Vsevolod Rauzer, born in Kiev in 1908, was one of the world’s leading chess opening theoreticians and thinkers in the 1930s. As a player, he was an uncompromising attacker, trying to avoid draws as well as to prove that 1.e4 wins by force. According to Mikhail Botvinnik, “His opening research…with linked middlegame plans, gives us every reason to place V. Rauzer among the founders of the Soviet chess school.”
Awarded the Master of Sport title in 1929, Rauzer’s best tournament performances included joint eighth place in the 1931 Soviet Championship, sixth in 1933 and eighth in 1937. According to Chessmetrics, he was ranked in the world’s top 30 for several years.
He made big contributions to theory in the Sicilian, French and Caro-Kann defenses among others. The book’s introductory articles contain deep dives into Rauzer’s opening laboratory and shed light on the historical development of key variations.
The present work contains 96 games, nearly all of them played by Rauzer. Opponents include Botvinnik, Fine, Levenfish, Lilienthal, Romanovsky, the author and other leading pre-War Soviet players. Many games come with Rauzer’s own annotations together with analysis by Konstantinopolsky, Botvinnik, Levenfish and others. The commentary has been updated by International Master Grigory Bogdanovich using the latest engines.
Ultimately, Rauzer’s story was a sad one. Chess, and especially opening analysis, was an obsession for him: he once told Panov: “Unfortunately, I just can’t make myself work on theory of the game for more than 16 hours a day! My head can’t endure more.” This obsession eventually drove him mentally ill and he spent much of his final period in care. Vsevolod Rauzer lived largely in poverty and tragically died in the Siege of Leningrad.
Alexander Konstantinopolsky (1910-1990), Rauzer’s close friend and collaborator over many years, was a leading Soviet player and coach, also from Ukraine. He trained David Bronstein and was head coach of the Soviet women’s team from 1954 to 1982. His best tournament performance was joint second at the 1937 Soviet Championship.
Although the London System was first played almost 200 years ago, it lay dormant until the beginning of the 21st century. Then chessplayers rediscovered it, realizing that the London could be played against most responses by Black, obtaining a good game with little preparation.
Nowadays the London has evolved into an opening taken up by both club players and world champions. Magnus Carlsen has played it regularly and the new word champion Ding Liren used it to convincingly defeat Ian Nepomniachtchi in game six of their 2023 title match.
Literature on the London has focused primarily on play from White’s side. However, this new book by grandmasters Vassilios Kotronias and Mikhail Ivanov changes all that. Thea authors present four (!) separate ways to combat the London: (1) King’s Indian Setups; (2) the London Benoni; (3) the London Nimzo- and Queen’s Indian; and (4) the London Orthodox System.
The London Files presents Black many good and flexible options for neutralizing White, while also giving us Londoners many new problems to contend with ... Without a doubt, this book will give Black players highly effective means to deal with the London System for a long time to come and may even have players completely rethinking their approach with the white pieces. – From the Foreword by Ian Harris
Defang the London System and fear it no more!
About the Authors:
Greek Grandmaster Vassilios Kotronias, has won the championship of Greece ten times and has represented his country many times in team competitions. He is one of the most respected opening analysts in the world today.
Russian-Serbian Grandmaster Mikhail Ivanov has been successful in many European tournaments, including the 2002 Neckar Open. He is a venerable chess coach and trainer. This is his first book for Russell Enterprises.
Viktor Korchnoi (1931 to 2016) was a giant of the chess world with a career embracing seventy years and over 5,000 recorded games. He contested two world championship matches against Anatoly Karpov, coming within a whisker of being crowned World Champion in 1978. He was a world championship candidate, Soviet champion and Olympiad medal-winner on numerous occasions.
In this first of four volumes on Viktor Korchnoi’s chess career, FIDE Master Hans Renette and International Master Tibor Karolyi deeply analyse 181 games and fragments up until 1968. This period encompasses his bitterly tough childhood involving the Second World War and poverty, the death of his father and grandmother, his mother’s mental health problems and his loyal support from his step-mother, but also his chess beginnings and early coaches, his marriage and the birth of his son. We learn about his early rivalry with Mark Taimanov and Boris Spassky in Viktor’s hometown of Leningrad (now St. Petersburg), and his later rivalry with Mikhail Tal and Tigran Petrosian. He exchanged blows with Bobby Fischer on equal terms.
Korchnoi won three of his four Soviet championship titles during this period, for the first time in 1960, and according to Chessmetrics rating calculations he began a four-month stint as world number 1 in 1965. He played at the 1962 candidates tournament in Curacao and reached the 1968 candidates final versus Spassky. This volume concludes with two of Korchnoi’s most impressive international tournament wins, at Wijk aan Zee and Palma de Mallorca in 1968.
