The Center Game is a wonderful opening for club players. White starts with a center push, develops quickly, looks for opposite castling, and launches an attack. The setup will feel very familiar to you in no time. And the chess engines show that this opening is both sound and correct, and at least as good as the over-analyzed Ruy Lopez and Italian Opening.
With this opening, you'll get a middlegame position that you know very well, but quite often will be new to Black. This will probably guarantee you an advantage on the clock, which will further increase your winning chances.
The author, Arne Moll, is an experienced club player, chess writer and chess book reviewer, so he knows exactly what the reader needs: the historical context, the basic strategic ideas of each line, the tactical patterns that will emerge, and some inspiring model games by great players such as Ian Nepomniatchi and Arjun Erigaisi —who uses the Center Game as a surprise weapon
Arne Moll is an experienced club and tournament player with a peak rating well above 2200. He was a chess writer for the legendary blog Chess Vibes and Chess.com and has reviewed dozens of chess books. He lives in Amsterdam and works as an IT and Data specialist in the Finance industry.
This theoretically solid opening repertoire for White, based on playing 5.d4 in the main line of the Ruy Lopez (1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5 a6 4.Ba4 Nf6), gives you a great way to bamboozle your opponent, who is probably unprepared for this variation and its many pitfalls. Black can easily go wrong within the next few moves and quickly lose material or succumb to a crushing attack. White is poised to castle and engage in battle; Black’s king is vulnerable in the center and may find no relief on the kingside as White develops pieces to powerful outposts and forces pawn moves that allow attackers to pour in.
This variation is named after Scottish-American master George Mackenzie, who popularized it in the nineteenth century. He was undefeated with it, overwhelming some top masters of that day.
Elite competitors from many eras have played the Mackenzie Variation, including Morphy, Lasker, Alekhine, Tal, Short, and Cramling. In recent years, grandmasters such as Jones, Kosteniuk, and Yoo have used it to great effect, especially in rapid and blitz games, when opponents have little time to find a sound defense.
A final chapter shows you how to meet the popular Berlin Defense (3...Nf6) with a Mackenzie-style thrust, 4.d4. Again, many difficult decisions and tricky positions await the unwary Black player.
As well as variations and advice, this book contains 57 model games with key annotations, from Morphy in 1858 through to a dozen examples from the 2020s.
“In this lucid and well-researched book, David Gertler shows you how to make the Mackenzie Variation a formidable weapon.” – Stuart Rachels, former US champion and author of The Best I Saw in Chess.
This book advocates the 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 move order for Black – with 3.Nc3 Bb4 having been covered in the sister volume Playing the Nimzo-Indian. By waiting for the knight to appear on f3 before transposing to a Queen’s Gambit, Black reduces White’s options.
Spanish GM Renier Castellanos completes his cutting-edge repertoire for Black against 1.d4, with the Vienna Variation (4.Nc3 dxc4) and Catalan (4.g3 dxc4) the biggest topics. This book also provides thorough guidance against all of White’s significant alternatives on moves 2-4.
With thoughtful explanations backed up by precise analysis, Beating the Queen’s Gambit – Indian Style! provides everything you need to handle 1.d4 Nf6 variations where White avoids the Nimzo-Indian Defence.
The Sicilian Scheveningen Defense is a highly respected and flexible variation of the Sicilian Defense, characterized by the pawn structure Black adopts with pawns on e6 and d6. It arises after the moves 1. e4 c5 2. Nf3 d6 3. d4 cxd4 4. Nxd4 Nf6 5. Nc3 e6. This setup allows Black to maintain a solid central presence while keeping options open for dynamic counterplay.
This updated volume takes you deeper into the strategies and tactics of one of the most daring defenses in chess.
The Benoni, known for its bold imbalance and sharp counterattacking potential, is the weapon of choice for players looking to challenge White from the very start. This expanded edition not only revisits the fundamental ideas of this opening but also introduces cutting-edge theory, new variations, and insightful commentary from top-level play.
The Bogo-Dutch is a hypermodern defense to 1.d4 which is based on 1.d4 e6 2.c4 f5. It is a hybrid opening that is based on the Bogo-Indian Defense (1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 Bb4+) and the Dutch Defense (1.d4 f5).
Black tries their hardest to wrest control of the e4–square from White by checking on b4, plus having a pawn on f5 at the same time.
It is undoubtedly an underrated defense, to the point that most players, from super-GMs all the way down to amateur level, are completely unfamiliar with this entire set-up.
