Today, I’d like to give you a sneak peek into my first two books Beyond Material and How to Study Chess on Your Own. Both made the FIDE Book of the Year shortlist in 2019 and 2022, respectively, and were bestsellers for New in Chess.

Beyond Material

Have you ever grabbed a pawn in the opening only to regret it later? Or talked yourself out of making a piece sacrifice that would promise you long-term compensation or attack? If you have, you are not alone. There is a reason why such situations tend to occur. 

Chess is a game in which our materialistic nature is often exposed, for better or worse. However, sometimes the best moves and ideas in a position defy our preconceived notions about the value of the material. Time, space, and psychology can play just as, or even more, essential roles in a chess game as how many pieces and pawns we win or lose. In ‘Beyond Material,’ I explore and explain the interplay between these four factors in six chapters.

Let me give you a few fresh examples to illustrate this. (Note: these are not from the book).

Example 1

Example 2

In the two examples above, all protagonists were titled players, International Masters. Based on the mistakes such strong players made, it is evident that mastering the non-materialistic way of thinking is far from trivial. As with many other skills in chess, to get better at it, one is well-advised to study many instructive examples, such as those presented in ‘Beyond Material’ in a systematic manner. The ultimate reward is the ability to play better and, what’s more, more beautiful and inspired chess. For instance, one happy reader sent me a game, played a few days after he began reading the book, in which he nicely sacrificed an exchange to obtain positional domination in the endgame.

Example 3

How to Study Chess on Your Own

When I started playing chess in the 1990s, life was much simpler. High-quality chess books and magazines, strong chess engines, and opening databases were luxury items for most. The online chess scene, with its excellent study resources available today, was virtually nonexistent. Back then, to study chess on your own, you would usually get your chess board out and explore whatever scarce resources you had. 

Fast forward 25 years into the digital era, and paradoxically, everyone seems confused about the optimal way to study chess. Due to an absolute explosion of information and resources available to virtually anyone on the globe, we have reached the point where ambitious young players and adult improvers seem to drown in abundance and often wonder how to resolve this ‘paradox of choice’.

I tried to address this issue with ‘How to Study Chess on Your Own.’ It is a multi-faceted book that advises on employing the right study mindset and learning processes, identifying your study priorities, picking appropriate study resources, creating study plans and schedules, and more. I have drawn on my fairly extensive playing and coaching experience to produce numerous helpful tables that facilitate the better organization of your studies, such as the following:

Besides the high-level advice mentioned above, the book also contains plenty of actionable ideas that help you to conduct your chess training on the ‘micro’ level. You will learn how to study opening tabiyas properly, memorize important variations with the help of logical steps and key images, explore typical middlegame structures efficiently using the Chessbase software, and much more. 

Let me give you a concrete example from the chapter ‘Make your endgame study more enjoyable’, one of the readers’ favorites. In it, I suggest that studying endgames doesn’t have to be a tedious chore. One can develop a particular interest in the final part of the game by combining the study of theoretical textbook material, endgame studies, and practical examples that cover the same endgame topic or principle. Let me provide one example from that chapter here:

Knight vs Rook’s Pawn Example 1:

Knight vs Rook’s Pawn Example 2:

Practical Endgame Example:

With a little extra effort, you can collect instructive examples like these from various sources (endgame manuals, articles, database search) and save them to your endgame databases. Something similar can be done with middlegame themes or model games in the opening. One of the main tenets of the book is to do as much independent work as possible. Gathering and systemizing knowledge in this fashion make learning more enjoyable and effective.

‘How to Study Chess on Your Own’ was one of the most popular chess books during the COVID-break in 2020 and 2021 when most in-person chess tournaments were canceled. Chess players had to spend more time at home than ever, leaving them with more time to reflect on and study chess, and this book came as a perfect guide and inspiration to many. I believe that the fundamental approaches laid out there will stand the test of time and be helpful to future generations of chess players.

Davorin Kuljasevic is a Croatian Grandmaster, FIDE trainer, and author.

He has trained many talented youths worldwide and has an extensive record of instructive chess content publications. Some of his top achievements include 4th place in World Youth U16 in 2002, and gold in many international tournaments including; SPICE Spring 2011, Zupanja 2011, Mediteran 2011, Split 2013, and Castelfranco 2014. Besides chess, he also graduated with a Masters’s degree in Finance from Texas Tech University in 2011.

The late C.J.S Purdy may have been the father of Australian chess and the first World Correspondence Chess Champion, but it’s clear from the quote above that his countryman GM David Smerdon disagrees with Purdy’s views of swindles. And it’s just as well too because otherwise this very original and entertaining book would not have been written! This article will give you a detailed overview of The Complete Chess Swindler.

“Chess is in the last resort a battle of wits, not an exercise in mathematics. Theory helps you; but you have to fight. Hence our contempt for the stupid word ‘swindle’ in chess.” – C.J.S. Purdy, as quoted in this book.

