Mastering Positional Sacrifices


Book Description

Most chess games of beginners and post-beginners are decided by fairly straightforward tactics. Anyone who wants to progress beyond this level and become a strong club player or a candidate master, needs to understand that somewhat mysterious-looking resource, the positional sacrifice. International Master Merijn van Delft has studied and loved positional sacrifices for as long as he can remember. This non-forcing tool is not just a surprising and highly effective way of creating a decisive advantage during a game. Positional sacrifices are also instruments of superior beauty. Van Delft has created a unique thematic structure for all types of positional sacrifices. He shows the early historical examples, explains which long-term goals are typical for each fundamental theme and presents lots of instructive modern examples. He then concentrates on those sacrifices that have become standard features of positional play. Solving the exercises he has added will further enhance your skills. Playing a positional sacrifice will always require courage. Merijn van Delft takes you by the hand and not only teaches the essential technical know-how, he also helps you to recognize the opportunities when to take the plunge. Mastering Positional Sacrifices is bound to become a modern-day classic.




Chess Life


Book Description




Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual: Second Edition


Book Description

The first edition of Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual was immediately recognized by novice and master alike as one of the best books ever published on the endgame. The second edition is revised and enlarged - now over 400 pages - covering all the most important concepts required for endgame mastery. "I am sure that those who study this work carefully will not only play the endgame better, but overall, their play will improve. One of the secrets of the Russian chess school is now before you, dear reader!" - From the Foreword to the First Edition by Grandmaster Artur Yusupov "Going through this book will certainly improve your endgame knowledge, but just as important, it will also greatly improve your ability to calculate variations... What really impresses me is the deep level of analysis in the book... All I can say is: This is a great book. I hope it will bring you as much pleasure as it has me." - From the Preface to the First Edition by International Grandmaster Jacob Aagaard Here's what they had to say about the First Edition: "Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual ... may well be the chess book of the year... [It] comes close to an ultimate one-volume manual on the endgame." - Lubomir Kavalek in his chess column of December 1, 2003 in the Washington Post. "Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual is quite simply a masterpiece of research and insight. It is a tremendous contribution to endgame literature, certainly the most important one in many years, and destined to be a classic of the literature (if it isn't already one). The famous trainer Mark Dvoretsky has put together a vast number of examples that he has not only collected, but analysed and tested with some of the world's strongest players. This is a particularly important book from the standpoint of clarifying, correcting, and extending the theory of endings. Most of all, Dvoretsky's analysis is staggering in its depth and accuracy." - John Watson, reviewing DEM at The Week In Chess 2003 Book of the Year - JeremySilman.com 2003 Book of the Year - Seagaard Chess Reviews: "This is an extraordinary good chess book. To call this the best book on endgames ever written seems to be an opinion shared by almost all reviewers and commentators. And I must say that I am not to disagree." - Erik Sobjerg




How Good Is Your Chess?


Book Description

Grandmaster and Hall of Fame chess legend Larry Evans, draws upon his vast experience as 5-time USA champion, author of 25 books, and Bobby Fischer's second, to present a fun and challenging new approach for chess players. Readers test their skills against 100 fascinating positions from actual games and must choose the best move among three choices. Each correct answer earns the reader 25 points; no points are given for incorrect choices. At the end of the series, players can calculate their own rating, be it absolute beginner or even grandmaster! In the solutions section, Evans carefully explains the proper thinking a player must employ to approach the position and why both alternatives are inferior. Readers not only find their true chess level, but get a complete course in exactly where they can go wrong.




The Complete Chess Workout


Book Description

In this book, tactics expert Richard Palliser presents the reader with an enormous 1500 chess puzzles, all checked for accuracy by the latest computer engines. There is something for players of all levels here: many basic tactics forks, pins, skewers and checkmates to appeal to beginners and improvers, and a considerable number of brain-teasers that will tax even the strongest of players."




