World Chess Champion Max Euwe, who held the title from 1935-1937, is one of the greatest chess players in history. Much has been written about him, and he authored dozens of books himself. But missing was an outstanding collection of games of this 'efficient, man-eating tiger' as the American chess master William Ewart Napier once called Euwe.
Max Euwe's Best Games fills this gap. And it couldn't have been written by anyone else than Euwe's successor in Dutch chess – Jan Timman, World Champion finalist and arguably one of the leading chess analysts of our time.
This book offers eighty of Max Euwe's games annotated with great clarity, starting in his early twenties when he worked his way to the world top, up until his late seventies when he was still a force to be reckoned with. It is incredible how high Euwe's level of play was for over fifty years – and how attractive his attacking style was.
Timman made many discoveries in Euwe's best and most famous games but has also unearthed several lesser-known brilliancies. Some interesting paradoxes are addressed along the line. For example, although he was an amateur almost his entire life, Euwe was better versed in opening theory than most of his top-level opponents. Although he was the underdog, he beat the mighty Alexander Alekhine in an epic World Championship Match in 1935. At 52, he could still beat top players like Geller and Najdorf with fantastic attacking play in the Zürich Candidates Tournament. And when he was over seventy, he was still highly dangerous for the new upcoming Dutch generation.
This game collection of an often underrated World Champion, analysed by top grandmaster Jan Timman, is a must-have for anyone interested in World Championship chess.
Jan Timman, World Chess Champion finalist, is the author of many bestselling chess books. Timman's Titans won the 2017 ECF Book of the Year Award, and his recent books, The Longest Game, Timman's Triumphs and The Unstoppable American, have all met with wide acclaim.
Ein Lehrbuch des Schachspiels auf ganz neuartiger Grundlage
„Mein System“ erschien zunächst in den Jahren 1925/26 in fünf Lieferungen jeweils als Broschüre und wurden vom Berliner Schachverleger Bernhard Kagan herausgegeben.
Das Buch ist aufgeteilt in zwei Teile: „Die Elemente“ beschäftigt sich mit den Grundlagen der Schachstrategie wie z.B. Zentrum und Entwicklung, offene Turmlinien, die 7. und 8. Reihe, Freibauern etc. Im zweiten Teil wird dann auf dieser Grundlage „Das Positionsspiel“ behandelt: Prophylaxe und Zentrum, Doppelbauer und Hemmung, eigene starke und schwache Bauern bzw. Punkte etc. Über alle Kapitel verteilt gibt es Partiebeispiele, zumeist aus der eigenen Praxis des Autors.
Quelle: https://nimzowitsch.net/mein-system.html
Available via subscription
British Chess Magazine (June 2023)
“And the Rest Is Just a Matter of Technique...”
How often has this comment been appended to a game move or variation? As many players know, it really may not be all that easy to figure out what is meant by this familiar phrase.
After the untimely passing of legendary instructor Mark Dvoretsky, Artur Yusupov was given access to Dvoretsky’s famous card files. With the core material based upon these files, the former top ten grandmaster – and perhaps the most successful of all of Dvoretsky’s students – put together this book, modifying and refining the content as needed.
The book begins with a “theoretical” explanatory section. This is followed by 102 practice positions, which increase in in difficulty. Good technique for gaining an advantage is useful in all areas of the game, so there are positions from the opening, middlegame, and especially the endgame – not only from practical games but also from various studies.
The comments to the solutions are very detailed, explaining not only the main line but also the supplementary side variations. Yusupov thought it important to demonstrate the logic in the search for a decision and to show how a chessplayer can come to the right conclusions at the board.
Dvoretsky’s master student Artur Yusupov has done a great job in selecting and presenting the material so that this book “feels” like another genuine Dvoretsky work. This book is a real gem and I hope that it gives you as much pleasure as it has given me. And that from now on, when you have an advantage, the rest really will be, well, just a matter of technique... – From the Foreword by Grandmaster Dr. Karsten Müller
The Four Knights Variation is a variation of the Sicilian Defense that most often occurs after 1.e4 c5 2.Nf3 e6 3.d4 cxd4 4.Nxd4 Nf6 5.Nc3 Nc6. It’s a good choice for all types of players – whether you’re an aggressive player who wants to attack your opponents or a more defensive player who prefers a slow and positional game, the Four Knights Variation is the right choice for you. The author of the book, Miloš Perunović, is an eminent Serbian chess grandmaster. He is known for his expertise in the Sicilian Defense, especially the Four Knights Variation. With the help of this variation, he achieved numerous successes in national and international competitions. Due to this, he is considered to be one of the leading experts of the variation.
