New (4th) and improved edition of an all-time classic. Jesus de la Villa presents the endgames that show up most frequently in practice, are easy to learn and contain ideas and concepts that are useful in more difficult positions.
The best place to start your tactics training is in the endgame! Chess is 99% tactics – and if you want to win more games, nothing works better than training tactics. Win a piece or find a mate. That will get you results.
Since most of the pieces have left the board, endgame tactics have the clarity that enables you to grasp all basics concepts quickly and comprehensively. In the endgame, you can focus on what is important without any distractions by a couple of random pawns and pieces.
In 1001 Chess Endgame Exercises for Beginners, IM Thomas Willemze does two things at once. He explains all the basic concepts, and provides you with a huge amount of exercises for each theme and each chess piece. Willemze uses all his experience as a coach, and his familiarity with the famous Step Method, to carefully build up your chess knowledge step-by-step. He shows you the strength of all pieces, from the lonely pawn to the almighty queen. And he guides you from the basics to more complex tactics in a highly instructive puzzle rush.
TACTICS TRAINER AVAILABLE! In this guide International Master Vladimir Barsky teaches the method created by his mentor Viktor Khenkin (1923-2010). It’s based on an ingenious classification of the most frequently occurring mating schemes. A wide range of chess players will find it an extremely useful tool to recognize mating patterns and calculate the often narrow path to the kill. All the 1,000 examples (850 of them in exercise format) that Barsky presents are from games played in 21st century. He has carefully selected the most instructive combinations and lucidly explains the typical techniques to corner your opponent’s king. More often than you would expect, positions that look innocent at first sight, turn out to contain a mating pattern. This is not just another book full of chess puzzles. It’s a brilliantly organized course that has proven to be effective. Finding mate isn’t rocket science, but you need to know what to look for. Vladimir Barsky teaches you exactly that.
TACTICS TRAINER AVAILABLE! Romain Edouard launches a brand new series of exercise books. In this first volume he focuses on middlegames. Romain gives you different instructions for each chapter, so you can improve your general thinking from various angles – exactly as you would face in your own games.
This ebook is a part of Bundle: Chess Calculation Training
Any good chess coach will tell you to study the endgame. Improving your knowledge of the ‘third phase’ in a chess game will bring you many extra half or even full points.
After the success of his award-winning classics, Chess Strategy for Club Players and Attacking Chess for Club Players Herman Grooten has now written an equally instructive endgame manual. He teaches you how to understand the themes of an endgame, and find the right moves based on your understanding.
International Master Herman Grooten learned about endgames the hard way, as many good players have. Early in his career, he realized there was a lot to be gained in this undervalued part of the game. Building on his experience as a player and coach, Grooten takes an original approach to convey his message: the endgames are divided according to theme, not chess material. This is a novel, but very effective way to learn the ins and outs, since many themes can occur with different material balances.
The material is richly illustrated with many examples from practical play, as well as endgame studies, which present the motifs in their purest and most attractive form. The result is a lively and highly instructive guide to the endgame.
Originally published at the beginning of the 20th century as part of a series for beginners on all phases of the chess game, this little book contains samples of all types of endgames that beginners or inexperienced players will greatly benefit from studying.
With 124 well-chosen positions, the author illustrates the fundamental knowledge of chess endgames that all players should master.
The material has been reexamined and lightly edited by FIDE Master Carsten Hansen.
"Chess Fundamentals was first published thirteen years ago. Since then there have appeared at different times a number of articles dealing with the so-called Hypermodern Theory. Those who have read the articles may well have thought that something new, of vital importance, had been discovered. The fact is that the Hypermodern Theory is merely the application, during the opening stages generally, of the same old principles through the medium of somewhat new tactics. There has been no change in the fundamentals. The change has been only a change of form, and not always for the best at that. In chess the tactics may change but the strategic fundamental principles are always the same, so that Chess Fundamentals is as good now as it was thirteen years ago. It will be as good a hundred years from now; as long in fact as the laws and rules of the game remain what they are at present. The reader may therefore go over the contents of the book with the assurance that there is in it everything he needs, and that there is nothing to be added and nothing to be changed. Chess Fundamentals was the one standard work of its kind thirteen years ago and the author firmly believes that it is the one standard work of its kind now." – J. R. CAPABLANCA, New York, Sept. 1, 1934
CHESS INFORMANT’S 157th ADVENTURE
OMNIPRESENT
CONTENTS:
• In Memoriam – Remembering Aleksandar Matanovic
• Leitao – World Cup 2023 (Tournament Review)
• Shyam Sundar – This or that? – World Cup Edition
• Perunovic – Instructive positions from the World Cup
• Foisor – Women FIDE World Championship Match (Tournament Review)
• Gormally – British Chess Championship (Tournament Review)
• Moradiabadi – Biel Chess Festival (Tournament Review)
• Yochanan Afek – Prague Chess Festival (Tournament Review)
• Kotronias – The Classical Scotch 4...Bc5 (Theoretical Survey)
• Davies – The Sandipan Dutch (Theoretical Survey)
• Prusikin – The Exchange Slav Ideas (Instructive Lesson)
• Szabo – The King’s Indian Defence E91 (Theoretical Survey)
• Perelshteyn – The Hyper-Accelerated Dragon (Theoretical Survey)
• Petrov – World Championship Game Changers – part 7
• Rogers – The Japan 1978 Zonal Tournament (Roger’s Reminiscences)
• Griffin – Spassky-Portisch, Toluca Interzonal 1982 (From Informant Archives)
• Barak Gonen – Correspondence Chess
Traditional sections: games, combinations, endings, Tournament reviews, the best game from the preceding volume and the most important theoretical novelty from the preceding volume.