The Kings of New York


Book Description

An award-winning sportswriter takes you inside a year with the nation’s top high school chess team.With strict admission standards and a progressive curriculum, Brooklyn’s Edward R. Murrow High School has long been one of New York’s public-education success stories, serving a diverse neighborhood of immigrants and minorities and ranking among the nation’s best high schools. At Murrow, there are no sports teams, and the closest thing to jocks are found on the school’s powerhouse chess team, which annually competes for the national championship.In The Kings of New Yorksportswriter Michael Weinreb follows the members of the Murrow chess team through an entire season, from cash games in Washington Square Park to city and state tournaments to the SuperNationals in Nashville, where this eclectic bunch competes against private schoolers and suburbanites. Along the way, Weinreb brings to life a number of colorful characters: the Yale-educated calculus teacher (and former semipro hockey player) who guides the savants while struggling to find funding for his team; an aspiring rapper and tournament hustler who plays with cutthroat instinct; the team’s lone girl, a shy Ukrainian immigrant; the Puerto Rican teen from the rough neighborhood of Bedford-Stuyvesant who plays an ingenious opening gambit named the Orangutan; and the Lithuanian immigrant and team star whose chess rating is climbing toward grandmaster status.In the bestselling tradition of such books as Word Freakand Friday Night Lights, The Kings of New Yorkis a riveting look inside the world of competitive chess and an inspiring profile of young genius.




Side-stepping Mainline Theory


Book Description

The average chess player spends too much time on studying opening theory. In his day, World Champion Emanuel Lasker argued that improving amateurs should spend about 5% of their study time on openings. These days club players are probably closer to 80%, often focusing on opening lines that are popular among grandmasters. Club players shouldn’t slavishly copy the choices of grandmasters. GMs need to squeeze every drop of advantage from the opening and therefore play highly complex lines that require large amounts of memorization. The main necessity for club players is to emerge from the opening with a reasonable position, from which you can simply play chess and pit your own tactical and positional understanding against that of your opponent. Gerard Welling and Steve Giddins recommend the Old Indian-Hanham Philidor set-up as a basis for both Black and White. They provide ideas and strategies that can be learned in the shortest possible time and require the bare minimum of maintenance and updating. They deliver exactly what you need: rock-solid positions that you know how to handle. By adopting a similar set-up for both colours, with similar plans and techniques, you further reduce study time. With this compact and straightforward opening approach, Welling and Giddins argue, club players will have more time to focus on what is really decisive in the vast majority of non-grandmaster games: tactics, positional understanding and endgame technique.




The 100 Endgames You Must Know Workbook


Book Description

Jesus de la Villa’s worldwide bestseller 100 Endgames You Must Know successfully debunked the myth that endgame theory is complex and endgame books are necessarily tedious. Reviewers praised its clarity and completeness and thousands of players significantly improved their endgame understanding (and their results!). In the past couple of years, De la Villa’s students sometimes complained that when they had to apply what they had studied in 100 Endgames, they didn’t have the material ready at their fingertips. And De la Villa made an important discovery: most of their errors had already been made by others as well, even by strong and sometimes famous chess players! De la Villa started collecting training material and selected those exercises best suited to retain your knowledge and avoid common errors. In this book the Spanish grandmaster presents hundreds of exercises grouped according to the various chapters in 100 Endgames. Solving these puzzles will drive home the most important ideas, refresh your knowledge and improve your calculation skills. This book contains a massive amount of clear, concise and easy-to-follow chess endgame instruction. The advice De la Villa gives in the solutions is practical and useful. Ideal for every post-beginner, club player and candidate master who wishes to win more games.




Tragicomedy in the Endgame


Book Description

The Key Concepts of Chess Endings In 2003 when it was released, Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual became an instant classic. Now the chess instructor extraordinaire offers an introduction to the fascinating world of chess endings. This book is designed to highlight the key concepts of the most common chess endgames and will prove quite instructive to chessplayers of all levels. Topics include: - The King in the Endgame - Pawn play - Zugzwang - Saving Methods - Tactics in the Endgame - Piece Maneuvering - Piece Exchanges - "Technique” ...and much more! The author has countless practical suggestions for improving your endgame play in this era of rapid-time controls so that you don't end up "drowning” in the ocean of endgame theory. Let Mark Dvoretsky help you win more games as he examines some elementary endgame errors from master play and shows you how to avoid making the same mistakes.




How to Reassess Your Chess


Book Description

How to Reassess Your Chess has long been considered a modern classic. This 4th edition takes Silman's groundbreaking concept of imbalances to a whole new level. Designed for players in the 1400 to 2100 rating range and for teachers looking for a ready-made chess curriculum, the author shares a mind-expanding journey that takes the reader through imbalance-basics, ensures that every detail of all the imbalances are mastered, and leaves the player/lover of chess with something he always wanted but never believed he could achieve: a master-level positional foundation. Hundreds of games brought to life by instruction-rich prose, and stories that offer humor while highlighting various lessons, vividly illustrate all the book's topics in a manner that's both personal and fun. Jeremy Silman is an International Master and a world-class teacher, writer, and player who has won the American Open, the National Open, and the U.S. Open.