The London System is a chess opening that is characterized by moves 1.d4 and 2.Nf3 followed by Bf4 and e3. This opening gained a lot of popularity among chess players because it is solid and flexible. By developing the knight on f3 and the pawn on e3, the central pawn structure is solid and well protected, making it difficult for the opponent to create any weaknesses. Such a stable center makes it easier for White to attack and, if needed, defend. The move Bf4 can be followed by a number of different moves, such as Nbd2, e3, c3, dxc5, h3, and in some cases c4, which allows White to adapt to a wide array of specific game situations. This flexibility allows for a number of different plans and possibilities, making it difficult for the opponent to anticipate White’s plan and thus counter it properly.
The book you have started reading explains the concept of the exchange sacrifice in chess. It is a complex concept where the value of pieces is not determined solely by their numerical value but also by the potential strategic advantage they provide. Beginners are taught the value of pieces using pawns as a unit of measurement, but as players progress, they begin to understand that a material advantage is not always a guarantee of winning. The sacrifice of an exchange, where a player gives up a rook for a bishop and a knight or a pawn, can lead to a strategic advantage. However, many players are hesitant to make this sacrifice due to the fear of losing a material advantage and ending up in a fatal endgame situation. The book explores the psychology behind this fear and offers guidance on how to overcome it. The book also covers the increasing use of exchange sacrifice as a tactical and strategic element in modern games. The author delves into the reasons behind this trend and discusses several open questions related to the exchange sacrifice. By shedding light on this complex concept across many chapters, the book offers a comprehensive understanding of the exchange sacrifice and its importance in chess strategy.
Are you ready for new strategic insights about thirty-five of the most fascinating and complex chess games ever played by World Champions and other top grandmasters? Grandmaster Matthew Sadler and renowned chess writer Steve Giddins take a fresh look at some classic games ranging from Anderssen-Dufresne, played in 1852, to Botvinnik-Bronstein (1951) and Geller-Euwe (1953). They unleashed the collective power of Leela, Komodo and Stockfish to help us humans understand what happened in games of fan favourites such as Boris Spassky, Mikhail Tal, Bent Larsen and Bobby Fischer.
The first chess engines improved our appreciation of the classic games by pointing out the tactical mistakes in the original, contemporary game notes. But the expertise of Matthew Sadler is to uncover the positional course of a game with the help of the second generation of chess engines that emerged after 2018.
This book will change your perception of these games’ strategic and technical patterns. You will, for example, learn to appreciate and understand a classic Capablanca endgame. And a classic Petrosian exchange sacrifice. And a winning, and then losing, king-hunt endgame between Spassky and Tal. You will see how Larsen already understood the strength of the h-pawn march far before AlphaZero’s revelation. The engines offer new strategic ideas and plans that human players have yet to consider. Even the ‘the best ever anti- King’s Indian player’, Viktor Korchnoi, would be amazed by the engine’s unique ideas about White’s breakthroughs on the queenside.
The most instructive games are often those which are more strategic and technical. Using modern engines, the authors have re-engineered a wonderful collection of classic games, generating dozens of positional chess lessons that will help every club player and expert to improve their game.
GM Matthew Sadler is the world’s strongest amateur chess player, a New In Chess magazine contributor, and co-author of the prize-winning books Game Changer: AlphaZero’s Groundbreaking Chess Strategies and the Promise of AI and Chess for Life.
FM Steve Giddins is a prolific chess writer and journalist. He compiled and edited The New In Chess Book of Chess Improvement, wrote books on Nimzowitsch, Alekhine and Bronstein, and co-authored The Lasker Method.
Szymon Winawer was a world top-10 player in the 1870s and 1880s, dueling with such titans as Steinitz, Lasker, Anderssen, Marshall, Chigorin, Zukertort, Louis Paulsen, Janowski, Maroczy, Tarrasch and others, and defeating most of the leading players of his time. He won or took prizes in major international tournaments, including Paris 1867 (second, behind Kolisch and above Steinitz), Leipzig 1877 (fourth, behind Paulsen, Anderssen and Zukertort), Paris 1878 (first equal with Zukertort, though he lost the play-off), Berlin 1881 (third equal with Chigorin, behind Blackburne and Zukertort), Vienna 1882 (first equal with Steinitz), and Nuremberg 1883 (first, ahead of Blackburne).
