This book covers the final two decades of Tal’s life and games, from 1972 until his death in 1992.
This ebook is a part of Bundle: Mikhail Tal's Best Games
John Watson and Eric Schiller provide club-players with solutions to a huge selection of rarely-played or tricky chess openings. They concentrate upon ideas and strategy, with enough analysis to satisfy the needs of practical play.
In Technical Decision Making in Chess former World Championship Challenger Boris Gelfand discusses his path to decision making in endgames and positions where one side possesses a structural or material advantage. This investigation into a top Grandmaster’s technical understanding will illuminate difficult parts of the game that many players find elusive. Concepts like the “Zone of one mistake” are certain to be a revelation to many.
This ebook is a part of Bundle: Gelfand Decision Making
“And the Rest Is Just a Matter of Technique...”
How often has this comment been appended to a game move or variation? As many players know, it really may not be all that easy to figure out what is meant by this familiar phrase.
After the untimely passing of legendary instructor Mark Dvoretsky, Artur Yusupov was given access to Dvoretsky’s famous card files. With the core material based upon these files, the former top ten grandmaster – and perhaps the most successful of all of Dvoretsky’s students – put together this book, modifying and refining the content as needed.
The book begins with a “theoretical” explanatory section. This is followed by 102 practice positions, which increase in in difficulty. Good technique for gaining an advantage is useful in all areas of the game, so there are positions from the opening, middlegame, and especially the endgame – not only from practical games but also from various studies.
The comments to the solutions are very detailed, explaining not only the main line but also the supplementary side variations. Yusupov thought it important to demonstrate the logic in the search for a decision and to show how a chessplayer can come to the right conclusions at the board.
Dvoretsky’s master student Artur Yusupov has done a great job in selecting and presenting the material so that this book “feels” like another genuine Dvoretsky work. This book is a real gem and I hope that it gives you as much pleasure as it has given me. And that from now on, when you have an advantage, the rest really will be, well, just a matter of technique... – From the Foreword by Grandmaster Dr. Karsten Müller
Opening preparation is essential, but for aspiring players understanding the middlegame is even more important.
Grandmaster and renowned chess coach Zenón Franco provides a training course designed to help all aspiring players to improve their chess. During each lesson, you are invited to play a 'game' in which you try to find the best moves at all the important moments. Points are awarded for selecting the best moves - and are deducted for selecting blunders! At the end of each lesson there is a points scale to indicate how well you have 'played'. This means you are able to accurately measure your progress as you work through the book. Readers are tested in all aspects of chess: attack, defence, counterattack, tactics, structures, strategy, endgames and so on. Following this interactive course of lessons is an ideal way to improve your game.
The test positions in this instructive book cover the entire spectrum of what a modern club player should know. The reader is invited to find tactical blows, deep strategic manoeuvres, opening traps, standard endgame plans and other principles in action. The solutions rarely involve spectacular fireworks, as is the case in most chess puzzle books. Instead, you may be asked to find a quiet move or a reasoned evaluation. Solving the puzzles in this unusual and entertaining book is a most effective way to improve your chess. It will help you to develop a vital skill: the ability to take practical decision in critical moments.
De la Villa started collecting training material and selected those exercises best suited to retain and improve your knowledge and avoid common errors. In this book the Spanish grandmaster presents hundreds of exercises grouped according to the various chapters in 100 Endgames. Solving these puzzles will drive home the most important ideas, refresh your knowledge and improve your technique. This book contains a massive amount of clear, concise and easy-to-follow chess endgame instruction. The advice De la Villa gives in the solutions is practical and useful. Ideal for every post-beginner, club player and candidate master who wishes to win more games.
London is a universal system, valid against almost any black response and one of the safest for White. It is very popular with club players who want to avoid the more theoretical lines, but it is also played regularly by strong grandmasters
In 2018 DeepMind published the shocking results of their chess-playing artificial intelligence software, AlphaZero. Chess players looked in disbelief and immediately wondered how AI would affect the future of chess. Less than a year later, a whole new wave of chess engines emerged that were based on using neural networks to evaluate positions in a completely new way. This book is about the extraordinary impact that AI has had on modern chess.
The games of top chess players since the end of 2018 have reflected the use of these new engines in home analysis. They have significantly developed opening theory as well as the general understanding of middlegame concepts. By analysing these games with the help of neural network engines, FIDE Master Joshua Doknjas discusses numerous exciting ideas and examines areas of chess that had previously been overlooked. With thorough explanations, questions, and exercises, this book provides fascinating material for masters and less experienced players alike.
Joshua Doknjas is a FIDE Master from Canada who has enjoyed success competing internationally. He has won seven national titles for his age and tied for 1st in the 2019 U18 North American Youth Chess Championship.
When you are ready for a great fighting game in the Sicilian Defense, there are few things there are more annoying than facing the hatefully solid 2.c3 variation, the so-called Alapin Variation.
This is not a shady gambit but it is a weapon that has been used by several grandmasters, including World Champion Magnus Carlsen.
The gambit has the advantage of being unexplored and is still quite unknown. Therefore, this book constitutes the first work dedicated to this fun and tricky variation.
To get a good feel for the intricacies of the various lines, the authors took it upon themselves to play the opening in their online and training games where it proved remarkably effective.
In this work, you will find forty-four thoroughly analyzed main games with lots of explanations and additional analysis as well as a 'Quick Repertoire' that will allow you to play the opening in your games after a minimal amount of study time.
It is time to take your opponents out of their comfort zone and right into yours!
Not all chess players are ready to face a dangerous opening like the Grivas Sicilian, or any other open form of the Sicilian Defense of course, so an alternative set-up is on the quest. White has plenty of choices after 1.e4 c5; these choices sometimes are quite sound, and some others are simply crap!
Well, shorter time-controls (blitz & rapid) ‘favors’ safer, not forced and not very deep and long theoretical continuations, so White has a fair point for avoiding the open versions of the Sicilian Defense. Especially in the ‘cholera years’ as I call the 2020–2021 years due to the Covid-19 pandemic, chess players had to stay home, avoiding travelling and exercise instead via the internet form of our royal game.
This general fear demanded as ‘compensation’ a lighter approach to the game and some weird and unsound opening choices were on the daily menu. That’s fine of course, for the well-trained and ambitious chess player sitting behind the black pieces!
It is also quite true that this book is quite ‘heavy’ and contains many, many lines which are almost impossible to remember in totality. But chess is learned sub-consciously, so repeated motifs and ideas guide our choices and help us to recall important lines.
We must be trained not only in concrete opening moves, but on the middlegame, the endgame and the tactical part of the opening in question. And this is exactly what this book offers: a complete structural think-tank on the non-open form of the Sicilian Defense.
There are no good or bad openings – there are openings you understand and openings that you do not understand. And understanding comes by studying and applying the absorbed Knowledge!