The work is supplemented with a generous portion of photos taken in particular from Soviet-era chess publications and the Korchnoi family archive.
Hans Renette, a FIDE Master with two International Master norms, is a historian and chess coach. He has written chess biographies of the great players Emanuel Lasker, Henry Edward Bird, Louis Paulsen, Gustav Neumann and John Wisker.
Tibor Karolyi is an International Master and chess coach who has written games collections of Magnus Carlsen, Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov, Bobby Fischer, Boris Spassky, Tigran Petrosian and Mikhail Tal, among many other chess books.
The book consists of 36 attacking games from the 21st Century divided into four chapters.
Mastering attacking play in chess is a dream that we all long to achieve, but of course the art of attack does not arise by itself.
Constructing positions which favour the attack is the most difficult task.
In this book we shall see games with brilliant finishes, but we shall also draw attention to the different phases through which the struggle passes, in order make such finishes possible.
Attention has been paid not only to what happens on the board but also, wherever possible, to the influence of the analysis engines not only on a player’s preparation for the game, something that has become more important in these early years of the new century, but also on the practical context of the game.
The games are prefaced by brief biographical information and a short description of the events of the game.
After each game some lessons are highlighted.
The Pirc Defence and the Modern Defence are two naturally entwined chess openings that are both flexible and rich in strategic and tactical ideas. They feature in the repertoire of great players like Grischuk, Ivanchuk, Nakamura and Carlsen.
In The Perfect Pirc-Modern, Viktor Moskalenko, a renowned propagator of dynamic chess who has championed the Pirc-Modern for many years, explains:
- the ideas and plans that matter
- the various pawn structures and how to handle them
- tricky transpositions: opportunities and risks
- a wealth of new resources for both Black and White.
In this updated version of Moskalenko’s 2013 book of the same name, 33 of the 42 games are new, the structure has been updated in places, and there are fresh ideas on every page.
Moskalenko expertly guides you through this ground-breaking opening book with the enthusiasm, ease and humour that characterize his style.
Viktor Moskalenko (1960) is an International Grandmaster and a well-known chess coach. The former Ukraine champion has won many tournaments in Spain, his current home country. For New In Chess, he wrote, among others, The Fabulous Budapest Gambit (2007), Revolutionize Your Chess (2009), The Diamond Dutch (2014), Training with Moska (2017), The Fully-Fledged French (2021) and Trompowsky Attack & London System (2022).
The Russian Boris Spassky was the perfect gentleman. He was a chess genius who became World Champion in 1969. But he was also gracious in defeat after he lost his title to the American Bobby Fischer in 1972 in the Match of the Century.
This biography includes fifty of Spassky’s best games, annotated by former Russian champion Alexey Bezgodov, and a biographical sketch of a few dozen pages, written by Dmitry Aleynikov, the Director of the Chess Museum in Moscow.
Spassky was born in St. Petersburg in 1937; he moved to France in 1976 and returned to Russia in 2010. On his road to the World Championship, he defeated all his contemporaries convincingly in matches, including Paul Keres, Efim Geller, Mikhail Tal, Bent Larsen and Viktor Korchnoi. He lost his first match for the ultimate title against Tigran Petrosian but won in his second attempt in 1969. With his all-round style, fighting spirit and psychological insights, he could beat anybody anytime and, for example, won at least two games versus six other World Champions: Smyslov, Tal, Petrosian, Fischer, Karpov and Kasparov.
Alexey Bezgodov is a grandmaster and a former Russian Champion. For New In Chess, he wrote books about World Champion Tigran Petrosian and the chess openings the Caro-Kann and the Tarrasch Defence. Dmitry Aleynikov is the Director of the Chess Museum in Moscow.
Available via subscription
British Chess Magazine (July 2023)
CHESS INFORMANT’S 156th ADVENTURE
MESMERIZED
CONTENTS:
• Gormally – World Chess Championship – Nepo – Ding (Review)
• Shyam Sundar – World Chess Championship – The Most Instructive Moments and Positions
• Miodrag & Milos Perunovic – European Chess Championship (Tournament Report)
• Leitao – The English Opening (WCH Edition – Theoretical Survey)
• Foisor – Woman’s Candidates Final (Instructive Review)
• Prusikin – The Power of Knight Pair(Instructive Lesson)
• Davies – The Maroczy Bind (Theoretical Survey)
• Kotronias – The King’s Indian Saemisch (Theoretical Survey)
• Perelshteyn – The Alekhine Defence (Theoretical Survey)
• Rogers – Telechess Olympiads (Roger’s Reminiscences)
• Griffin – Vaganian – Gulko, Baku 1977 (From Informant Archives)
• Barak Gonen – Correspondence Chess (Review)
Traditional sections: games, combinations, endings, Tournament reviews, the best game from the preceding volume and the most important theoretical novelty from the preceding volume.