In the introduction to the book, Smerdon emphasises that swindles are meant to be tried against human opponents; it’s essentially pointless to try to swindle a super-strong chess engine. He also says that “swindle-mode” thinking is useful when a player is about to resign because he is clearly losing. This is the time to start thinking about making the opponent’s life difficult and exploiting chess psychology. Of course, swindles won’t work if the opponent is alert to the idea, but if the position is lost anyway, it can’t hurt to try.

He offers four possible flaws that can be exploited, namely impatience, hubris, fear, and kontrollzwang (the compulsion to keep the position under control), and suggests the following four strategies for them:

• Trojan horses for impatience
• Decoy traps for hubris
• Berserk attacks for fear
• ‘Window-Ledging’ for kontrollzwang

These strategies make up the swindler’s toolbox that is discussed in Part III of the book, while Part IV discusses the core skills required for a successful swindle. Stalemate, perpetual check, and fortresses are particularly important tools. All these topics are covered in great detail and in an entertaining way. The annotations are clear and precise, and Smerdon also provides some pertinent background to the games in many of the examples.

The book concludes with three chapters with 108 exercises for the reader to solve. These exercises are quite different to the normal “find the winning move” types. Here, the task is to try to find a way to potentially swindle the opponent! It’s not easy to adjust to this type of exercise, but the effort is certainly worthwhile.

Read More:-

• Book Review: Winning by Nigel Short

Two examples from the book are given below, with annotations from the book.

Forty years after his death, Purdy continues to have an enviable reputation as a chess author. With this book, Smerdon clearly shows that he is a worthy successor to Purdy, and the book is a fine addition to the Australian chess literature and a great book in its own right.

Our BOOK OF THE WEEK is Mastering Opening Strategy by Johan Hellsten.

While club players should not focus primarily on opening theory, it is important to understand what both sides should be fighting for from the first moves. Opening principles are useful, but they can be easy to misapply if you don’t understand the reason why the principles work when they do. The purpose of this book is to explain the most important principles and holistic ideas in the opening to make it clear which opening principles are inherent within chess and how to apply them correctly. This is done through detailed explanations and annotated examples.

Here is a sample from Mastering Opening Strategy.

Chapter 1: The nature of development

Introduction

The quick development of the pieces is a key condition in the opening, in order to exploit their power to the maximum and secure the king. Leaving aside other positional factors such as material, space, and structure, the time factor plays a crucial role in the initial phase of the game. A player left behind in development might face serious problems when some of the pieces, such as the rooks, can’t easily take part in the battle. Consider the following positions which we will soon come back to in this chapter:

White has already brought all his pieces into the battle; in contrast, Black still hasn’t mobilized either rook and he has failed to secure his king. Take it for sure that he will have a hard time defending this position.

Nominally White is a piece up, but the difference in activity between both sides’ forces is simply overwhelming. When teaching young players, who tend to have big respect for the nominal value of the pieces, in such a position I make them observe that White has ten points out of the game! For example, the rook on a1 hardly has the same value on e8, and this is, after all, what development is all about.

This position is actually from the next chapter, but it suits our discussion. Black has won a pawn, but his poor kingside development will leave him suffering badly once White achieves d4-d5, and that will come on the next move! In contrast, if Black had an extra tempo, i.e. if …e7-e6 was already on the board, then after …Bb4! His chances would increase dramatically. One single tempo makes a huge difference in the opening battle, as we will often see.

So who suffered in these depressing positions? Dolmatov, Topalov, and Timman, in games contested in 2004, 1999, and 2002 – which makes it clear that the concept of development is present in battles even at the highest level. By the way, observe the importance of the queens’ presence in the above positions – if these are removed, then Black would probably be okay in the first one, White would be winning in the second one, and his compensation for the pawn in the third one would look much less convincing.

A few principles to bear in mind:

• The imbalance between attacking and defending pieces is a key factor in any attack, and this certainly applies to positions where one side is better developed than the other, as in the three positions above.
• The opening or sharpening of the position almost always favors the better-developed side, which makes this a key method when exploiting a lead in development.
• The conversion of a lead in development into a more stable advantage often requires heavy usage of tactics, sacrifices, etc. Throughout the book, I often use the term “punishment” when referring to such actions, including standard methods such as opening the position, attacking weak points in the enemy camp, keeping the opponent’s king in the center, and swapping his active pieces, etc.

What others are saying:

“Mastering Opening Strategy should enjoy a wide audience. Players from 1600-2200 will find it a first-rate guide to learning intermediate and advanced opening principles and ideas, while teachers will find it offers a wealth of training material. A third group, those who simply enjoy playing through high-quality comments (predominately prose) on instructive modern games, will also find what they are looking for.” – IM John Donaldson

Click the link below to purchase the book or read the free book sample.