What exactly makes the greatest players of all time, such as Magnus Carlsen, Bobby Fischer, and Garry Kasparov stand out from the rest? The basic aspects of chess (calculation, study of opening theory, and technical endgame ability) are of course of great importance. However, the more mysterious part of chess ability lies within the thought process.
In particular:
• How does one evaluate certain moves to be better than others?
• How does one improve their feel of the game?
This book will tackle this woefully underexplored aspect of chess: the logic behind the game. It will explain how chess works at a fundamental level.
Topics include:
• What to think about when evaluating a position.
• How to formulate and execute plans.
• How to generate and make use of the initiative.
The reader also has plenty of opportunities to test their decision-making by attempting 270 practical exercises. These are mostly designed to develop understanding, as the justification of the moves is more important than the actual correct answer.
“Strategy without tactics is the slowest route to victory. Tactics without strategy is the noise before defeat.” Sun Tzu
Mostly basing my chess work on this statement of the great Chinese military theoretician, I have managed throughout my chess coaching career to implement many of his principles, and even establish them as being valid for the game of chess. I think the statement above should be taken as an axiom. Thus, strategy must be the leading chess topic, and definitely based on logic. Moreover, strategy must tower over all other chess topics and sub-topics; strategy is the ultimate chess idea and it sublimates and determines other principles.
How to learn strategy? Can it be learned? It can be, of course. And these volumes are the perfect guide to learn (or, more precisely, to learn to understand) strategy.
My idea is to throw light on all the strategic concepts in these volumes. To help you navigate more simply, I have divided all the material into two volumes. This first one is exploring the elements of strategy, explaining typical and essential principles in detail. The second one is about pawn structures. Of course, structures themselves actually mean nothing without recognizing patterns and principles from the elements (because pawn structures are used to determine the values of pieces, for instance). That is why volume two can be considered as an advanced level of strategy. Generally, examples will be based on material adopted from volume one and upgraded.
A highly adventurous repertoire designed to meet 1 e4 with 1...e5 and take the initiative!
The main problem Black faces in answering 1 e4 with 1...e5 is the plethora of opening systems available to White: the Ruy Lopez, Giuoco Piano, Scotch, Ponziani, King’s Gambit, Vienna, Bishop’s Opening and so on. Each is likely to be White’s pet line, which usually means conducting the chess battle on the opponent’s turf.
One solution is to study the main lines of all these openings and hope to remember what to do if they appear on the board. Another, more enterprising approach is to turn the tables and make White fight on your territory.
Adopting the latter course, CC-SIM Jonathan Tait shares their investigations into a myriad of disregarded, “disreputable” responses, which can set White thinking as early as move three. These lines are greatly under-estimated by contemporary theory and include weird and wonderful variations such as the Calabrese Counter-Gambit (1 e4 e5 2 Bc4 f5), the Wagenbach Defence to the King’s Gambit (1 e4 e5 2 f4 exf4 3 Nf3 h5), the Romanishin Three Knights (1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Nc3 Bc5), the Two Knights Ulvestad Variation (1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bc4 Nf6 4 Ng5 d5 5 exd5 b5) and ultra-sharp lines of the Jaenisch Gambit (1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 f5).
The theory of the variations in this book is generally poorly understood. This has made them successful at all forms of play, including against online computer-assisted assault.
Chess Secrets is a series of books which uncover the mysteries of the most important aspects of chess, such as strategy, attack, defence, opening play, endgames, off-board preparation and mental attitude. In each book the author chooses and deeply studies a number of great players who have excelled in such aspects of the game, greatly influenced their peers and inspired all of us.
In Heroes of Classical Chess, Craig Pritchett selects five great players whose style exemplifies classically direct, clear, energetic, tough, ambitious yet fundamentally correct chess playing attributes. Pritchett studies the major contributions they have made, compares their differing styles and discusses the critical influences they have had on the development of chess, on their peers and on all our games.
Read this book and enhance your own skills. Understand how to play in a classical style and win more games.
In Giants of Innovation, Craig Pritchett selects five chess legends whose play exemplifies outstandingly innovative attributes. Wilhelm Steinitz established the essential ground-rules for modern positional chess. Emanuel Lasker pioneered a new kind of total all-out battling chess. Mikhail Botvinnik taught us how to prepare and successfully play an entire range of complex modern opening systems. Viktor Korchnoi set particularly high standards in the art of defence and counter-attack. Vassily Ivanchuk, a modern byword for ingenuity and surprise, excels by constant creation.
Read this book and enhance your own skills. Understand how to inject more innovation into your own games.
Chess Secrets is a series of books which uncover the mysteries of the most important aspects of chess, such as strategy, attack, defence, opening play, endgames, off-board preparation and mental attitude. In each book the author studies a number of great players who have excelled in such aspects of the game, greatly influenced their peers and inspired all of us.
In Great Chess Romantics, Craig Pritchett selects five players, whose chess artistry expresses a deeply personal commitment to the discovery and revelation of great new truths and beauty on the chessboard. Anderssen defined romanticism's inherently dramatic and correct combinational core. Chigorin championed this essence in splendid opposition to an emerging new classical consensus. Réti revealed the extraordinary power of new flank openings. Larsen confounded the overly sober, scientific Soviet schoolÌ at innumerable turns. In the computer age, Morozevich constantly discovers new depths to chess, while simply oozing exquisite strokes in his best games.
