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The French Defence is one of the most popular and reliable responses to 1.e4. Grandmaster Repertoire 15 – The French Defence 2 covers the most critical variation of the Winawer, which occurs after the opening moves 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4 4.e5 c5 5.a3 Bxc3† 6.bxc3 Ne7 7.Qg4. This volume presents three contrasting ways of meeting White’s aggressive opening system: 7...cxd4 leading to the notorious Winawer Poisoned Pawn; 7...0–0 8.Bd3 f5, a solid yet strategically complex system; and 7...0–0 8.Bd3 Nbc6, which leads to a tense, full-blooded battle

Grandmaster Repertoire 14 – The French Defence 1 introduces the Winawer Variation after the opening moves 1.e4 e6 2.d4 d5 3.Nc3 Bb4, and provides expert recommendations against all of White’s major possibilities, with the exception of the most critical 7.Qg4 line which receives special coverage in Volume Two of the series. Volume Three will deal with the Tarrasch, Advance and all of White’s other options.

Practical White Repertoire, Volume 2

This is the second volume of Alexei Kornev’s practical White repertoire with 1.d4 and 2.c4, and it is devoted to the defences in which Black fianchettoes the dark-squared bishop — the most ambitious, attacking replies to the Queen’s-Pawn game.

Kornev gives clear, complete recommendations against the whole fianchetto family: the Grünfeld (with the main 4.cxd5 and 5.e4 approach), the King’s Indian in all its branches, and the Modern, Pirc, and Philidor/Lion structures that arise when Black combines ...g6 or ...d6 with an early kingside fianchetto. Each is met with a coherent, unified plan rather than a patchwork of unrelated lines.

As the title promises, the emphasis is practical: the repertoire is chosen to be sound and genuinely playable for a club player, with the key plans and move-orders laid out clearly so you know not just the moves but the ideas behind them.

This is the middle book of a three-volume series: together with Volume 1 (the 1...d5 defences) and Volume 3 (the Nimzo-Indian and others), it forms a complete, classical 1.d4 and 2.c4 repertoire. Best suited to club players and above who want a principled, low-fuss way to meet the King’s Indian and Grünfeld.

We have analysed the most straightforward possibilities for White

Playing the Trompowsky

The Trompowsky — 1.d4 Nf6 2.Bg5 — is the great theory-dodger’s weapon. By pinning or harassing the knight on move two, White sidesteps the Nimzo-Indian, the Grünfeld, and the King’s Indian in one stroke, avoiding the deep, well-trodden main lines those defences demand and steering the game into fresh, creative, and genuinely complex positions instead.

Richard Pert — a Trompowsky specialist who has played it for years — turns that idea into a complete White repertoire. He works systematically through Black’s replies, from the solid 2...e6 and the combative 2...c5 to the immediate 2...Ne4 and the structural 2...d5, giving a clear recommendation and the typical plans in each case, and he also covers the related 2.Bg5 systems against the Dutch and against 1...d5.

The appeal is practical: the amount of theory you must learn is modest, the resulting middlegames reward understanding and imagination over memorisation, and you will routinely take better-prepared opponents out of their comfort zone early. Pert’s recommendations are ambitious without being unsound — he is happy to fight for an advantage rather than settle for a quiet game.

A sound, low-maintenance opening for club players and above who want an aggressive, off-beat answer to 1...Nf6 and would rather play chess than recite the latest 25-move main line.

Wojo's Weapons, Volume 2

The late Aleksander Wojtkiewicz was one of the most successful tournament grandmasters of his era — a player who racked up wins year after year with a compact, repeatable White system rather than a sprawling theoretical repertoire. This series preserves and teaches that "Wojo System," and Volume 2 carries it forward into the heart of the Queen’s-Pawn battleground.

The backbone is the Catalan, reached via the flexible 1.Nf3 and g3 move orders Wojo favoured. The book gives a complete, layered treatment of both the Closed Catalan and the Open Catalan — the latter examined in real depth, line by line — and then extends the same fianchetto approach to the Slav, the Queen’s Gambit Accepted, the Tarrasch, and the Chigorin.

What makes the material so practical is its coherence: the same bishop on g2, the same pressure on the long diagonal and the c-file, and the same handful of plans recur across every line, so the repertoire is far easier to learn and maintain than its scope suggests. The authors explain how to assemble the pieces of the system into a working whole.

A sound, grandmaster-tested White repertoire for club players and above who want to win the way Wojo did — quietly building pressure and grinding out the point. It is the second of three volumes in the Wojo’s Weapons: Winning With White series; this book concentrates on the ...d5 and ...e6 defences (the Catalan and the Queen’s-Gambit family), while the companion volumes cover the rest, so the three together form the complete repertoire.

Club players looking to master an efficient, safe, and practical White repertoire will benefit from this highly readable book

Have you ever wished for a “formula” to help you decide what move to make in any given chess position?

This is the complete tournament and match record of the most compelling figure in chess history — all 735 of Bobby Fischer’s games, from his first recorded efforts as a twelve-year-old in 1955 through the 1972 world-championship triumph to the 1992 rematch with Spassky.

The collection is framed by an unusually distinguished cast. The foreword is by Larry Evans, Fischer’s long-time second and friend; the introduction is by endgame authority Karsten Müller; and Andy Soltis contributes a survey of Fischer’s openings, tracing how the American’s razor-sharp repertoire evolved over a career that reshaped opening theory.

Organised year by year, the book lets you follow Fischer’s development in a way no anthology of “best games” can: the early brilliancies, the dominant runs of the early 1960s, the astonishing streak through the 1971 Candidates, and the match that made him champion. Career results, highlights, and full opening and player indexes make it as useful for reference as it is for study.

For anyone drawn to Fischer — whether to relive the classics or to study the precision and clarity that defined his play — this is the definitive single-volume games collection.

If you play chess for blood, it makes sense to learn the violent tactics that feature in the openings that you play.

Far from a dusty relic once played by great masters such as Rubinstein, Pillsbury and Bogolyubov, the Zukertort System now enjoys new life.