do-or-die moments, says Steve Hrop, the first thing to do is to sit on your hands and take a few deep breaths. In Defending Under Pressure: Managing Your Emotions at the Chessboard, the author uses critical moments from his own tournament games (most of them against players rated above 2200) to describe the difficulties of thinking straight when the enemy is at the gates, and then outlines methods and techniques to clear your head, evaluate the position, and find your way to the best move. Techniques include how to avoid redundant pieces that critically limit your mobility; when visualization is more important than calculation; and “freeze-framing” positions to eliminate blunders. Save the draw – or turn a looming defeat into an astonishing victory – with the tips in this practical training manual!
The FastTrack to Endgame Expertise! Since it first appeared in 2003, Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual has been acclaimed as the best single volume ever written on the endgame. With staggering depth and accuracy, it clearly reveals the secrets of this most important stage of the game. One of the unique characteristics of the Endgame Manual has been the highlighting of text considered to be essential to the understanding of endgame theory. The late, great trainer Mark Dvoretsky carefully selected the text to be highlighted so that players at all levels could benefit from this monumental work. Now in its fifth edition, the 440-page manual may seem somewhat intimidating to some readers. With that in mind, German grandmaster Karsten Müller and American grandmaster Alex Fishbein – both recognized endgame experts in their own right – have collected the highlighted text from the fifth edition and presented it so that the core concepts might be more readily available. The result is Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual: FastTrack Edition. As noted by Australian grandmaster Ian Rogers in his foreword: “I am very pleased that Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual: FastTrack Edition has come along. It is eminently suitable to sit in an amateur player’s library as their only endgame book, and equally good at preparing a serious student for many other fine endgame books – not forgetting of course the storied father of this volume, Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual." If you are serious about studying endgames, have a limited amount of time, or are simply looking for a convenient way to improve your play in endgames, the FastTrack Edition may just be the book you have been looking for.
TACTICS TRAINER AVAILABLE! Working on chess tactics and checkmates will help you win more games. It develops your pattern recognition and your ‘board vision’ – your ability to capitalize on opportunities. This Workbook features a complete set of fundamental tactics, checkmate patterns, exercises, hints, and solutions. Peter Giannatos selected 738 exercises based on ten years of experience with thousands of pupils at the prize-winning Charlotte Chess Center. All problems are clean, without unnecessary fluff that detracts from their instructive value. The Workbook has ample room for writing down the solutions to the exercises. This is helpful for both students and coaches, who can assign homework from the book without having to worry about being unable to review the solutions. And writing down the correct chess moves will greatly accelerate your learning process. Everyone’s First Chess Workbook offers you a treasure trove of chess knowledge and more than enough lessons to keep you busy for a year!
This book by International Grand Master Yasser Seirawan provides a move-by-move account of the best chess games of the last 25 years, played by the world's foremost chess competitors. With an authoritative voice that is by turns poetic and analytical, Seirawan serves as host of a fascinating excursion of the most brilliant chess game, providing highlights into and explanations of each and every move.
Seirawan begins each game with a description of the historical atmosphere of the chess world and sometimes the world at large at the time the game was played. When he delves into the game itself, he starts with the reasoning behind the opening moves. From there he provides both a play-by-play description of the game and an analytical commentary, all the while examining the moves in terms of place development and possible tactical and strategic opportunities. Along the way, a handful of the players are profiled in biographies.
In WINNING CHESS BRILLIANCIES you'll get a taste of the most dazzling chess combinations devious strategies, and downright cruel blows as world champions risk it all! This book is truly a celebration of the sport of chess.
This ebook is a part of Bundle: Seirawan's Winning Chess
Mikhail Tal, the 'magician from Riga,' was the greatest attacking World Champion of them all, and this enchanting autobiography chronicles his extraordinary career with charm and humor. Dazzling games are interspersed throughout with anecdotes and witty self-interviews, and in typically objective fashion he related both the downs and ups of his encounters. An inveterate smoker and drinker, Tal's life on the circuit was punctuated by bouts in the hospital with kidney problems, but nothing could dull his love for chess and his sheer genius on the chessboard. His illustrious tournament record, up to his death in 1992, is included here in full, along with 100 complete games and nearly as many positions. Tal's annotations in this book are a world apart from ordinary games collections. No reader could fail to be swept along by his passion and vitality as he sets the scene for an encounter and then recounts every psychological twist and turn.
I was lucky enough to play against six world champions and several top players in my modest chess career, but the greatest player I feel privileged to have known, to have spent time with him, was Miguel Najdorf, “El Viejo”. This is a chess book, with 275 commented games, it covers all his chess career, but it has also many stories. Najdorf was the most important Argentinean chess player, and he was an exceptional person. Oscar Panno said that Najdorf reminded him of Don Quixote, in the part of the book where he tells Sancho Panza, “Wherever I am, that is where the head of the table is going to be”. He successfully overcame the most terrible setbacks, as few are capable of doing. Writing about Miguel Najdorf is one of my greatest pleasures as a chess journalist and writer!