Sergei Tkachenko, a member of the Ukrainian team that won the 5th World Chess Composition Tournament in 1997 and which came second in 2000, 2004, 2013, and 2017, has collected 100 studies whose common theme is that white ends up with just one pawn in the finale, yet manages to win or draw.

The Queen’s Gambit is one of the oldest and most reliable opening which is mainly based on positional and structural understanding. The author gives a perfect guide about it and if somebody masters it, he will be able to use it in his entire chess career. This opening will never run out of fashion, its strategical and positional ideas will not be refuted by the strong computers.

We have analysed the most straightforward possibilities for White

Which opening does better in practice: the wild, “unsound” and “refuted” Latvian Gambit (1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 f5) or the solid Philidor Defence (1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 d6)? As James Schuyler points out, referring to the definitive Megabase, the Latvian Gambit scores higher. How can such a discredited opening (and the same story is repeated with other “unsound” openings) do so well? The point is that playing like this throws the opponent off balance, makes them anxious and induces mistakes. Even the very best players recognise the value of discomforting the opponent. Historically, Emanuel Lasker was the master of this approach and his modern day equivalent is world champion Magnus Carlsen. Carlsen frequently employs offbeat openings and his opponents invariably fail to counter them correctly. This is the key theme of this book. Schuyler covers all phases of the game and discusses other vital subjects such as harassment, material imbalance, time management, surprise moves, unusual ideas, provocative play, manoeuvres and recovering from bad positions.

This book presents a repertoire against 1…d5, based on the Reti

Pattern recognition is perhaps the single most important thing in Chess. This is true in all three phases of the game and it applies to both positional and tactical themes. The book you hold in your hands provides a sufficiently comprehensive overview of the latter. The main goal of this book is aimed at improving pattern recognition and tactical vision, while also treating the reader with nice combinations. There are two parts to this book. The first 17 chapters elaborate on the most important motifs in practical chess. The remaining 8 chapters showcase the art of attack and defense. Certain motifs feel like they belong together and the order of the chapters in which they are discussed reflects that. All 25 chapters of this book begin with an introduction which is always designed to clearly illustrate the motif or theme at hand. Most but not all of the games here are classics. All the introductions are followed by training puzzles in order to reinforce pattern recognition and learning for what has been discussed beforehand. It has to be emphasized that motifs in chess are interwoven and it is the rarest occasion in practical games that only one motif is present. Often, even a single move features multiple motifs and the one we are studying depends on which aspect of the move we are looking at. It was not an easy feat to sort the puzzles appropriately. Therefore, the approach I took when assorting the puzzles was to decide which theme or motif best characterizes the tactic. The total number of training puzzles is 365, one for every day of the calendar year. All of them are from real games and most from Grandmaster practice. This should give the book more practical value. In some of the games the player found the solution, while in others the combination was missed. With the training puzzles I put a lot of emphasis on being original. This means that during my research I mostly collected puzzles from recent games while also incorporating tactics from my own practice. There are a number of combinations from my friends’ games as well that I am immensely grateful they shared with me.

The Sicilian jungle is vast. Unless you have a massive amount of time on your hands, it is an exhausting task to keep a sharp opening repertoire together against Black’s numerous possibilities. It does not mean that it is impossible, nor does it mean that you shouldn’t do it. But for the average player with an average amount of time available for chess studies, it is important to pick the right battles. This is where our weapon, the Chameleon Sicilian, comes in handy. It proposes a very flexible way for White to handle the Sicilian Defense using the move order 1.e4, 2.Nc3 and 3.Nge2.

The main goal in choosing lines was to reach positions with well-defined plans for both sides, then illustrate how to handle a typical middlegame in each variation through the use of well-chosen instructive games.

Moskalenko covers the Anti-Dutch, Leningrad, Stonewall and Classical variations. He guides you through this ground-breaking opening book with the enthusiasm, the ease and the humor that characterize his style.

Instruction + exercises according to the old Soviet chess school. Experienced Russian Grandmaster Yakov Neishtadt reveals the training material that was used in Soviet times to build up young masters

Feature articles and hundreds of deeply annotated games

Moskalenko’s lively style will infect you and encourage you to start playing this opening, which is a great weapon at any level, from club player to grandmaster. This new edition is completely reworked and fully updated from the original 2007 publication; It has been extended by 25% and contains new analysis, new games, new ideas and lots of novelties.