The periodical that pros use with pleasure is at the same time a must have publication for all serious chess students!
Forging New Paths in an Ancient Opening
The Queen’s Gambit Accepted is one of the oldest known openings in chess. It was first mentioned in chess literature in the late 15th century. Over 500 years later, American Grandmaster Max Dlugy demonstrates in this groundbreaking work that the QGA is still a fighting, uncompromising opening that allows Black to play for a win from the very first move.
But his comprehensive coverage is something players who face the QGA with White will also want to study. Dlugy not only carefully maps out Black’s best strategy, but also gives ample consideration to how White should play. The positions analyzed are a blend of the tactical elements and the key positional considerations such as space, time and pawn structure to be assessed when choosing your lines.
This book will teach you not just the QGA, but chess strategy in general. It will teach you how to play solid yet lively positions and allow you to take something away from Maxim Dlugy’s classical style and lucid explanations. If you want to improve your chess while learning a reliable opening with Black, you are now reading the book you need. – From the Foreword by GM Alex Fishbein
Max Dlugy has great experience with the QGA, having played it successfully for over 40 years. In this book, he presents new analysis in established lines and rehabilitates many variations, turning existing theory on its head. Whether you play White or Black, this creative, cutting-edge treatment of the Queen’s Gambit Accepted will be indispensable.
For many chess-players, opening study is pure hard work. It is difficult to know what is important and what is not, and when specific knowledge is vital, or when a more general understanding is sufficient. Tragically once the opening is over, a player is puzzled what plan to follow, or even understand why his pieces are on the squares on which they sit.
Our author GM Dariusz Swiercz, continued in the second Volume of his series, and explains in a methodological way how to solve these issues when White proceeds with 3.Nf3 and g3.
He picked some aggressive options with the Ragozin and brings the ever popular Catalan to a stand still. Any chess player being Black would be much interested to find out how Dariusz decided on his final choices. We are convinced you won’t be disappointed with his second and final volume of this series.
World Chess Champion Max Euwe, who held the title from 1935-1937, is one of the greatest chess players in history. Much has been written about him, and he authored dozens of books himself. But missing was an outstanding collection of games of this 'efficient, man-eating tiger' as the American chess master William Ewart Napier once called Euwe.
Max Euwe's Best Games fills this gap. And it couldn't have been written by anyone else than Euwe's successor in Dutch chess – Jan Timman, World Champion finalist and arguably one of the leading chess analysts of our time.
This book offers eighty of Max Euwe's games annotated with great clarity, starting in his early twenties when he worked his way to the world top, up until his late seventies when he was still a force to be reckoned with. It is incredible how high Euwe's level of play was for over fifty years – and how attractive his attacking style was.
Timman made many discoveries in Euwe's best and most famous games but has also unearthed several lesser-known brilliancies. Some interesting paradoxes are addressed along the line. For example, although he was an amateur almost his entire life, Euwe was better versed in opening theory than most of his top-level opponents. Although he was the underdog, he beat the mighty Alexander Alekhine in an epic World Championship Match in 1935. At 52, he could still beat top players like Geller and Najdorf with fantastic attacking play in the Zürich Candidates Tournament. And when he was over seventy, he was still highly dangerous for the new upcoming Dutch generation.
This game collection of an often underrated World Champion, analysed by top grandmaster Jan Timman, is a must-have for anyone interested in World Championship chess.
Jan Timman, World Chess Champion finalist, is the author of many bestselling chess books. Timman's Titans won the 2017 ECF Book of the Year Award, and his recent books, The Longest Game, Timman's Triumphs and The Unstoppable American, have all met with wide acclaim.
Ein Lehrbuch des Schachspiels auf ganz neuartiger Grundlage
„Mein System“ erschien zunächst in den Jahren 1925/26 in fünf Lieferungen jeweils als Broschüre und wurden vom Berliner Schachverleger Bernhard Kagan herausgegeben.
Das Buch ist aufgeteilt in zwei Teile: „Die Elemente“ beschäftigt sich mit den Grundlagen der Schachstrategie wie z.B. Zentrum und Entwicklung, offene Turmlinien, die 7. und 8. Reihe, Freibauern etc. Im zweiten Teil wird dann auf dieser Grundlage „Das Positionsspiel“ behandelt: Prophylaxe und Zentrum, Doppelbauer und Hemmung, eigene starke und schwache Bauern bzw. Punkte etc. Über alle Kapitel verteilt gibt es Partiebeispiele, zumeist aus der eigenen Praxis des Autors.
Quelle: https://nimzowitsch.net/mein-system.html