Relive the magic of Capablanca, Alekhine, Botvinnik, Tal, Karpov, Kasparov, Bobby Fischer and the others. All great champions, but so different in character and playing style. Schulz’s chronicle is an absorbing evocation of the battles they fought. He has also selected one defining game from each championship, and he explains the moves of the Champions, and the ideas behind the moves, in a way that is easily accessible for amateur players and highly instructive for beginners as well. This is a book that no true chess lover wants to miss.
2020 ENDGAME MAZE, selected and analysed by Ivan Ivanisevic: * Practice your planning and decision-making skills in the final phase of the game!, * Complete coverage of most instructive and interesting endgames in 2020, * 151 carefully selected endgame positions, * 42 test positions.
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.
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.
The second volume of Elk and Ruby’s treatise on Viktor Korchnoi, penned by FM Hans Renette and IM Tibor Karolyi, covers the period 1969-1980. This encompasses Korchnoi’s famous world championship fight with Karpov at Baguio City in 1978, his candidates final matches against Karpov in 1974 and Hubner in 1980, as well as the related candidates cycles and major tournament performances. Much biographical colour is supplied on his life and character, with this period including his defection from the Soviet Union to the West in 1976. Like in Volume I, original material is provided from interviews with key protagonists and their relatives, while sources in Russian, German, Dutch and Hungarian as well as English are used to paint the most comprehensive portrait of Korchnoi available.
140 games and fragments are analysed in detail in this work. As well as Karpov and Hubner, opponents include Fischer, Spassky, Petrosian, Smyslov, Portisch, Geller, Najdorf, Timman, Larsen, Mecking, Sosonko, Andersson, Ljubojevic, Polugaevsky, Nunn, and Miles among others. Many new discoveries are made in the analysis. In particular, the authors identify that Korchnoi worked hard to improve his endgame ability significantly during the time that he was boycotted in tournaments by the Soviets, which is most surprising given that he was in his mid-forties by then, and was the best player of his time at endgame tactics. Further, the authors found that his reputation as a pawn grabber was highly exaggerated, and that he carried out a huge number of king attacks on the h-file. They also discovered that Korchnoi more than matched Karpov for openings in the 1978 title bout despite the unprecedented preparation of the Soviet chess machine, and that the key reason he lost that match was time trouble.
The book is supplemented with a generous supply of photos, many taken from the Korchnoi family archive and never before published.
CHESS INFORMANT’S 159th ADVENTURE
VIGOROUS
CONTENTS:
• Afek - Wijk aan Zee 2024 (Tournament Review)
• Leitao - The Difficult Art of Defence in Chess
• Gormally - My Hastings Nightmare (Danny's Chess Diary
• Kotronias - King's Indian Defence - Gligoric System (Theoretical Survey)
• Perelshteyn - The Alekhine - Exchange Variation (Theoretical Survey)
• Davies - Understanding the Openings (Theoretical Survey)
• Perunovic - The Sicilian Off-Road (Theoretical Survey)
• Marin - Old Wine in New Bottles
• Prusikin - The Caro-Kann Exchange Variation (Instructive Lesson)
• Barak Gonen - World of Correspondence Chess
• Rogers - Europe v Asia Match, Batumi 2001 (Roger’s Reminiscences)
• Griffin - Browne v Hort, Wijk aan Zee 1975 (From Informant Archives)
Traditional sections: games, combinations, endings, 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!