International Master Maxim Chetverik’s book covers the Bogo-Indian Defense which is normally arrived at after the moves 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.Nf3 Bb4+. This book additionally covers Catalan-Bogo hybrids, in particular, the Bogo response to the Catalan Opening with 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 e6 3.g3 Bb4+. Maxim is a big expert in this opening, having played it in 76 official games as of the publication date, and one of his full games as well as several fragments from his play are included in this volume. While this solid opening remains part of the repertoire of top-level players, it is also interesting for club players to study and adopt. Its strategic ideas are easier to absorb than those of the Queen’s Indian Defense, and black will not be required to learn as much theory as in the QID. Sharp variations are rare, and tactics play very much a subordinate role to strategy. The key focus is pawn structures, with most pawns remaining on the board in generally closed positions. Yet black retains the ability to vary the pawn and piece setup to suit his taste. 114 deeply annotated games are grouped into 20 chapters with Maxim’s carefully considered recommendations. Many of the featured games and fragments are played by world champions and supergrandmasters, including Carlsen, Kasparov, Alekhine, Anand, Kramnik, Smyslov, Korchnoi, Caruana, Short, Gelfand, Topalov, Shankland, Nakamura, Judit Polgar, Ivanchuk, Yusupov, Ding Liren, Giri, Aronian, Svidler, Hou Yifan, Timman, and many others. Many of the games are drawn from the very recent past and are not covered in previous books on the Bogo-Indian. Indeed, a large number of games from 2018-2019 are included, hence this work, which is full of Maxim’s original analysis, covers the latest theory as of the publication date. This book is essential reading for both black and white in the Bogo-Indian Defense.
First published in Russian in 2004 and now available in English for the first time, The Lubyanka Gambit is a classic work investigating the darkest side of chess history in the Soviet Union. It is the culmination of nearly two decades of research by Correspondence Chess Grandmaster, historian and human rights campaigner Sergei Grodzensky, whose own father was sent to the Gulag in Stalin’s times. It describes the careers and life stories, based on archival documents and witness testimony, of Soviet chess composers, players and famous amateurs who were repressed by the Soviet authorities, ending up either executed or sent to the Gulag. Featured names include Lazar Zalkind, Arvid Kubbel, Vladimirs Petrovs, Petr Izmailov, Georgy Schneideman, Nikolai Krylenko and Natan Sharansky, among many others. The theoretical contribution to the history of composition is one key theme in this work.
The Lubyanka Gambit also looks in detail at the historical context of the purges of chess players and describes how chess was played by prisoners in the Gulags and internal exile. Perhaps the icing on the cake is provided by Grodzensky’s personal memories of the Soviet Union’s foremost Gulag writers Alexander Solzhenitsyn (his schoolteacher) and Varlam Shalamov (his father’s close friend). This book contains 72 full games and fragments analyzed by the participants, contemporaries, the author and other leading players, as well as 145 computer-checked compositions.
Have you ever thought about trying your hand at composing endgame studies? Probably not, it always seemed far too difficult. But now, your chance to learn the tools is finally here! Mikhail Zinar's composition manual, first published in Ukraine in 1990 with a 100,000 print run that has long sold out, and now updated and revised by Sergei Tkachenko, reveals the secrets that will give you a head-start in composing chess poetry!
Dissecting over 400 examples, Zinar's manual begins by explaining the basic tactics of pawn studies: simplest maneuvers, roundabout way, feint, tortoise move, queening the pawn, Reti double threat, Reti - Sarychevs feint, luring into check, Grigoriev anti-check feint, anti-check retreat and king double threat (Eilazyan branch). It then goes on to consider key study ideas, including beacons, winning a pawn, checkmate, stalemate, anti-stalemate, underpromotions, studies with two or more phases, domination, anti-domination and logical studies. Further sections of the book cover artistic requirements for endgame studies, practical tips and a series of demanding tests that you may spend days, weeks or even months completing!
Careful study of this book will not turn you into an overnight prize-winning sensation, but following its recommendations and putting in hard work will place you firmly on the right path. Today's leading Ukrainian studies composer Sergei Didukh told Sergei Tkachenko that he read Zinar's manual several times before he composed his first study.
Mikhail Zinar (1950-2021) was considered the world's leading pawn studies composer in his life-time, inheriting the mantle from Nikolai Grigoriev. He composed several hundred studies in his career, winning multiple prizes. Zinar was awarded the title of Master of Sports of the USSR in 1987 and won the bronze medal in the studies competition of the 3rd FIDE World Cup in Composing in 2013. He lived his last years in Hvozdavka near Odesa in Ukraine.
International Master Maxim Chetverik has written an in-depth study of one of the most popular choices by white in the Queen's Indian Defense - the main line with 4.g3, where white fianchettoes his bishop. This line is often seen at top-level chess. This book contains 181 full games in this line and several hundred fragments with detailed and original commentary by the author focused throughout on giving a balanced evaluation in what are complicated positions.
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.
The diverse set of tactical ideas involving two bishops in the finale will enable them to gain a deeper understanding of how the bishop pair combines.
The diverse set of tactical ideas involving two knights in the finale will enable them to gain a deeper understanding of how the knight pair combines.