A good start is half the battle. Experienced American chess coach Dean Ippolito has trained thousands beginners and adult improvers and knows exactly how you should build your opening knowledge.
Each chapter focuses on a concrete tactical theme. Those will allow you to set traps, and play tricks, but will also develop your general understanding of opening play with concepts as development and the importance of the center.
In this first book of a series of three, Ippolito gives you the tools you need to start your chess games with confidence. Delve into the exciting world of the Center Fork Trick, the Fried Liver Attack, and many more powerful openings tips and tactics.
Dean Ippolito has been considered one of the best coaches in the United States for more than two decades. By the age of 25, he had already coached three of the five youngest national champions in American history. A former prodigy himself, International Master Ippolito understands what is needed to climb the rankings of scholastic chess players. Ippolito has written five well-regarded chess books, including the successful Wojo's Weapons series.
This book not only covers the most-played opening in online chess, but a complementary opening system as well. It makes sense to study both the versatile London System – moving the bishop to f4 - and the more aggressive Trompowsky Attack, moving the bishop to g5. This will offer White more flexibility and deepen your understanding of both systems. It gives White the opportunity to surprise his opponent, while still playing the same opening patterns. And both openings are connected by a large number of possible transpositions.
This complete opening repertoire has a limited (but flexible) scope, which is ideal for club players who can spend only so many hours on studying chess. Like all Moska’s books, Trompowsky Attack & London System is practical, accessible, original, entertaining and inspiring. The two systems are explored in 46 games, of which Moskalenko played eleven himself.
Viktor Moskalenko (1960) is one of the leading chess instructors of our time. The Ukrainian Grandmaster has authored numerous inspiring opening manuals such as An Attacking Repertoire for White with 1.d4, The Even More Flexible French, The Wonderful Winawer, Training with Moska and The Fabulous Budapest Gambit.
Turbo-Charge Your Tactics 1 is essentially a chess puzzle book, but not a typical one. It’s a multi-year effort by GM Mykhaylo Oleksiyenko and his world-renowned trainer IM Vladimir Grabinsky to introduce you to the world of “unnatural” tactical moves.
Presenting examples of extreme beauty, no matter where they come from – be it online bullet or world-class grandmaster praxis – this book will cure your “selective blindness” by destroying the false notion of chess principles being a set of rules, instead of helpful guidelines. Most chess games are decided by tactics, so solving tactical puzzles is the most effective path to improvement.
Turbo-Charge Your Tactics 2 concludes a multi-year effort by GM Mykhaylo Oleksiyenko and world-renowned trainer IM Vladimir Grabinsky to create the perfect chess puzzle books. This second volume builds upon the first, using games from the World Champions and their challengers. Most chess games are decided by tactics, so solving tactical puzzles is the most effective path to improvement.
This book also contains a special chapter with expert guidance on how to use chess engines. The engines might analyse precisely but they can also harm our chess understanding if followed blindly, so we must know when and how to use them.
The diverse set of tactical ideas involving two bishops in the finale will enable them to gain a deeper understanding of how the bishop pair combines.
The diverse set of tactical ideas involving two knights in the finale will enable them to gain a deeper understanding of how the knight pair combines.
I realize that this book will not cover all open wounds, nevertheless my aim to write a manual about defense which can help us defenders enduring the hardest difficulties in practice, seems to be achieved. Personally speaking this book helped me as a defender to approach a worse position in a much more objective way, optimally use all of my defensive resources available, both psychologically and technically, to set – even under the most dire circumstances – pitfalls, while keeping my nerves under control.