Editorial Reviews:
Winner of ChessCafe.com Book of the Year 2005, nominee for BCF Book of the Year 2005 and the best chess book in the last two decades according to Jeremy Silman. In this ambitious work Mihail Marin examines and explains the contribution from the chess legends who influenced him strongly in his own development. This personal and sympathetic journey into the best chess of yesterday is guaranteed to help the readers in their games. As we all know: those who do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.

Editorial Reviews:
The material imbalance that is the subject of this book may seem a narrow topic, but the lessons to be learned here apply to all areas of chess: those who study this book will improve their general feeling for the pieces and their interrelation. Lund starts by building a theoretical foundation, comparing various theoreticians’ methods of assessing positions with a rook versus two minor pieces. Later, in a rich exercise section, these concepts are tested in practice. This book has an unusual approach to the idea of "practical examples" as the examples often start in the opening, then consider the transformation from the opening to the middlegame, and later to the endgame: this provides the reader with a much deeper level of understanding than conventional methods.

Editorial Reviews:
Most endgame books deal with positions where each player have only one piece, and seems to presume that the reader will memorise long variations and hundres of positions. This book is an exception to these. While focussing on the basic rules governing endgame play, and demonstrating them with deeply annotated practical examples, this book helps the reader to understand endgames, instead of memorising them. This "learn a man to fish" approach is characteristic for Jacob Aagaard's books, but never more apparent than in this book, which both the author himself and his regular proof reader Danny Kristiansen considers his best work.