Chess is a cruel game. We all know that feeling when your position has gone awry and everything seems hopeless. You feel like resigning. But don’t give up! This is precisely the moment to switch to swindle mode. Master the art of provoking errors and you will be able to turn the tables and escape with a draw – or sometimes even steal the full point! Swindling is a skill that can be trained. In this book, David Smerdon shows how you can use tricks from psychology to marshal hidden resources and exploit your opponent’s biases. In a lost position, your best practical chance often lies not in what the computer recommends, but in playing your opponent. With an abundance of eye-popping examples and training exercises, Smerdon identifies the four best friends of every chess swindler: your opponent’s impatience, their hubris, their fear, and their need to stay in control. You’ll also learn about such cunning swindling motifs as the Trojan Horse, the Decoy Trap, the Berserk Attack, and ‘Window-Ledging’. So, come and join the Swindlers’ Club, become a great escape artist and dramatically improve your results. In this instructive and highly entertaining guide, Smerdon shows you how.
Simple Attacking Plans is a classic right from the get-go
Learn sure-fire tactics and combinations from one of the worlds top chess players. Attack? Defend? Swap pieces? Tactics are the watchdogs of strategy that take advantage of short-term opportunities to trap or ambush your opponent and quite possiblychange the course of a game in a single move. Why play in a fog, only hoping that your opponent will blunder when International Grandmaster Yasser Seirawan can show you how to put the tactics of the worlds chess legends to work for you. Choose from the double attack, the pin, the skewer, deflection, the cor, x-rays, windmills and many more time-tested tactics.Using classic board situations arranged in chapters by tactical themes, Seirawan teaches you how to:
Plan your entire game from the very first move.Think ahead, step-by-step, anticipating every obstacle your opponent can throw your way; Position yourself for the smashing combination and endgame you've always dreamed of.
Board positions from actual games played by historys great chess tacticians are provided throughout. Review tests for each topic let you track your improvement. In no time you'll be playing better, with more confidence than you ever thought possible.
This ebook is a part of Bundle: Seirawan's Winning Chess
The Hippopotamus Defence is just what a club player needs. It’s a straightforward and clear-cut chess opening that avoids the ever growing body of mainline theory. It’s universal: Black can use the Hippo against virtually all of White’s choices (1.e4, 1.d4, 1.c4, 1.f4, the Colle, London, Trompowsky, Réti and others). It’s not very well known and will surprise many opponents. On top of all that, the Hippo is seriously underestimated: with its characteristic double fianchetto it may look quiet, but inside there lurks a very dangerous animal. FIDE Master Alessio de Santis is one of the world’s greatest experts on the Hippo and has written a practical, well-structured and accessible manual.
In his three-volume treatise, leading Russian chess historian Sergey Voronkov vividly brings to life the long-forgotten history of the Soviet championships held in 1920-1953. Volume I covers the first 10 championships from 1920-1937, as well as the title match between Botvinnik and Levenfish. The key contestants also include world champion Alekhine and challenger Bogoljubov, lesser-known Soviet champions Romanovsky, Bogatyrchuk, Verlinsky, and Rabinovich, and names that today will be unfamiliar yet were big stars at the time: Riumin, Alatortsev, Makogonov, Rauzer, Ragozin, Chekhover, and many others. This book can be read on many levels: a carefully selected collection of 107 of the best games, commented on mostly by the players themselves, supported by computer analysis. A detailed and subtly argued social history of the Soviet Chess School and of how chess came to occupy such an important role in Soviet society. A discussion of how the chess community lost its independence and came to be managed by Party loyalists. A portrayal of how the governing body and its leader, Nikolai Krylenko, strived to replace an entire generation of free-thinking chess masters with those loyal to the state. A study of how the authorities’ goals changed from wanting to use chess as a means of raising the culture of the masses to wanting to use chess to prove the superiority of the Soviet way of life. Or a sometimes humorous, often tragic history of talented, yet flawed human beings caught up in seismic events beyond their control who just wanted to play chess. This book is illustrated with around 170 rarely seen photos and cartoons from the period, mostly taken from 1920s-1930s Russian chess magazines. As Garry Kasparov highlights in his foreword “this book virtually resembles a novel: with a mystery plot, protagonists and supporting cast, sudden denouements and even ‘author’s digressions’ – or, to be exact, introductions to the championships themselves, which constitute important parts of this book as well. These introductions, with wide and precise strokes, paint the portrait of the initial post-revolutionary era, heroic and horrific at the same time. I’ve always said that chess is a microcosm of society. Showing chess in the context of time is what makes this book valuable even beyond the purely analytical point of view.”
The astounding success of How To Study Chess on Your Own made clear that there are thousands of chess players who want to improve their game. And chess players like to work on their training at least partially by themselves.
The bestselling book by GM Kuljasevic offered a structured approach and provided the training plans. Due to popular demand, Kuljasevic now presents a Workbook with the accompanying exercises and training tools a chess student can use to immediately start his training.
Most workbooks offer puzzles and puzzles only. But Kuljasevic has used his experience as a coach to create a broader and more interesting training schedule. You will be challenged by tasks like these:
– Solve positional play puzzles
– Find the best move – and find the mini-plan
– Play out a typical middlegame structure – against a friend or against an engine, carefully set a an appropriate level
– Simulation – study and replay a strategic model game
– Analyze – try to understand a given middlegame position
Volume 1 is optimized for chess players with an Elo rating between 1800 and 2100 but is useful for anyone between 1600 and 2300. Volumes 2 and 3 will serve the needs of beginners and more advanced club players.
Davorin Kuljasevic is an International Grandmaster born in Croatia. He graduated from Texas Tech University and is an experienced coach. His bestselling book Beyond Material: Ignore the Face Value of Your Pieces was a finalist for the Boleslavsky-Averbakh Award, the best book prize of FIDE, the International Chess Federation.
With very accessible verbal explanations this book helps you to solve the basic problems of chess middlegames: space, tension and initiative. .
Grandmaster Preparation
Sielecki always clearly explains the plans and counterplans and keeps you focussed on what the position requires. Ambitious players rated 1500 or higher will get great value out of studying this extremely accessible book.