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.
Are you searching for a new weapon against 1 e4? Look no further - choose the Killer Sicilian! In this book, opening expert Tony Rotella presents a Sicilian repertoire for Black, the backbone of which consists of the Kalashnikov Variation. The Kalashnikov is an ideal choice for those looking to take up the Sicilian. Black follows an easy-to-learn system of development, with clear strategic aims. What's more, in many lines Black can choose between aggressive and positional options. It's no coincidence that the Kalashnikov has attracted such attacking talents as World Championship candidate Teimour Radjabov and multi-time US Champion Alexander Shabalov. Rotella critically examines the main lines and lucidly explains the key positional and tactical ideas for both sides. He also shows what Black should do against White's various Anti-Sicilian options. Read this book and unleash the Killer Sicilian!
To guide your thinking during a game, you should be able to fall back on a reservoir of typical ideas and methods. That is exactly what this book offers, with Zlotnik’s legendary study material about the middlegame, modernized, greatly extended and published in the English language for the first time. Accessible to a wide range of players, it grants access to a body of instructive material of unparalleled quality, collected during a lifetime of training and coaching chess. A large collection of carefully chosen exercises will help you drill what you have learned. Written by one of the world’s most prominent chess coaches, the former director of the legendary Chess Department of the INEF College in Moscow
In Magnus Wins With Black Grandmaster Zenon Franco deeply analyses 30 of Magnus Carlsen’s most instructive games where he wins with the black pieces. This book is written in “move by move” style, a good training tool containing exercises and tests. This format is a great platform for studying chess, improving both skills and knowledge, as the reader is continually challenged to find the best moves and the author provides answers to probing questions throughout. It is the second of two volumes written by Franco for Elk and Ruby Publishing House on the games of Magnus Carlsen. His first volume Magnus Wins With White has proved to be an international best seller. The main difference between these games and those in the previous book is that fewer of them are attacking games than when Carlsen plays White. This should not come as a surprise, because White has more chances to dictate the game scenario. Nevertheless, there are still some examples in this volume where Carlsen wins by attack. Another important difference is that there are more endings in this volume, which is also understandable. What remains unchanged is that the fights are always intense. Carlsen never stops trying to win the game, no matter if, objectively, his chances are small. There are several examples where, at some point, his opponents collapse, unable to withstand the tension that Carlsen maintains in the game. Most of the games are taken from Magnus’s recent career, including one from 2020 and six from 2019. His opponents are nearly all super-grandmasters, and they include former world champions Viswanathan Anand and Vladimir Kramnik, as well as Fabiano Caruana, Maxime Vachier-Lagrave, Alexei Shirov, Levon Aronian, Ding Liren, Ian Nepomniachtchi, and Anish Giri.
The official story of the 2020 Candidates Tournament began on November the 11th, 2019 with the signing of a contract between FIDE and the Russian Chess Federation detailing the hosting duties of said tournament in Ekaterinburg from the 15th of March to the 5th of April, 2020. At that point no one could have even imagined how difficult the road to that tournament would be nor how unexpected the outcome. Yet the significance of the actual numbers in this dramatic epic is hard to overestimate which is why the author will attempt to play the role of chronicler and try to describe as accurately as possible the key moments of this historic event. Vladimir Tukmakov was our close observer, author and wrote an historical important book on the first part of the Candidates 2020.
The Royal Chess Couple is a combined attempt to introduce the various traits of the most significant piece with the most powerful piece on the chessboard. Following a short historic review of the development and metamorphoses of each piece over time, the reader is offered 240 positions (480 in total) from tournament practice as well as from the magic world of chess composition. In each position a royal piece plays either a crucial offensive or defensive role. These positions are subdivided into 60 themes, four positions per theme, arranged by their increasing difficulty. The reader may use the positions as training challenges to improve his understanding and playing skills or just to enjoy playing through them. In either case he will learn to appreciate the characteristic qualities of each piece alone and in collaboration with other pieces.
Former Russian Champion Alexei Bezgodov explains for a wide range of players how they can employ the skills of former World Champion Tigran Petrosian to deal with adversity in their own games. The aim of this book is to help amateur players to improve the standard of their defensive play. In many training programs a serious analysis of the art of defense is missing. That is why most club players are much better at attacking than at coping with difficult positions. This book will point the way to finding creative solutions and save lots of points. Written by former Russian Champion Alexei Bezgodov, on a subject that has been neglected in many training programs: defense.
Elements of Positional Evaluation
Which side stands better? How much better, and why? Most players answer these questions with a loose bag of half-remembered maxims — and those vague principles often lead straight to inaccurate evaluations and bad decisions. This groundbreaking book by Dan Heisman sets out to put positional judgement on a firmer footing.
Heisman’s key move is to separate genuine "elements" from what he calls "pseudo-elements." The real elements — mobility, flexibility, vulnerability, centre control, piece coordination, time, and speed — are the lasting factors that determine how much a piece is actually worth in a given position. The pseudo-elements — material, space, king safety, development — matter too, but only as consequences of the real ones. Getting that distinction straight transforms how you assess a position.
From there he examines how each piece relates to the elements, and how static features (doubled, isolated, backward and passed pawns; open files; weak squares and outposts) feed into a sound evaluation. Now in its fourth edition, the book is as much a clarifying framework as a set of facts.
A genuinely original, thought-provoking read for the club player who wants to understand why a position is better, not just memorise that it is.
This ebook is a part of Bundle: Dan Heisman's Books
1.e4 vs Minor Defences
This is the fifth volume of Parimarjan Negi’s celebrated Grandmaster Repertoire — 1.e4 series, and it rounds out the project by tackling everything Black can try besides the Sicilian, French, Caro-Kann and 1...e5. In other words: all the "minor" but pesky defences that a 1.e4 player meets constantly.
Negi supplies a top-class White repertoire against the Alekhine, the Scandinavian, and the Pirc and Modern complexes, plus the various offbeat first moves (1...Nc6, 1...b6 and the like) that try to drag you out of book early. As throughout the series, the recommendations are built on sound main lines and then sharpened with the original ideas of a world-class theoretician.
These openings are often under-prepared by ambitious players precisely because they seem secondary — which is exactly why a serious, well-analysed repertoire against them pays off in practice. Negi leaves no gaps.
Demanding and thorough, this is for strong, ambitious players who want their 1.e4 repertoire to be airtight against everything, not just the main defences. With the rest of the series it forms a complete answer to 1...whatever.
Technical Decision Making in Chess
Most players find the same moments slipping away: the endgames and the positions where one side holds a structural or material edge but the win (or the save) refuses to come. In this book — part of his acclaimed Decision Making series — former World Championship Challenger Boris Gelfand opens up his own thinking in exactly these technical situations.
This is not a manual of memorised positions but a window into how an elite grandmaster actually decides. Gelfand explores the recurring questions of technique: when to defend passively and when actively, why a bad plan beats no plan, when it is right to "run" with the king, and how to choose the correct transformation of one advantage into another. His concept of the "Zone of one mistake" — the danger zone where a single slip squanders everything — is likely to be a revelation.
The examples range from Rubinstein’s classics to his own battles with players like Karjakin, and include fascinating chapters on stalemate, geometry, opposite-coloured-bishop endings, and the practical value of studying endgame compositions.
Demanding and deep, it is best suited to strong club players and above who want to understand technical chess from the inside. A serious book that repays serious study.
This ebook is a part of Bundle: Gelfand Decision Making
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