TACTICS TRAINER AVAILABLE! The Woodpecker Method is the name given by Axel Smith to a training system developed by his compatriot and co-author Hans Tikkanen. After training with his method in 2010, Tikkanen achieved three GM norms within a seven-week period.
In Calculation thinking methods such as Candidates, Combinations, Prophylaxis, Comparison, Elimination, Intermediate Moves, Imagination and Traps are explained to the reader, and ownership of them is offered through a carefully selected series of exercises.
This ebook is a part of Bundle: Grandmaster Preparation
Jacob Aagaard describes his chess improvement philosophy, developed over more than twenty years of thinking about one question: How do we make better decisions at the chess board.
TACTICS TRAINER AVAILABLE! Chess Tests offers chessplayers material of very high quality for working on various themes, from training combinative vision to techniques of realizing advantages. I recommend using those materials for in-depth work in the directions mentioned in the book. If you follow this advice, then this volume will become a valuable addition to your chess studies and will help you reinforce skills and knowledge you have already obtained. And here is probably the most important point. Dvoretsky wanted to write a book that would not only teach some intricacies of chess, but would also be simply a pleasure to read for aficionados of the game, so he tried to amass the ‘tastiest’ of examples here. I hope that this last book by him is going to achieve this, presenting its readers with many chess discoveries and joy of communication with the great coach and author.
TACTICS TRAINER AVAILABLE! Chess is 99% tactics. This celebrated observation is not only true for beginners, but also for club players (Elo 1500 – 2000). If you want to win more games, nothing works better than training your combination skills. There are two types of books on tactics: those that introduce the concepts followed by some examples, and workbooks that contain lots of exercises. FIDE Master Frank Erwich has done both: he explains all the key tactical ideas AND provides an enormous amount of exercises for each different theme. Erwich has created a complete tactics book for ambitious club and tournament players. He takes you to the next level of identifying weak spots in the position of your opponent, recognizing patterns of combinations, visualizing tricks and calculating effectively. Erwich has also included a new and important element: tests that will improve your defensive skills. 1001 Chess Exercises for Club Players is not a freewheeling collection of puzzles. It serves as a course text book, because only the most didactically productive exercises are featured. Every chapter starts with easy examples, but don’t worry: the level of difficulty will steadily increase.
Understanding the pawn structure is a key tool when you are evaluating a position on the board. Post-beginners should know the basic essentials of chess structures and that is what this modern training manual focuses on.
Tactics are usually why most people find chess fun! This book will greatly enhance your enjoyment learning about – and benefiting from – the recurring patterns of tactics.
This ebook is a part of Bundle: Dan Heisman's Books
In this book, aimed at strong tournament players (1900-2300 Elo or fast improving juniors) the author introduces a wider approach to developing endgame tactics skills that a formidable chess player needs. Specifically, he presents 101 positions from games of grandmasters played in 2019, including super-GMs such as Magnus Carlsen, Ding Liren, Alireza Firouzja, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Alexander Grischuk, Wang Hao, Alexei Shirov, Samuel Shankland, Kirill Alekseenko, and Levon Aronian, in which he first explains the mistake made by one of the players in underestimating their opponent’s counterplay, then he analyzes how the game progressed where punishment for the mistake is meted out. After that, he returns to the starting position to demonstrate the correct or a more promising continuation. Therefore, the text is structured so that each challenge contains the starting diagram twice – before the moves in the actual game, and then, on the page overleaf, before the solution. Studying these key fragments from grandmaster games will help a player to develop their endgame approach. Firstly, the student analyzes why a move or series of moves by one of the players was erroneous. What counterplay by the opponent did the player making the mistake underestimate? Secondly, armed with this answer, the student can review the position to try and figure out the better move. If the student is working with a coach, then the coach should first set up the position on the board, demonstrate the erroneous move played, and ask the student to find the refutation to that bad move. After the refutation is found by the student, the coach should once again set up the critical position and ask the student to find the strongest continuation for the initial player. This may be one or more moves, depending on the position. Naturally, in the case of self-study the student can change their approach, either trying to figure out the refutation to the error by covering up the subsequent text, or simply studying the moves in the game before trying to find the better continuation, which is detailed overleaf together with the starting diagram.
Looking for Trouble … helps you to recognize threats by providing over 300 problems in which you focus on identifying and meeting threats in the opening, middlegame and endgame. The author’s clear explanations are presented in a manner that should greatly benefit players of all levels.
Understanding what your opponent is planning to do or trying to accomplish is one of the core skills required to take your game to the next level.
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.