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Chess enthusiasts can sit down with 20 of the world's top players to answer the question posed by this instructive and amusing guide. Grandmaster Daniel King based How Good is Your Chess? on his popular Chess Monthly column. His easy-to-follow, test-yourself guide asks readers to predict their opponent's moves; points are awarded (or deducted) according to the readers' degree of success. In addition to helping players to judge their standard of play, it presents opportunities for improvement by providing a look at complete games and the chance to work out and study the plans and ideas of the experts. Algebraic notation used throughout.

Designed for the typical amateur player who wants to improve his or her chess skills, this clear, straightforward guide provides the extra knowledge and technique that turns a losing player into a winner.

The author, a well-known chess teacher and author of a dozen books on openings, coaches the reader through all the fundamentals of attacking, sacrifices, defense, positional play and choosing a move, as well as how to approach the endgame. The crucial processes of assessing the position and choosing a move are examined in depth, and there are helpful sections on how to cope with difficult positions and time-trouble. Several illustrative games, from the annals of the imaginary Midlington Chess Club, add a light touch to this expert practical guide to better chess.

Tim Harding is a well-known chess author and captain of the Irish Correspondence Chess Team. He represented Ireland in the 1984 FIDE chess Olympiad in Thessaloniki.

Beginning students of the game as well as veterans of the board will find this chess guide offers a wealth of inspiration, enjoyment, and practical chess advice. In providing valuable instruction for players at all levels, noted chess writer and teacher Peter Tamburro initially presents elementary ideas that can be used immediately by beginners.

The attack section features the tactics of such great masters of the assault as Fischer, Keres, Alekhine, Larsen, and Rubinstein — all demonstrating how to win the middle game. A survey of endgame concepts follows, along with a selection of challenging chess problems and 60 complete games by Blackburne, Marshall, Tartakower, Polgar, and other champion players. An accessible, enjoyable guide, Learn Chess from the Greats allows readers to learn the fundamentals and improve their game in an informal, user-friendly way.

Irving Chernev's outstanding chess books earn him a high rank among the world's top chess authors. In this well-annotated text, Mr. Chernev guides his readers to an understanding of the subtleties of combinative play.

Step-by-step from the simplest combinations to the most complex, the book explains the intricacies of pins and counter-pins, Knight forks, smothered mates, and other elements of combination play. There is a discussion in chapter five of combinations lurking in roads not taken — alternate lines of play show up in Chernev's notes to the game, while the sixth chapter, "Convincing the Kibitzers," shows the second-guessers what would have happened had the masters done the obvious. (Some disastrous combinations show up here.) A host of boomerangs follow — cases where the player didn't look far enough ahead and his combination, instead of bringing about the opponent's ruin, paved the way to his defeat. Chapters 8–21 take up combinations used by such great players as Tarrasch, Botvinnik, Nimzovich, Steinitz, Rubinstein, and Pillsbury; the sacrificial combinations of Anderssen and Spielmann; the dazzling brilliancies of Morphy, Keres, and Alekhine; the deadly attacks of Marshall; the almost unfathomable ideas of Lasker; and the matchless creations of Capablanca. Mr. Chernev's thoughtful annotations unravel the secrets of each of these plans. A diagram accompanies each combination; an index, by player, leads the reader to the combination he is looking for.

Both an instruction book and an engaging meditation on the joys of chess, this is the final work by one of the most successful chess writers of all time. Irving Chernev blends anecdotes with his observations on inspiring moves and combinations by well- and lesser-known players, including Troitzky, Réti, Kasparyan, Benko, Kubbel, Rinck, Grigoriev, and many others.

Each example is introduced with a cue ("White to play and win") and includes the composer's name, the date of its original publication if available, a clear diagram with an algebraic grid, and the winning variation presented in algebraic notion. Chernev's sparkling text is complemented by introductions by national Master Bruce Pandolfini and Adam Hart-Davis, an editor who worked with Chernev and who helped assemble this posthumous publication.

Appropriate for players at every level, 200 Brilliant Endgames promises to assist chess enthusiasts in sharpening their endgame skills and to enhance their pleasure and satisfaction in the game.

A dramatic sacrifice might seem like the best way to achieve a dazzling, come-from-behind victory, however, the outcome of most chess matches, depends on the participants' positional skills. The first player to establish a positional advantage gains the best chance of a successful direct attack.

This complete guide, written by an Israeli grandmaster, offers valuable insights in developing a more powerful strategic game. It spans a century and a half of international chess, from the era of the legendary Paul Morphy in the 1850s to that of the modern powerhouse Gary Kasparov. The author focuses on common situations arising from practical over-the-board play. Examples — on such themes as key squares, bad bishops, and pawn structures — appear in ascending difficulty, with ample cross-reference.

Derived from the author's own coaching manuals, these instructive examples successfully assisted in training Israel's top juniors and the champions of the Israeli women's national team. Chess players at every level will benefit from this opportunity to develop an intuitive grasp of each concept and strengthen their positional play.

Every chess player hopes to set off brilliant combinations and win games in a blaze of glory. Such combinations do not come into being by themselves, however; they appear only as the result of proper chess strategy. It is therefore surprising that so few books deal with this highly important subject, and understandable that Pachman's modern classic has been so enthusiastically received by chessplayers at all levels.

