All the average club player needs is a small and manageable chess opening repertoire. They don’t have time and energy to study hundreds of pages of chess opening theory. And why would they? Amateur games are rarely decided in the opening. Understanding structures and finding tactics are much more important. Renowned German chess trainers Erik Zude and Jörg Hickl have created an ideal club player’s repertoire for Black. This compact manual presents a set of lines that is conveniently limited in scope, yet varied, solid and complete. The core repertoire is based on lines that the authors have successfully played at (grand)master level for decades: the Antoshin variation of the Philidor Defence against 1.e4 and the Old-Indian Defence against 1.d4. There is only a limited number of plans, ideas and structures that you need to learn, and very few forcing variations. After an initial phase in which Black may at first sight look slightly passive, you will develop your position with a sequence of strong standard moves and start your highly effective counterplay. Zude and Hickl provide common sense guidance, explain all typical characteristics and give practical examples. If you have an Elo rating between 1400 and 2200, you don’t need to look further because you can Play 1..d6 Against Everything!

Cyrus Lakdawala examines the universal defence 1...d6, constructs an opening repertoire for Black and provides answers to all the key questions in this opening.

Vol. 12 (from May 1876 to May 1877) includes: Researches in telephony / by A. Graham Bell.

Reprints.

Readings in Fuzzy Sets for Intelligent Systems is a collection of readings that explore the main facets of fuzzy sets and possibility theory and their use in intelligent systems. Basic notions in fuzzy set theory are discussed, along with fuzzy control and approximate reasoning. Uncertainty and informativeness, information processing, and membership, cognition, neural networks, and learning are also considered. Comprised of eight chapters, this book begins with a historical background on fuzzy sets and possibility theory, citing some forerunners who discussed ideas or formal definitions very close to the basic notions introduced by Lotfi Zadeh (1978). The reader is then introduced to fundamental concepts in fuzzy set theory, including symmetric summation and the setting of fuzzy logic; uncertainty and informativeness; and fuzzy control. Subsequent chapters deal with approximate reasoning; information processing; decision and management sciences; and membership, cognition, neural networks, and learning. Numerical methods for fuzzy clustering are described, and adaptive inference in fuzzy knowledge networks is analyzed. This monograph will be of interest to both students and practitioners in the fields of computer science, information science, applied mathematics, and artificial intelligence.