Theory and Exercises

This book is designed to help chess players up to 2100 rating points improve their endgame calculation skills. The book covers all the theoretical positions and techniques needed for successful endgame play and includes many carefully selected exercises to help readers practise and reinforce their understanding of these concepts. The exercises are organised in a progressive manner.

Grandmaster Training

Endgame Labyrinths presents the reader with 1002 challenging studies selected and truncated, with their usefulness for the practical player in mind. It is common for studies to be extended by less interesting manoeuvres or by incomprehensible sequences, before the main themes come into play. The studies in this book have been pruned to leave the reader with 1002 clear and solvable challenges.

Manoeuvre!!

Chess Informant 162 “Manoeuvre!!” presents:

1. World Championship Match Ding Gukesh, analysis by GM Ivan Ivanisevic

2. European Individual Chess Championship, analysis by GM Milos Perunovic

. The Budapest Gambit, theoretical survey by GM Vasilios Kotronias

4. The King’s Gambit,

5.h3 Variation by GM K. Szabo

Few books have dealt with the topic of exchanges in chess, leaving this important part of chess strategy a mystery to most. In Mastering Chess Exchanges, grandmasters Aagaard and Castellanos break down the topic into crystal-clear themes, including piece preferences, tension, weaknesses, colour complexes, king safety and endgames, illustrating the concepts with illuminating examples. Then the reader is given a chance to turn understanding into skill, with 365 instructive exercises, featuring a novel, multiple-choice format designed to focus attention on possible exchanges.

Manoeuvre!!

Chess Informant 162 “Manoeuvre!!” presents:

1. World Championship Match Ding Gukesh, analysis by GM Ivan Ivanisevic

2. European Individual Chess Championship, analysis by GM Milos Perunovic

. The Budapest Gambit, theoretical survey by GM Vasilios Kotronias

4. The King’s Gambit,

5.h3 Variation by GM K. Szabo

Chess Heroes at their best

When Learn from the Legends was published in 2004, the book became an instant classic and Mihail Marin became known as one of the world’s finest chess authors. In this new book, the Romanian GM shines the spotlight on five more all-time-great players:

Chess Opening Repertoire

When deciding upon a repertoire to meet 1 d4, those players whose natural inclination is to be aggressive have a difficult decision. There are plenty of outright counter-attacking tries such as the Benko Gambit, the King's Indian Defence and the Modern Benoni. However, such openings are generally considered borderline unsound at the higher levels. On the other hand the safe options such as the Queen's Gambit Declined and Queen's Gambit Accepted make it difficult to create middlegame complications. So, what to do?

Chess Opening Repertoire

The Accelerated Dragon (1 e4 c5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 d4 cxd4 4 Nxd4 g6) has attracted the attention of many creative players. In the past these included Tigran Petrosian and Bent Larsen while modern aficionados include the dominant player of the era, Magnus Carlsen, as well as Viswanathan Anand, Veselin Topalov, Vassily Ivanchuk, Jan-Krzysztof Duda and many others.

The Russian Sphinx 1892-1921

Award-winning historian Sergey Voronkov has written a four-volume psychological biography of Alexander Alekhine, presenting the former world chess champion in a much more complicated, conflicted and tragic light than you have ever seen him before! This first volume traces his early development through to his departure from Soviet Russia in 1921, while also attempting to untangle the knot of his complex relationships with all his five wives.

Introduction Chess is one of the most difficult and beautiful games man has everinvented and played, it has been intriguing people all over the world since ancient times. Chess is a school of strategy and tactics. Thanks to rules that do not find the counterparts in reality around us as well as the need of calculating variants, chess can make players develop abstract thinking and imagination.

How Alekhine Alienated the World

Starting his reign in 1927, Alexander Alekhine dominated the world of elite chess for more than a decade. To this day, he is the only world chess champion to die while holding the title. On his way to the top, Alekhine dodged artillery on World War I battlefields, narrowly escaped a Bolshevik firing squad and negotiated with Nazis to escape occupied Paris. He also earned a reputation as a ”grandmonster“ of chess: arrogant, amoral and alcoholic. Alekhine Alienated the World

A Year with the Chess Genius

The Willfully Inscrutable Bobby Bobby Fischer, the enigmatic 11th World Chess Champion, lived in Germany for almost a year beginning in April 1990. He had connected with a woman, Petra Dautov, who had reached out to him two years before. It was not a romantic relationship, but quite intriguing nevertheless. In her own words, ”My intention in describing the experiences in this book was to show the human side of the chess genius and allow everyone to make up their own minds.“

How the Game Was Played, Glorified and Abused

The USSR is famous as the first totalitarian state to promote chess. Less well known is that Nazi Germany was the second. The Third Reich gave chess a tremendous financial and propaganda boost in hopes of making Germany a dominant chess power. Yet this aspect of the Nazi era has received scant attention in later German literature, and even less in English. This book fills that gap.

Georgy Lisitsin (1909-72) was a respected Soviet master, theoretician and writer. In 1958 he published a revised edition of his most ambitious work, entitled Strategy and Tactics of Chess, which became one of the most legendary manuals in the Soviet chess school, and no doubt one of the books that motivated the young Bobby Fischer to learn Russian.

Die Eröffnung 1. d4 Sf6 2. f3!?

Die Eröffnung 1.d4 Sf6 2.f3!? gründet auf der Idee, nach den weiteren Zügen 2... d5 3.e4 dxe4 4.Sc3 die Grundstellung des Blackmar-Diemer-Gambits zu erreichen, wie sie normalerweise aus der Zugfolge 1.d4 d5 2.e4!? dxe4 3.Sc3 Sf6 4.f3 entsteht. Obwohl diese Spielweise nicht neu ist, findet sich bis heute keine systematische Darstellung der Varianten, die sich ergeben, wenn Schwarz nicht mit 2... d5 oder 3... dxe4 fortsetzt.