Winawer was a proponent of fighting chess, regularly deploying the King’s Gambit and Ruy Lopez as white, demonstrating winning combinations as well as positional sacrifices and endgame precision. He attacked the castled king with his h-pawn 150 years before Alpha-Zero. He displayed technique using Horowitz bishops and opening the g-file. At the same time, we see in the book that he also played solid positional chess. Moreover, several opening ideas are named after him, including the popular Winawer Variation of the French Defense.
The Warsaw-born player was not a chess professional and never published any annotated games of his own, but some of his concepts, both in the opening and in the middlegame, are still valid in the 21st century. Indeed, many strategic ideas (blockade, exploiting doubled pawns, maneuvering) described in the works of Nimzowitsch and other hypermodernists can be found, in embryonic form, in the games of Winawer played half a century earlier.
In the first half of this biographical work, Warsaw-based chess historian Tomasz Lissowski, who has co-written books on Kieseritzky and Zukertort among others, portrays Winawer’s life and his sporting achievements in the context of the epoch. This book delivers not only a description of the evolution of chess in Poland in the nineteenth century, but a sense through the prism of chess of the political and social history of Poland and the Austro-Hungarian, German and Russian empires in a period of war and upheaval. It is illustrated by many historical photos from the period.
In the second half of this book, International Master Grigory Bogdanovich paints Winawer’s creative portrait, as well as examining the legacy that this ingenious improviser left to chess culture. The book contains in total 132 annotated instructive games and fragments of Winawer and his contemporaries.
British Chess Magazine (May 2023)
How often have you seen a game like this?
The hero has no advantage whatsoever but somehow manages to keep setting the opponent problems. Their opponent goes slightly astray and suddenly hero has a tiny advantage. It’s not much but now that they have a little something to work with, they are in their element. They play accurately and remorselessly and make life incredibly difficult for their opponent. Suddenly, and almost imperceptibly, their advantage increases. Further tiny inaccuracies follow, hero turns the screw and bags the full point. Their opponent is left shaking their head, wondering where on earth they went wrong.
This is the squeeze and the great champions have been capable of squeezing opponents to death. José Capablanca, Tigran Petrosian, Anatoly Karpov and, in the current era, Magnus Carlsen are legendary in this respect.
How do they do it? How do they set problems in apparently sterile positions? How can they continuously manage to defeat world class opposition from positions that others would simply give up as drawn?
In this book, Cyrus Lakdawala explains the mechanisms commonly used in squeeze plays. Using examples from the world’s greatest strategic masters he unpicks the secrets of the squeeze.
Rudolf Spielmann was one of the strongest chess players in the world in the first half of the 20th century. Following his shared second place at the Carlsbad tournament in 1929 with Capablanca, half a point behind Nimzowitsch, he was considered one of the world’s top five. His career spread over four decades and included a host of tournament and match victories, such as defeating Bogoljubov over ten games in 1932.
Often known as the Last Romantic in chess with his predilection for the King’s Gambit and Vienna Game and love of sacrifices, he bequeathed a rich legacy of ideas and techniques. These combinational and positional master classes are examined here in 213 instructional games and fragments, organized thematically in a way similar to Grigory Bogdanovich’s previous volumes on Bogoljubov.
Detailed commentary is provided on games against leading contemporaries. Opponents in this work include five world champions Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Euwe, and Botvinnik, as well as Marshall, Janowski, Tarrasch, Tartakower, Nimzowitsch, Reti, Rubinstein, Romanovsky, Bogoljubov, and many others. Bogdanovich’s commentary is richly supplemented by that of stars of the epoch and, above all, of Spielmann himself.
The book further contains a biographical sketch and is supplemented by a large number of tournament photographs and portraits. Spielmann’s life was ultimately tragic – a lonely death in Sweden aged just 59 as a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany following the demise three years earlier of his sponsor, while several family members failed to escape the Holocaust.
Additional materials in the book include a detailed table of tournaments and matches from his career, as well as a translation of Spielmann’s fascinating article dating to 1923 called “From the Sickbed of the King’s Gambit”.