Test Your Chess by Steffen Pedersen Publication Date: December 1, 2000 (160 pages)
Editorial Reviews:
This book offers a variety of entertaining and thought-provoking exercises in fundamental chess skills. It will help players of all standards to identify strengths and pinpoint areas of their play that need more attention. The first half of the book tests your ability in each part of the game. Opening Exercises test your ability to develop harmoniously and to find creative solutions in the first part of the the game. The middlegame section assesses your proficiency at making decisions relating to attack and defence, prophylactic thinking and finding the correct plan. The endgame challenges focus on the basic essential knowledge that often decides real-life games.
Editorial Reviews:
Grandmaster Joe Gallagher serves up a plethora of ideas to help you root out the enemy king whenever you have the chance. He shows how to mate an exposed king, how to and what to sacrifice, and how to spot key weaknesses. Gallagher also reveals when it is wiser to opt for a positional onslaught, with guidance on the queenside minority attack and other less violent attacking methods.
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One of the world's finest writers on chess presents his selection of brilliant modern games of 25 moves or fewer. Much can be learned from these sparkling miniatures. John Nunn examines how the loser might have avoided disaster, and explains how the winner managed to punch home his advantage so effectively.
The games themselves are absolute gems. In a roll-call of the world elite, grandmasters and World Champions feature as both victor and victim. Fischer, Timman, Kramnik and Shirov all have wins. There are two wins apiece for Spassky and Korchnoi, five by Tal and seven by Kasparov. The format (with three diagrams per page, and up to six per game) enables the book to be enjoyed even if a chess set is not handy.
Editorial Reviews:
Many books provide training in how to round off a successful attack with a final combination, but that's really just the easy part. The difficult thing is to decide how and where to attack in the first place, and to build up the offensive without giving the opponent real counterchances. Larry Christiansen is highly respected by his grandmaster colleagues for his ability to conjure up dangerous attacking chances from almost any position. In this book he takes more than 50 real-life positions, breaks each one down into its key elements and explains the right strategy for conducting a successful attack. The examples are selected to illustrate a wide variety of attacking themes and to provide an instructive and accurate picture of how modern players attack and defend.
Editorial Reviews:
Without strategy, a chess game is just a series of tactical tricks. A good strategy binds together the tactics, and enables a player to make methodical progress towards victory.
This book makes sure you will never be short of winning strategies. Angus Dunnington utilizes his many years of chess playing and training to provide an arsenal of ideas that can be employed in many types of position. These plans have been proven in many grandmaster games, so you can be sure that by using them your game will be soundly based.
Editorial Reviews:
Winner of the year 2000 Chess Journalists of America Cramer Award for Best Chess Book.
Topics covered include: trend-breaking tools; the burden of small advantages; what exchanges are for; classics revisited; and computer chess. A large part of the book discusses a variety of important opening set-ups, including methods for opposing offbeat but dangerous lines, such as the Grand Prix Attack.
Editorial Reviews:
It is now seventy years since Nimzowitsch wrote his monumental work My System. While it remains a fundamental work on chess strategy, the way chess positions are handled has changed greatly since Nimzowitsch's time - both refinements to existing ideas, and completely new concepts. John Watson's book fulfils the need for a thorough, profound work on the modern handling of chess positions, and how Nimzowitsch's theories - still controversial and revolutionary at the time My System was written - have been refined and used alongside classical concepts.
S.T.A.R. Chess by Paul Motwani Publication Date: March 1, 1998 (239 pages)
Editorial Reviews:
Acclaimed author and grandmaster Paul Motwani discusses four elements of successful chess (strategy, tactics, attack, reaction) with the same wit and clarity that has characterised his previous writings on the game. Here he applies his original, mnemonic-based approach to the strategy and tactics of attack, defence and counterattack. This book is packed with instructive model examples starting from a wide spectrum of opening systems, presenting a treasure-trove of ideas to surprise even the most experienced of opponents. Interspersed with the instruction are test positions and puzzles to improve your skills in reasoning.