Gambit Chess Books

In this book Lars Bo Hansen shows how chess understanding has evolved and explains how and why a study of great champions of the past and present will significantly improve your chess. Although modern chess is a highly concrete game where calculation is a paramount and principles often appear to take a back seat. Hansen argues that the principles have become implicit at top level: "you cannot w...

Throughout a game of chess, the players must constantly make judgments and decisions that cannot be determined simply by calculation. They must then rely on their positional judgment. Good positional skills are primarily developed by experience, but they can also be learned. In this book, Carsten Hansen provides a wealth of advice and ideas that will help give readers a helping hand up to new l...

Igor Stohl has selected 62 outstanding games from recent years and analyzed them in painstaking depth. Here he presents his findings to chess enthusiasts, who will find the games entertaining and the annotations both instructive and illuminating. Stohl is an outstanding theoretical expert, so the opening phase of each game reads like a lesson in the key strategic aspects of the opening chosen, ...

By calmly fianchettoing his king's bishop in reply to the King's Indian and Grunfeld, White seeks to draw the sting from these dynamic defenses and exert positional pressure throughout the middlegame. By refusing to create a massive pawn-centre, he offers Black no target for counter play. Some of the lines become very sharp, especially if Black makes an all-out attempt to generate counter play ...

Good planning is central to good chess. A plan gives meaning to manoeuvres and tactical devices, forming a coherent whole that brings us closer to our goals. The modern understanding of chess planning has evolved considerably since the days of the "grand plan", whereby a player might even try to map out the whole course of the game. Nowadays, top-class players appreciate that the opponent's ide...

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Andrei Volokitin is one of a rare breed of players: he achieved a ranking in the world's top 20 while still a teenager, playing dynamic and often brilliant chess. Although we cannot all aspire to emulate his achievements, there is much that we can learn from his training methods, his games and his general approach to chess. These topics are the subject of this book, written in collaboration wit...

The Nimzo-Indian is an extremely popular and reliable defence, upon which most world champions have relied at some point in their careers. Black controls the vital e4-square with his pieces, and retains total flexibility with his central pawns. By playing 4 f3, White challenges Black's idea head-on. Either Black grants White control of e4, or else he must commit his pawn to d5, whereupon White ...

The Alekhine is arguably the most forcing and aggressive reply to 1e4. Black immediately sets the pace and drags the game onto his own favoured territory. This strategy is not without risk, but those who specialize in the Alekhine find that the opneing has a real practical sting and quick-strike potential.<br> This book describes the main positional and tactical themes unique to the Alekhine, a...

This book fills a gaping chasm in chess literature. For years, those who wish to take on the black side of the Ruy Lopez have had to muddle their way through against the variety of alternative openings at White's disposal. This book gives a choice of systems for Black; to counter anything White might try in order to avoid the Ruy Lopez - the Scotch, King's Gambit, Italian Game, Four Knights, et...

Acclaimed author and grandmaster Paul Motwani discusses four elements of successful chess (strategy, tactics, attack, reaction) with the same wit and clarity that has characterized his previous writings on the game. Here he applies his original, mnemonic-based approach to the strategy and tactics of attack, defense and counterattack. This book is packed with instructive model examples starting ...

In his previous work, Secrets of Chess Defence, Mihail Marin examined the task facing the defender. Now he considers the other side of the coin. In this wide-ranging treatise, he discusses many topics including: the balance between attack and defence; the premises for starting a successful attack; advantage in development; intuitive sacrifices; typical scenarios. The book features many practica...

Intuition is central to all chess decision-making, and an understanding of its role is vital in improving one's game. Players who try to calculate everything to a finish are doomed to lose out to those who use their logical and intuitive abilities in harmony with one another. This book, the first devoted to the role of intuition in chess, explains how to allow your intuition to reach its full p...

One of the most important skills in chess is the ability to transform one type of advantage into another. The great champions effortlessly convert an initiative into an attack, an attack into a material gain, and move into an endgame where this advantage can be exploited smoothly. Readers know from their own games that this is not as simple as it looks. It is all too easy to miss the right mome...

How can one determine if a piece is weak or strong? Or if a square is weak or strong? These are the principal questions that grandmaster and trainer Drazen Marovic addresses in this important book. By discussing carefully-chosen games and positions, Marovic explains how to recognize good and bad features of positions, and how to make use of one's advantages and exploit the opponent's weaknesses...

What is the best way to improve your chess results? Memorizing an opening encyclopedia, learning endgame theory, solving puzzle positions...there must be an easier way. How about making the most of your existing talent? In this book, John Nunn helps you to do precisely that. Drawing upon more than three decades of experience, he provides advice that will help players of all standards, playing s...

In this book, John Nunn, a top-class grandmaster who is also one of the world's finest solvers, explains the methods by which chess problems and studies are solved. The logical and creative methods advocated, while targeted at the solving of composed positions, may also help players find startling tactical solutions in their games. Solving in Style also constitutes an entertaining and insightfu...

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 firs...

The Najdorf Sicilian is one of the key battlegrounds of modern chess. This opening line occurs in a high proportion of top-level games, and is popular amongst players of all levels. World Champions Fischer and Kasparov are the Najdorf's most famous adherents - both made it their main defence, and scored a high proportion of wins with it, while very rarely losing. The English Attack (Be3 and f3)...

This book continues the coverage of the French Defence that was begun by Pedersen in The Main Line French: 3 Nc3. It is essential reading for all those who play the French, and for those who meet it with the popular and flexible Tarrasch Variation. The Tarrasch Variation provides a stern test for the French Defence, and has always been a favourite of strategically minded players, such as Michae...

My banner makes an attractive headline; but I would humbly opine that this book is sort of like Kotov's classic "Think like a GM" and Pal Benko's "Winning Chess Psychology" combined. I was at the prestigious HB Tournament as a spectator; and there was the widest array of chess books I had ever seen were on sale. Opening books, ones on tactics, games collections, etc. but I wanted something a bi...