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.
In Play Like a Champion, Jennifer Shahade showcases the careers and sparkling tactics of some of the most talented and influential players to ever sit at the chessboard, from the first Women’s World Champion Vera Menchik and Grandmaster Hou Yifan to Phiona “Queen of Katwe” Mutesi. Learn the powerful moves of family chess dynasties including the Polgar and the Botez sisters.
Jennifer walks you through essential and inspiring examples of themes such as Double Attack, Removal of the Guard, and Clearance. You’ll get your turn to solve 700 puzzles from the games of more than one hundred pioneering chess champions. The positions are designed to help chess improvers (from beginner to master) to develop their tactical vision.
Solve the positions here, and you too will start to Play Like a Champion.
Jennifer Shahade is a two-time US Women’s Champion, an Olympic chess medalist, and the first female ever to win the US Junior Open. An award-winning writer, host, and speaker, Jennifer is known for making chess more fun and inclusive. She is also the author of Play Like a Girl!, Chess Queens, and Thinking Sideways (2025).
She lives in Philadelphia with her family.
In the second volume of the Kotronias on the King’s Indian series, grandmaster Vassilios Kotronias turns his attention to the main line of the famous Mar del Plata variation, which arises after the opening moves 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6 5.Nf3 0–0 6.Be2 e5 7.0–0 Nc6 8.d5 Ne7 9.Ne1. This leads to some of the most complicated and theoretically challenging positions in the King’s Indian, but Kotronias provides a world-class repertoire for Black, including a wealth of original ideas and analysis.
This ebook is a part of Bundle: Kotronias KID
In the fourth volume of the epic Kotronias on the King’s Indian series Grandmaster Vassilios Kotronias tackles a variety of White’s attempts to challenge his favorite opening, starting with the sequence 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 Bg7 4.e4 d6.
Grandmaster Vlado Kovačević is an expert in the field of chess endgame theory, offering an educational approach for players of various skill levels. The first of seven books, spanning 304 pages, provides a definite guide to pawn endgames. The book is organized based on the number of pawns in the endgame, creating a clear division for readers. Kovačević’s focus is on the clear explanation of rules and guidelines rather than mere memorization, striving to practically prepare his readers for possible pawn endgames.
The book contains 500 of the most instructive examples from the games played during 2023 in tournaments around the world. The positions are selected owing to their practical value, importance and inherent aesthetics, and are divided into 4 levels of difficulty to make your training and browsing through the material smooth. Exercises are not organized in sections according to tactical motifs they are based on, because my intention was to present examples which are resembling real game situations.
The first volume dealt with the Najdorf and Scheveningen variations, and it is now time to pay attention to three other extremely popular systems: the Taimanov, Kan and Richter-Rauzer variations. After careful consideration within the Thinkers Publishing team, we decided that it made sense to group these variations together. In particular, the first two are closely related and share the feature that, in both cases, Black plays ...e7-e6 and ...a7-a6 at an early stage. They typically have the idea of retaining more options for their king’s bishop by postponing ...d7-d6 (or even omitting it entirely.) The bishop may go to b4 or c5 in different lines. The Richter-Rauzer is, in theory, just one of the possible developments from a Classical Sicilian. We have already dealt with a few games that started with the Classical and where Black shortly played ...e7-e6; and 6.Bc4 (the Sozin variation) was rightly treated within the Scheveningen pages. However, it is clear that White’s most popular counter, the Richter-Rauzer variation (6.Bg5) deserves separate attention.