A complete, easy-to-use program for teaching and self-study of chess, in this series of books co-written by Roman Pelts and Lev Alburt, Grandmaster of Chess and three-time U.S. Chess Champion.
Top grandmasters demystify chessboard planning, giving you the practical, game-winning strategic techniques you could spend years gathering on your own. Chess strategy is the long-term planning at the heart of winning chess. Each important idea is clearly explained using games carefully chosen for their instructive clarity and power. This is the fifth but stand-alone volume of the Comprehensive Chess Course, the series that brings readers of English the once strictly guarded Russian training methods.
This book is a comprehensive manual for those new to chess, which explains with great clarity the basics of the game. Using innovative methods, Gude ensures that readers quickly grasp each key concept before building on it by introducing new ideas. This is an interactive course. With a total of 280 questions and exercises to tackle, the reader will quickly gain skills rather than mere knowledge. Gude strips the mystery away from tactics and combinations by looking first at the strengths and weaknesses of each piece in isolation, and then showing how they work together with each of the other pieces. He also presents guidelines on chess strategy that will help shape the reader's understanding of chess, and a wide variety of patterns for the reader's all-important 'mental database'. The section on openings explains the main aims of each major opening, and the style of game to which they tend of lead, together with some key variations. Later chapters provide examples of how to launch attacks, putting together the skills from earlier chapters, and deal with issues such as chess training, psychology and competitive chess at club and tournament level.
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 the computer’s best moves, but in playing your opponent – however bad the evaluation! 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 wildly entertaining guide, Smerdon shows you how.
Athough accurate opening play is satisfying and the middle game can be exciting, for most chess players victory is the aim. This book boils down the essential wisdom of the endgame, and gives the player ideas and the ability to recognise when to play them.
A three-time U.S. Champion and Grandmaster and an award-winning educator provide a compact but comprehensive series of chess lessons and essential knowledge to help everyone from beginners to competitors achieve their desired level of proficiency in the game. Original.
Artur Yusupov's complete course of chess training stretches to nine volumes, guiding the reader towards a higher chess understanding using carefully selected positions and advice. To make sure that this new knowledge sticks, it is then tested by a selection of puzzles. The course is structured in three series with three levels. The Fundamentals level is the easiest one, Beyond the Basics is more challenging, and Mastery is quite difficult, even for stronger players. The various topics – Tactics, Strategy, Positional Play, Endgames, Calculating Variations, and Openings – are spread evenly across the nine volumes, giving readers the chance to improve every area as they work through the books. This book is the first volume at the Fundamentals level. The Build Up Your Chess series won the prestigious Boleslavsky Medal from FIDE (the World Chess Federation) as the best instructional chess books in the world.
This chess classic has been praised by players and teachers alike. Lev Alburt, Grandmaster of Chess and three-time US chess champion, presents and analyzes the attack and defense of the king, with hundreds of game illustrations, dozens of problems and exercises, and instructive explanations and solutions. These practical exercises take the reader from beginner to tournament-strength chess player.
An easy-to-understand guide to chess strategy -- conceptual planning -- has always been the amateur's dream. This book makes that dream a reality. This comprehensive guide in dictionary form, the first of its kind, makes all aspects of chess strategy quick, easy, and painlessly accessible to players of all degrees of strength. Each strategic concept is listed alphabetically and followed by a clear, easy-to-absorb explanation accompanied by examples of how this strategy is used in practice. Such great World Champions as Steinitz, Capablanca, Petrosian, Fischer, and Karpov have used these strategies in virtually all of their games. Now you can arm yourself with their weapons. As you incorporate these weapons into your own play, they will enrich your appreciation of the game and lead you to one beautiful victory after another.