International Master Tibor Karolyi has studied Carlsen’s career and selected more than 90 of his best endgames. He reviews them in chronological order to show how Magnus developed his skills. His technique and his choices are being explained in a manner that is easy to understand for club players.
The author presents a full opening repertory for the club player, which is analysed in seven volumes. In the books you will find many novelties for both sides, with a full move-to-move presentation. Furthermore, the reader will get access to middlegame strategies, endgame techniques and common tactical motifs, which are patterning the proposed variations.
In the sixth volume the openings of the the Janowski Defence, the Orthodox Defence, the Cambridge Springs Defence, Various Slav Systems and the Tartakower Defence are presented.
This ebook is a part of Bundle: Grivas Opening Laboratory
On 30 April 2023, in Astana, Kazakhstan, Chinese grandmaster Ding Liren sensationally defeated Russia’s Ian Nepomniachtchi in a dramatic battle for the chess crown. Ding Liren not only became the 17th World Chess Champion, but he also won the hearts of chess fans across the globe with his incredible fighting spirit and disarming interviews. At the final press conference, the new champion said the match ‘reflected the deepest of his soul’.
Humble and almost vulnerable in his demeanour, Ding Liren is a formidable fighter with a rich inner chess world. Throughout his career, his creative output has been immense. His games feature outstanding precision, rationality and superior endgame technique on the one hand and a talent to find brilliant, imaginative solutions on the other. His stoicism in the face of adversity and ability to quickly learn from mistakes and adapt to his opponents is unique.
Few chess greats can boast that they reached first place in both the blitz and rapid world rankings and became World Champion in classical chess. Even fewer can claim an unbeaten streak of 100 classical games. That’s how special Ding Liren is.
In this best games collection, grandmaster Davorin Kuljasevic follows and explores Ding Liren’s rise from his first chess steps in provincial China to the top of the chess world. Making no secret of his admiration for this extraordinary chess genius, the author describes Ding Liren’s successes and setbacks and how these experiences shaped him as a player and a person.
Davorin Kuljasevic is an International Grandmaster born in Croatia. He graduated from Texas Tech University and is an experienced coach. His first book Beyond Material: Ignore the Face Value of Your Pieces was a finalist for the Boleslavsky-Averbakh Award, the best book prize of FIDE, the International Chess Federation. His second book, How To Study Chess on Your Own, was an international bestseller.
In this groundbreaking work, award-winning chess coach and author Frisco Del Rosario shines a long-overdue light on this neglected aspect of Capablanca’s record. He illustrates how the Cuban genius used positional concepts to build up irresistible king hunts, embodying the principles of good play advocated by the unequaled teacher, C.J.S. Purdy. The author also identifies an overlooked checkmate pattern – Capablanca’s Mate – that aspiring attackers can add to the standard catalogue in Renaud and Kahn’s The Art of the Checkmate. As Del Rosario shows, Capablanca has inspired not only generations of players, but also many of the classics of chess literature.
What’s the most effective book for your level or the most effective course to get?
As a Grandmaster and chess coach, who left his cozy life and started a company with a mission to help chess lovers to unlock their full potential, I’m very happy that in the chess world there are people like Vishnu and that you picked his book.
Vishnu isn’t an ordinary person; his methods of improvement aren’t ordinary and neither is he as a coach. When he won the Chicago Open, being the 60th out of 116 in the starting list, many people were surprised. But they wouldn’t be if they saw how smart and interesting his system of chess improvement is. Vishnu proved that his methods work and how important pattern recognition is. And exactly that’s what he teaches in this book!
When I saw the draft of it I was blown away by the hard work he had done, the quality of the research, and how carefully he was picking up the examples. I want to congratulate you on having this book in your hands. You avoided traps, you found a man who has walked the talk and has spent years learning and preparing for you a material that you can digest in a short period of time. And if your rating is somewhere between 1000-2000, this book will be one of the best books for you!
The Queen's Indian Defence has the reputation of a very reliable system for Black. Although his chances of obtaining sharp double-edged positions are restricted, good knowledge of piece set-ups and different plans should offer Black chances of seizing the initiative even in calm variations. The opening monographs on the QID, as a rule, focus on the move order 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 b6. What is Black supposed to do if the opponent wishes to avoid the QID and begins the game with the moves 1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4, or 1.d4 Nf6 2.Nf3?. How should Black deploy his pieces and what should he aim for in the middlegame? The book of the grandmaster from Saint Petersburg and chess-coach Evgeniy Solozhenkin answers these questions!
I was lucky enough to play against six world champions and several top players in my modest chess career, but the greatest player I feel privileged to have known, to have spent time with him, was Miguel Najdorf, “El Viejo”. This is a chess book, with 275 commented games, it covers all his chess career, but it has also many stories. Najdorf was the most important Argentinean chess player, and he was an exceptional person. Oscar Panno said that Najdorf reminded him of Don Quixote, in the part of the book where he tells Sancho Panza, “Wherever I am, that is where the head of the table is going to be”. He successfully overcame the most terrible setbacks, as few are capable of doing. Writing about Miguel Najdorf is one of my greatest pleasures as a chess journalist and writer!
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.
Do you relish the prospect of setting your opponent awkward problems from the early start of the game? If so, you should just continue reading, for in the Bg5 Najdorf, it’s every man for himself, and only the best informed and most creative resourceful player survive. The Bg5 variation gives White very dangerous attacking ideas, and Blacks really needs to know a precise defense to come out of this variation alive. This book provides weapons that are ideal choices for those who revel in forcing opponents into chaotic and uncomfortable positions. Lukasz Jarmula, a player and writer of international caliber, will be your truthful guide!
The writings of Mikhail Moiseevich Botvinnik (1911 – 1995) are legendary. And Botvinnik’s legacy is deeply imprinted in the DNA of every grandmaster today, says Andy Soltis in his foreword tot this book. ‘The Patriarch’ took professionalism in chess to a new level and was the first to emphasize preparation: what a player does before a game plays an enormous, if not decisive, role in what happens during a game.
In this book, Botvinnik writes the story of the three clashes with his compatriot Vasily Smyslov, matches full of tension between two virtually equal opponents, and his match with Tigran Petrosian, which marks the end of an era: the mighty Botvinnik lost his world title fifteen years after he conquered the highest crown for the first time.
The first part of this book gives Botvinnik’s view of three World Championship matches and how he prepared for them. The matches were as great a clash of personalities as in any world championship, as much as Karpov versus Kasparov. While Botvinnik played the role of a stern father, Smyslov was like the smiling, easy-going uncle. Botvinnik was proud of what he called his ‘hard character’. Smyslov seemed to get along with everyone. His attitude was to try to do his best and let fate decide.
The last part of the book is the gripping account of a heroic battle. The ageing Botvinnik desperately tries to bounce back after his Armenian opponent Tigran Petrosian has taken an early lead but ultimately The Patriarch fails.
Mikhail Botvinnik, one of the greatest chess players of all time, analyses many of the games, reveals his match strategy and comments on the strategic choices of his opponent. This important historical document also features annotations and writings by Smyslov, Petrosian and other top grandmasters, the games of a secret training match by Botvinnik and Botvinnik’s legendary notebooks, including the final one containing his preparation for a match with Bobby Fischer in 1969 – a match that was never to be.