TACTICS TRAINER AVAILABLE! 404 Puzzles for those who are serious about improving their chess! Tactical puzzle books all seem sort of the same, positions where you are being told what the demand is and you then have to figure it out. Typically having to sacrifice or exploit a tactical feature, the answers can typically be worked out sooner or later. The puzzles in this book are different. For starters, the puzzles are recent, from the latter half of 2018 and they are played by players rated at least 2300. Additionally, the solutions are not always a quick tactical solution, and the first move is typically not enough for a complete answer, instead a series of precise moves is required and not always is it a winning continuation but one leading to an advantage, often a large one, but occasionally a clear or even a small advantage is all you can hope for. The key is, the solver doesn't know just as in game situations. Should the puzzles prove too difficult, then there are hints for the solution, although the hints can be rather cryptic as well.
TACTICS TRAINER AVAILABLE! Chess Tests offers chessplayers material of very high quality for working on various themes, from training combinative vision to techniques of realizing advantages. I recommend using those materials for in-depth work in the directions mentioned in the book. If you follow this advice, then this volume will become a valuable addition to your chess studies and will help you reinforce skills and knowledge you have already obtained. And here is probably the most important point. Dvoretsky wanted to write a book that would not only teach some intricacies of chess, but would also be simply a pleasure to read for aficionados of the game, so he tried to amass the ‘tastiest’ of examples here. I hope that this last book by him is going to achieve this, presenting its readers with many chess discoveries and joy of communication with the great coach and author.
Kalinin helps players seeking the master title by showing how concrete knowledge leads to improved decisions at the board. He stresses the essence of the classics and the importance of human interaction in reaching analytical mastery.
In a clear and concise manner, Srokovski explains basic positional motifs like the strengths and weaknesses of pieces and pawns, of squares, files and diagonals.
Chess students love a Puzzle Rush. And solving tactics puzzles certainly helps you improve your pattern recognition and will help you find good moves in tournament games. But there is a downside to most tactics puzzles — we always know who is supposed to win!
Chess in real life is different, not just because no one taps us on the shoulder and tells us to look for a tactic. Sometimes tactics work, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes your opponent has a few tricks up their sleeve, too.
This book shows the reality of chess tactics. It explores a chess player's challenges over the board: attack, defense, and counterattack! It exposes the actual give-and-take nature of chess tactics.
American grandmaster Joel Benjamin, a three-time U.S. Champion, was inspired by the 20th-century classic Chess Traps, Pitfalls, and Swindles by legendary chess authors Fred Reinfeld and Israel Albert Horowitz. With modern examples, Benjamin arouses the same spirit of fun and enjoyment. With a generous amount of puzzles in quiz form, this manual will help chess students sharpen their tactical skills and be ready to strike - or counterstrike.
Joel Benjamin is an American grandmaster and a three-time U.S. Champion. He became the youngest-ever U.S. chess master at age 13, beating Bobby Fischer's record. Chessboard Combat is his fifth book for New In Chess. Benjamin graduated from Yale University with a major in history.
Many players are serious about their chess but become stuck at a certain playing strength. It’s rarely a lack of talent or practice or opening knowledge that holds them back. Usually they get left behind because they don’t know how to make best use of the time they have available to study chess. This book addresses this problem and is your self-improvement plan. It shows you how to work on your own games to root out mistakes. It will sharpen your calculation of variations. You will be challenged to find the best middlegame strategy. Endgame technique is also covered in detail. All topics are discussed with numerous examples and puzzles from the games of modern players such as Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana and Viswanathan Anand. If you want your chess to leap forward it’s time to Coach Yourself!
In Coaching Kasparov, Year by Year and Move by Move Garry Kasparov's long-term coach, second and mentor Alexander Nikitin tells the story of how he trained Kasparov from a brilliant but raw junior into becoming and then remaining the world champion. Volume I, the present work, covers the period 1973-1981, until Kasparov reached the age of 18. The author goes to great lengths to describe his educational approach during the early period to raise Kasparov's theoretical knowledge and practical performance, covering both play and psychological training. The present volume contains 46 games fully annotated by Nikitin, including all 14 games of a blitz match played between the 15-year old Kasparov and ex-world champion Mikhail Tal on 26 December 1978 in Tbilisi that have never before been published and which are provided specially for the 2019 edition of this book. Most of the other games are well known, but Nikitin explains many of Kasparov's decisions in those games from the point of view of the future world champion's coach, providing the context of his young pupil's thought process and mistakes and tracing his progress. He also uses these games to illustrate and expand upon his coaching advice. This makes his commentary quite unique and instructive, of formidable practical use to budding players, coaches and parents.
How does one achieve the unique ‘sound’ and distinct technique that are absolutely necessary to become successful at the highest level? It can only be done via a deep understanding of the chess player’s personality and the unique talent that distinguishes him from other soloists. It is here that the role of a coach is of the utmost importance. First, it is necessary to understand the nature of your student’s chess talent, and second, it is important to identify the player’s character and personality traits. His style ought to be harmonious, so that the essence of the human being matches the characteristics of his chess talent. Since it is the same emotionless computer that is now in charge of the purely chess component, it falls upon the coach to deal with the chess player’s personality, mysterious and unknowable as it might be. Yes, a lot depends on the number and power of dependable cyber assistants, on the size and quality of various chess databases, on the enthusiasm of the seconds and on the ability to work with modern electronic gadgets, but at the highest level, almost all elite chess players have the same tools at their disposal. Thus, as always, everything is decided — as in the ‘good old days’ — by the player's talent, by his unique ability to create. The coach's task is to help his student develop this unique creative side to the maximum. It has so happened that in recent years I have been able to work closely with great chess talents who were at the same time outstanding personalities. I hope that an inside look at this kind of work will be of interest to both specialists and chess fans. I faced several ethical problems when working on this book. Many of the chess players who appear in these pages are still young; their whole life, including their sports career, lies ahead. That is why I tried to avoid purely personal details and did not reveal any professional secrets. I hope that these players, like me, will be curious to reflect on their own achievements and mistakes, and to take the reader on the difficult journey that allowed them to become prominent chess personalities.