The periodical that pros use with pleasure is at the same time a must have publication for all serious chess students!
Rook endgames are the most frequently recurring endgames and also one of the most exciting areas of chess, with mind bending tactical opportunities and dizzying nuances available. They have unsurprisingly been a big topic in endgame literature, with a heavy focus on the set theoretical positions and their logic and fixed conclusions (see the excellent Theoretical Rook Endgames by GM Sam Shankland, published as a sister volume to this book as the peak example of this).
Conceptual Rook Endgames goes in a different direction. Focused on two dozen major concepts, the book explains the mechanisms of rook endgames in a novel way, by building foundations with simple examples, which can be seen in the most complicated examples as well. Rook endgames will remain rich and surprising, as they are for the greats, but armed with this book, your comprehension of them will skyrocket.
Grandmaster Jacob Aagaard is the most talented chess writer of his generation. He won the British Championship in 2007, but is mostly known for his multi-award winning books and his work with students that have won club, country, state, national, continental and world championships, as well as Olympiad golds (board and overall), the World Cup and Candidates tournament.
The Fifth Edition of a Modern Masterpiece! When it appeared in 2003, the first edition of Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual was immediately recognized by novice and master alike as one of the best books ever published on the endgame. The enlarged and revised fifth edition is better than ever! Here is what Vladimir Kramnik, the 14th World Champion, had to say in his foreword to the fifth edition: “I consider Dvoretsky’s Endgame Manual an absolute must for every chess professional, and no less important even for a club player... I always recommend this book... I consider it to be one of the very best chess books published in recent times and I am very pleased with the new enhanced edition...” German grandmaster Karsten Müller, widely recognized as one of the best endgame theoreticians in the world today, has carefully updated the fifth edition with the help of American grandmaster Alex Fishbein. The incredible instructional value of the exercises has been preserved, and the blue text used in the first four editions has been replaced with text with a light grey background.
Born in Bakhmut, Ukraine, and brought up in Odessa, Boris Verlinsky (1888-1950) was the first holder of the grandmaster title in the Soviet Union, and he was consistently one of the top Soviet players in the 1920s.
He earned the master’s title at the 1924 Soviet Championship and won fourth prize at the 1925 Championship, defeating the tournament winner Bogoljubov along the way. Verlinsky then crushed Capablanca at the 1925 Moscow International Tournament, where he finished twelfth equal with Rubinstein and Spielmann, both of whom he also beat. He won the Soviet Championship in 1929, for which he was awarded the grandmaster title, and came third in 1931 despite poor health. Verlinsky played in five Soviet Championship finals in total. He also won a number of other major Tsarist and Soviet-era tournaments, including the Southern Russia Championship, Odessa Championship, Ukrainian Championship, Moscow Championship and others. Moreover, he achieved all this despite being profoundly deaf.
According to the Chessmetrics website, Verlinsky’s highest world ranking was #15 in 1926, and that year he achieved his highest rating of 2627.
Verlinsky possessed a sharp attacking style. As Grandmaster Dmitry Kryakvin highlights in his foreword, “I think that this great attacking player was way ahead of his time, and in his best years he played spectacular, beautiful, dynamic and modern chess more characteristic of the famous players of the second half of the twentieth century. As you study Verlinsky’s brilliant victories, you think of the masterpieces of Mikhail Tal, Leonid Stein, Viktor Kupreichik, Alexei Shirov, and other modern successors of the ‘Fire-On-Board’ dynasty.”
Ukrainian historian and former world champion at composing chess studies Sergei Tkachenko presents a comprehensive biography of this unique player. This book analyzes 130 games and fragments, in which opponents include Capablanca, Alekhine, Botvinnik, Bronstein, Bogoljubov, Spielmann and other stars. The games are frequently annotated by Verlinsky or his opponents and contemporaries, and they have all been reviewed using modern engines by grandmasters or international masters especially for this work.
The World Championship match between Fischer and Spassky in Reykjavik 1972 was played at the height of the Cold War. The image of a lone American genius defeating the Soviet machine captivated a worldwide audience unlike anything else in chess history. Exactly fifty years later, Fischer – Spassky 1972 takes a fresh look at both the chess and the human aspects of this monumental match.
Bobby Fischer is one of the greatest chess players of all time. His astonishing journey up to the 1972 match was documented in The Road to Reykjavik. In this volume, award-winning author Tibor Karolyi completes his study of Fischer’s career with in-depth analysis of the legendary Reykjavik match and the controversial Fischer – Spassky 1992 rematch.
International Master Tibor Karolyi is a renowned author and trainer from Hungary. His biographical works for Quality Chess have received glowing praise from readers and reviewers.