Ljubomir Ljubojević belongs to a generation of extraordinary chessplayers, whose most outstanding representative is Anatoly Karpov.
Ljubojević reached number 3 in the world rankings and a potential candidate for the world title.
The book consists of forty of his best games, played between 1970 and 2008, annotated in the “Move by Move” format, with questions and exercises, a method which is effective both for training and teaching.
At the start of his career Ljubojević was notable for his dynamic and original style but his play gradually became more rounded and positionally refined.
As usual, Franco is keen to highlight the practical aspects of competitive chess, since we are playing, not against computers, but against human beings like ourselves, who make mistakes, like or dislike the position, get tired etc.
I was once dismissive of the attempts by amateur players to improve. To me it seemed too obvious - you either had it or you didn’t. Talent was ultimately all that mattered. All my writing on chess was really for myself. If amateur players couldn’t follow, tough.
I don’t think that this dismissive attitude towards amateurs by professional chess players is particularly unusual. There is plenty of talk about ‘fish’, and in professional circles a general level of contempt is always on display. Perhaps we too easily forget that we were once ‘fish’ and ‘patzers’ ourselves, and are probably still viewed as such by even higher-rated players. It is only recently that I have started to think more along the lines of how amateur players approach chess, and the typical mistakes they make.
Classic mistakes by amateur players include:
These and other mistakes I will try to explain in the book. Of course it should be noted that professional players also make these kinds of mistakes. I certainly do, all the time, so there is plenty of overlap and understanding of where these mistakes come from.
Vasily Smyslov, the seventh world champion, had a long and illustrious chess career. He played close to 3,000 tournament games over seven decades, from the time of Lasker and Capablanca to the days of Anand and Carlsen. From 1948 to 1958, Smyslov participated in four world championships, becoming world champion in 1957.
Smyslov continued playing at the highest level for many years and made a stunning comeback in the early 1980s, making it to the finals of the candidates’ cycle. Only the indomitable energy of 20-year-old Garry Kasparov stopped Smyslov from qualifying for another world championship match at the ripe old age of 63!
In this first volume of a multi-volume set, Russian FIDE master Andrey Terekhov traces the development of young Vasily from his formative years and becoming the youngest grandmaster in the Soviet Union to finishing second in the world championship match tournament. With access to rare Soviet-era archival material and invaluable family archives, the author complements his account of Smyslov’s growth into an elite player with dozens of fascinating photographs, many never seen before, as well as 49 deeply annotated games. German grandmaster Karsten Müller’s special look at Smyslov’s endgames rounds out this fascinating first volume.
The possession of the bishop pair (vs. bishop & knight, or knight pair) is an important strategic element that may guarantee superiority and even determine the outcome of the game. In modern chess, the bishop pair has been established as a positional advantage in the majority of cases, and it’s very common nowadays to hear teachers tell their students ‘keep your bishops’ or ‘capture that bishop’.
In today’s chess, the importance given to this element has increased to the point that in some of the most popular opening variations, the main goal has become to gain the bishop pair. That is because the bishop pair can be a powerful advantage in any phase of the game. For example, it’s a lethal weapon in an attack against the king. It can also be very efficient in attacking weaknesses: one bishop can put pressure on the target, while the other attacks the defending piece. However, it is the endgame where it is particularly strong.
The Belgian master Edgard Colle was one of the most dynamic and active chess players of the 1920s and early 1930s. Though his international career lasted only ten years, Colle played in more than 50 tournaments, as well as a dozen matches. Moreover, he played exciting and beautiful chess, full of life, vigor, imagination and creativity. As with such greats as Pillsbury and Charousek, it was a tragedy for the game that his life was cut short, at just age 34.
Author Taylor Kingston has examined hundreds of Colle’s games, in an effort to understand his skills and style, his strengths and weaknesses, and present an informed, balanced picture of him as a player. Colle emerges as a courageous, audacious, and tenacious fighter, who transcended the limitations his frail body imposed, to battle the giants of his day and topple many of them. 110 of Colle’s best, most interesting, and representative games have been given deep and exacting computer analysis. This often revealed important aspects completely overlooked by earlier annotators, and overturned their analytical verdicts. But the computer’s iron logic is tempered always with a sympathetic understanding that Colle played, in the best sense, a very human kind of chess.
Though not intended as a tutorial on the Colle System, the book has many instructive examples of that opening. Additionally, there is an extensive excerpt from Max Euwe’s Gedenkboek Colle, several other memorial tributes, biographical information about many of Colle’s opponents, his full known tournament and match record, and all his available tournament crosstables.
We invite the reader to get acquainted with this wounded but valiant warrior, whom Hans Kmoch called a “chess master with the body of a doomed man and the spirit of an immortal hero.”
A comprehensive guide through the Najdorf Sicilian jungle that enables you to find your way to security and initiative with the black pieces.
The so called “rare lines” have become extremely popular in recent times, so we offer you a single volume “solution” to all the nuances and complications that may arise in these less common lines.
Over the years some of the variations covered in this book got a strong following among the professionals and amateurs alike (6.h3 in particular), while some remained less explored and essayed only by the very elite (6.a3, or 6.Qd3).
IM Szuhanek presents you his deep and diligent analysis of all the possible (and reasonable) White tries with focus on more common lines. Throughout the book you will find many improvements for both sides, but with author’s clear preference for the black side.
Now you got a highly practical weapon to tackle all the White’s pesky Najdorf options!