In this volume, the authors cover the main lines of the Closed Ruy Lopez. These lines include: The Marshall Attack, The Anti-Marshall, The Zaitsev Variation, The Breyer Variation, The Chigorin Variation, and a number of minor lines, such as the Bogoljubow Variation, The Smyslov Variation, The Keres Variation and more.
The Accelerated Dragon is a dynamic choice for Black and arguably the most natural way to play the Sicilian Defence: Black develops rapidly and chooses the most active squares to place his or her pieces. Unknowing white players looking for a direct attack similar to the one used against traditional Dragon are shocked by Black's increased options due to the flexible move order. Instead, White sometimes employs a more positional approach incorporating the famous Maroczy Bind, when the battle centres on White's impressive pawn structure against Black's lively pieces and the ability to create a pawn break. The Accelerated Dragon was brought to prominence by the Danish chess legend Bent Larsen, while in more recent years its advocates have included World Championship Candidate Sergey Tiviakov.
This book is a further addition to Everyman's best-selling Starting Out series, which has been acclaimed for its original approach to tackling chess openings. International Master Andrew Greet, an Accelerated Dragon expert, revisits the basics of the opening, elaborating on the crucial early moves and ideas for both sides in a way that is often neglected in other texts. The reader is helped throughout with a plethora of notes, tips and warnings highlighting the vital characteristics of the Accelerated Dragon and of opening play in general. Starting Out: The Accelerated Dragon is a perfect guide for improving players and those new to this opening.
– User-friendly design to help readers absorb ideas
– Includes coverage of the Hyper-Accelerated Dragon
– Ideal for improvers, club players and tournament players
Have you ever admired an amazing game of chess, simultaneously thinking “I could never play like that”? In Tiger’s Chaos Theory, you will find a different perspective, treating extraordinary play and creativity as a learnable skill. Thinking outside the box is a stock phrase of the commentators; champions expand their box.
GM Tiger Hillarp Persson is renowned as one of the most creative and original thinkers in chess – attributes he developed through targeted study. Tiger shares how to map patterns and navigate the outrageous, using games and ideas that helped him expand his creative approach.
Tiger’s Chaos Theory will take you on an inspirational journey, featuring concepts such as extreme Hecatomb sacrifices, Houdini-style pawn breakouts and even becoming another player at the board. With thought-provoking chess content, amusing anecdotes and candid reflections on the author’s games and career, this book is unmissable.
The Nimzo-Indian Defence is an ideal weapon for Black at all levels. It has been popular for over a century due to its positional soundness, yet has experienced a revolution in recent years, with modern analysis increasingly highlighting its dynamic potential.
Playing the Nimzo-Indian offers a complete repertoire for Black after 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3 Bb4, with an active, counterattacking emphasis on the choice of lines. The forthcoming companion volume, Beating the Queen’s Gambit – Indian Style!, will complete the coverage of 1.d4 Nf6 from Black’s perspective by covering White’s alternatives on moves 2 and 3, with 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 d5 the biggest topic.
With bulletproof analysis, more novelties than we could keep track of, and deep explanations of plans and concepts, Playing the Nimzo-Indian offers everything you need to learn and play the Nimzo-Indian successfully.
Today's openings are reruns of an old sitcom that we have all seen a hundred times before, while for players in the past, life on the chess board was wild, unexplored territory. Learning the details of that gigantic entity, the Ruy Lopez (from either side), is on par with the time that hateful 7th-grade teacher made us memorize the capital cities of every country in the world--in alphabetical order!
The Origins series is an attempt at a "big picture" view that displays the interlocking parts of a much larger mechanism in time.
In this volume, the authors cover specialty lines either side deviates before heading into the Closed System Main Lines, for instance, The Exchange Variation, The Worrall Attack, The Open Ruy Lopez, The Møller, The Arkhangelsk, and many more.
About 10 months ago, Nery approached me. We already knew each other; Nery had been my student in group online classes for about 2 years. Nery’s main goal and desire is to help chess lovers like himself. Let’s say we don’t know the theory beyond moves 8-10 and, in many cases, after 5-6 moves we find it difficult to make the right choice. We are also not interested in studying all these complex and long variations, it does not bring us pleasure, and we only want to understand the criteria that we can rely on in choosing a move or plan in opening positions that are critical for us. Nery came to this idea thanks to numerous positions from many of his games in which he found it difficult to make a quick and correct decision. The analysis of these positions after the game, and the conclusions made together with his coach or the computer, or even independently, brought invaluable experience for making further correct decisions in the opening.
Dear chess friends, he wants to share this experience with you.
I’m sure you will enjoy reading this book. Play chess and love chess!!!