The Grünfeld Defence is well known to be one of Black’s best and most challenging responses to 1.d4, and has long been a favourite choice of elite players including Kasparov, Svidler, Caruana, Vachier-Lagrave and many more. As with many openings, however, it can be difficult to navigate the ever-expanding jungle of games and theory. Playing the Grünfeld offers an ideal solution for practical players. Alexey Kovalchuk is a young Russian talent with expert knowledge of the Grünfeld, and in this book he shares his best ideas to form a complete, coherent and combative repertoire for Black. In addition to theoretical soundness, efforts have been made to avoid variations leading to early forced draws, as well as those in which Black allows his king to be attacked at an early stage.
This book presents the Triangle set-up, which arises after 1.d4 d5 2.c4 e6 3.Nc3/Nf3 c6. This move order avoids many unpleasant systems for White, notably the Catalan, the Exchange Slav and the Botvinnik Variation. It leads to sharp strategically unbalanced play and brings Black excellent practical results. Semko Semkov is a chess journalist and theoretician. He has co-authored the famous books The Modern English, The Most Flexible Sicilian, Attacking the English/Reti, Attacking the Flexible Sicilian and Understanding the Queen’s Gambit Accepted.
In Coaching Kasparov, Year by Year and Move by Move Garry Kasparov's long-term coach, second and mentor Alexander Nikitin tells the story of how he trained Kasparov from a brilliant but raw junior into becoming and then remaining the world champion.Volume II , the present work, covers the period 1982-1990, including the first four world championship matches against Karpov and the candidates matches against Smyslov, Korchnoi and Beliavsky. The present volume contains 39 fully annotated games. These include 20 secret training games that Kasparov played against his grandmaster coaches Evgeny Vladimirov and Gennady Timoshchenko in 1982-83 that have never before been published and which are annotated by Grandmaster Dorian Rogozenco, national coach of the German Chess Federation and captain of the German national team. These games are provided by the Kasparov family specially for the 2020 edition of this book. The reader has a unique opportunity to gain an insight into Kasparov's secret preparation in those years, which were a new starting point in his career: he had to adjust his openings. Rogozenco is a big expert on Kasparov's games, having helped FIDE World Champion Ruslan Ponomariov prepare for his planned match against Kasparov in 2003. Kasparov's legendary opening repertoire, which was to define trends in chess theory for decades, was created not just through deep analysis, but also via training games. The never previously published material in this book consists of 16 games with classical time control and 4 rapid thematic games. Testing the Catalan for the first time with white, searching for ideas in the King's Indian with black, preparing the Queen's Gambit with both colors, playing typical Sicilian positions and trying new openings (for instance the Tarrasch as the big surprise for his candidates match versus Beliavsky) - all this can be found in these games. Further, the time records on most of Kasparov's original scoresheets (all of them pictured in this book) show that Kasparov and his coaches paid serious attention to such an important training aspect as the distribution of time during the game. From intuitive positional sacrifices to precisely calculated combinations and instructive play in typical pawn structures - the training games provide a lot of interesting material for both players and coaches. The other games, annotated by Nikitin, are well known, but Nikitin explains many of Kasparov's decisions in those games from the point of view of the world champion's coach, providing the context of his pupil's thought process and mistakes and tracing his progress as they together gradually out-thought Korchnoi and then Karpov. He also uses these games to illustrate and expand upon his coaching advice. His many insights include the preparation of the “cross-fire” strategy (playing the same opening against the same opponent with both colors) and a systematic approach to maintaining time discipline during games based on chronometric analysis. This makes his commentary quite unique and instructive, of formidable practical use to budding players, coaches and parents.