Ludĕk Pachman, a Czech grandmaster, has long had an international reputation as a chess theorist, but until now his work has not been available in English. This present volume, which condenses his great Modern Schachstrategie, presents his ideas and theories in a form that the English-speaking world can assimilate easily. Beginning with basic concepts and the rules of the minor and major pieces, it covers the use of the Queen, the active King, exchanges, various kinds of Pawns, the center and its use, superiority on the wings, minority attack, strategical points and weak squares, methods of attack and defense, and similar topics. Pachman elaborates the various kinds of strategy that can be employed, and shows how each leads to tactical opportunities. It has been said that his section on the Rook alone make his book indispensable to the serious chess player, since the Rook is so important in both middle and endgames.

Pachman presents his method in the form of a thorough, systematic, analytical text, which draws upon scores of great games for exemplification. Both classical and very recent masters are included, although stress is on the moderns: Capablanca, Alekhine, Dr. Lasker, Rubinstein, Nimzovich, Botvinnik, Reshevsky, Bronstein, Smyslov, and Spasski.

Chess endings have an immediacy lacking in chess endgame or chess problems: endings are not theoretical or composed, but actual board positions, the point in every game when the superfluous falls away, leaving only the essential. José Raúl Capablanca (1888–1942) had no need for isolated artistic theory or compositions — he composed and created chess art as he played. All of his genius — intuitive, tactical, strategic, logical — all of his art shines clearest in his endings, as he himself was proud to declare, advising others to study them carefully. "In order to improve your game," he said, "you must study the endgame before anything else; for whereas the endings can be studied and mastered by themselves, the middle game and the opening must be studied in relation to the endgame."

The best way to follow Capablanca's advice is through this — the only book devoted to his great endings, 60 complete games emphasizing the grand finale but annotated throughout.

Irving Chernev communicates in his notes the mystery and wonder as well as the delight in discovering again and again the original, fertile mind of chess's greatest born player. "Virtuoso," "exquisite," "profound," "inspired," "elegant," and "fiendish ingenuity" describe match and tournament games and endings against Alekhine, Steiner, Marshall, Nimzowitsch, Lasker, Réti, and others, the best in the contemporary chess world. Capablanca's eleventh game in the 1901 Cuban championship (which he won, aged 12) "surpasses any accomplishment by such other prodigies as Morphy, Reshevsky, and Fischer." From age 12 through the last game in the book (nearly four decades later against Reshevsky at Nottingham, 1936), Capablanca fashions endgames in tense tournament atmosphere that seem like delicate, precise instruments dreamt at leisure.

Here then is the essence of Capablanca, analyzed for the instruction of players and the pleasure of chess connoisseurs. Included are indexes of openings, themes in the endings, and opponents, as well as a bibliography and record of tournament and match play. Capablanca: for players, the epitome of the endgame; for readers, a classic chess study.

The book of a strong tournament is more than just a games collection. When its participants are the world's strongest players . . . the tournament as a whole represents a step forward in the development of chess creativity. We may take as examples of such tournaments the events at Hastings 1895, St. Petersburg 1914, New York 1924, Moscow 1935, and Groningen 1946. Beyond doubt, Zurich-Neuhausen 1953 deserves a place among them.

David Bronstein ventured this evaluation of Zurich 1953 just three years after the event, in the preface to the first Russian edition of this book. Since that time the 210 games of the legendary tournament have only grown in stature. Most knowledgeable chess players now rate it the greatest tournament since World War II, and possibly the greatest tournament of all time.

In the 1920s Jim Marfia, a talented amateur player, became determined to provide an authoritative English translation of Bronstein's book, a task which occupied him for several years. The complete record of the famous Zurich International Chess Tournament, 1953, is available in English for the first time.

Held to determine a challenger for then World Champion Botvinnik, Zurich 1953 attracted fifteen of the strongest players in the world: Smyslov; Geller; Boleslavsky; Bronstein; Najdorf; Szabo; Keres; Kotov; Gligoric; Reshevsky; Taimanov; Euwe; Petrosian; Averbakh; and Stahlberg.

Almost all the games were hotly contested, and many are masterpieces of the first rank. To mention Euwe-Smylov (round 3), Taimanov-Najdorf (round 4, winner of a brilliancy prize), and Keres-Reshevsky (round 11, one of the most reproduced and analyzed games in chess), is just to touch the tip of the iceberg; there are literally dozens of memorable, innovative games in this volume, including a substantial portion by the author, one of the game's greatest players, who finished tied for second with Keres and Reshevsky, behind the winner Smyslov.

Advanced players will want this book for the games alone. Beginning and intermediate players, concerned more immediately with instruction, will find David Bronstein's annotations not only perceptive and thorough, but also a veritable textbook on how to play the middle game.

Here are 62 masterly demonstrations of the basic strategies of winning at chess, compiled and annotated by one of the game's most admired and respected writers. Each game offers a classic example of a fundamental problem and its best resolution, described and diagrammed in the clearest possible manner for players of every level of skill.

As Irving Chernev observes in the Introduction, "Who will doubt the tremendous power exerted by a Rook posted on the seventh rank after seeing Capablanca's delightfully clear-cut demonstration in Game No. 1 against Tartakower? And who will not learn a great deal about the art of handling Rook and Pawn endings (the most important endings in chess) after playing through Tarrasch's game against Thorold?"

Chernev's lively and illuminating notes on each game reveal precisely how Capablanca, Tarrasch, and other masters — Fischer, Alekhine, Lasker, and Petrosian among them — turn theory into practice as they attack and maneuver to control the board. Readers will find their techniques improving with each lesson as Irving Chernev dissects winning strategies, comments on alternate tactics, and marvels at the finesse of winning play, noting at the end of his Introduction: "I might just as well have called this collection The Most Beautiful Games of Chess Ever Played."