Chess is a cruel game. We all know that feeling when your position has gone awry and everything seems hopeless. You feel like resigning. But don’t give up! This is precisely the moment to switch to swindle mode. Master the art of provoking errors and you will be able to turn the tables and escape with a draw – or sometimes even steal the full point! Swindling is a skill that can be trained. In this book, David Smerdon shows how you can use tricks from psychology to marshal hidden resources and exploit your opponent’s biases. In a lost position, your best practical chance often lies not in what the computer recommends, but in playing your opponent. With an abundance of eye-popping examples and training exercises, Smerdon identifies the four best friends of every chess swindler: your opponent’s impatience, their hubris, their fear, and their need to stay in control. You’ll also learn about such cunning swindling motifs as the Trojan Horse, the Decoy Trap, the Berserk Attack, and ‘Window-Ledging’. So, come and join the Swindlers’ Club, become a great escape artist and dramatically improve your results. In this instructive and highly entertaining guide, Smerdon shows you how.
TACTICS TRAINER AVAILABLE! In 2017, Romain Edouard launched a brand new series of exercise books, Chess Calculation Training. The series became one of the most popular tactics books amongst advanced players. This new series, Chess Calculation Training for Kids and Club Players, is based on the same model, but aimed at players of a more modest level. In this first volume, you can enjoy 276 chess problems, which arose in real games, and you should checkmate your opponent! The book is divided into eight chapters, starting with basic mates in two, and the difficulty of the exercises increases as you go through the book. It is a fantastic training tool for anyone wanting to improve his tactical skills quickly, and not miss any opportunity to end the game with a glorious checkmate!
This book will bring something new to your chess library. In our computer era, focus is usually on openings. Watching recent broadcasts, the new generation would rather choose games of a certain opening and look for an interesting idea or even a brilliant novelty. I offer, and recommend, a different concept altogether, based on the famous Soviet school of chess. The focus should be on understanding strategical concepts, principles and underlying logic. Fashionable opening lines will be forgotten (or re-evaluated) sooner or later, but understanding cannot be lost, and can be only upgraded. It is sad to see some players that are well equipped with opening lines, who are unable to realise a big positional advantage in an endgame. So, our advice is to concentrate on Strategy and Logic. This book is highly recommended for club players, advanced players and masters, although even higher rated players may also find it useful. There is no doubt that lower rated players will learn a lot about thinking processes and decision making, while some logical principles can be put to use by more advanced players too. The reader may ask: Why those games? The games presented in this book cannot be classified as the “best ever” (of course, such a classification is subjective). However, each game was chosen for its logic and instructive value. Of course, the author understands that readers’ opinion may differ. Either way, the games are useful for exploring many important points: How to evaluate a position and choose an appropriate plan? Where to attack? When to attack? When to exchange? How to realise an advantage?… Learning how to answer such important questions during your future games will improve your chess knowledge and technique considerably. Always try and introduce logic into your games – you will be delighted with the results! The author also chose some instructive games with the idea to illustrate some psychologically important moments in chess such as the counter-attack, zeitnot or realisation. The games are separated into chapters, each focusing on a topic. This should facilitate the reader’s navigation through the book.
CHESS INFORMANT’S 142nd ADVENTURE
COUNTDOWN
CONTENTS:
22nd EUROPEAN TEAM CHAMPIONSHIP GM Ivan Sokolov
FIDE WORLD CUP 2019 GM Danilo Milanović
HAMBURG FIDE GRAND PRIX GM Ivan Ivanišević
EUROPEAN CLUB CUP GM Dragoljub Jaćimović
THE LAST MAN STANDING ON THE ISLE OF MAN GM Ivan Ivanišević
DANNY'S CHESS DIARY GM Daniel Gormally
GOING FOR THE KILL GM Rafael Leitão
SAINT LOUIS WINTER CLASSIC GM Sabina-Francesca Foişor
THE REHABILITATED CARO-KANN – Part III GM Aleksander Delchev
THE FOUR KNIGHTS SICILIAN GM Miloš Perunović
FIGHTING AGAINST THE FIANCHETTO KNIGHT GM Michael Prusikin
FROM THE CHESS INFORMANT ARCHIVES Douglas Griffin
Traditional sections: games, combinations, endings, correspondence chess, endgame blunders, 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!