Benjamin Katz is a renowned chess coach with over 20 years experience coaching students of all ability levels throughout the United States. He has helped numerous students improve and achieve chess success. This book details the training program he has developed based on this extensive experience. It cultivates the core skill set required to advance beyond the basics in chess. Included are key strategies, basic endgame positions and techniques, information on what to do when you’re stuck, how to convert an advantage, and a high-level opening repertoire for both black and white. There are also numerous practical exercises that utilize a combination of recent examples from the games of Benjamin’s students, as well as games played by the top players in the world, both contemporary and from the game’s history.

'New (4th) and improved edition of an all-time classic The good news about endgames is: • there are relatively few endings you should know by heart • once you know these endings, that's it. Your knowledge never goes out of date! The bad news is that, all the same, the endgame technique of most players is deficient. Modern time-controls make matters worse: there is simply not enough time to delve deep into the position. Jesus de la Vila debunks the myth that endgame theory is complex and he teaches you to steer the game into a position you are familiar with. This book contains only those endgames that: • show up most frequently • are easy to learn • contain ideas that are useful in more difficult positions. Your performance will improve dramatically because this book brings you: • simple rules • detailed and lively explanations • many diagrams • clear summaries of the most important themes • dozens of tests.

Grandmaster Johan Hellsten is convinced that mastering chess strategy - just like chess tactics - requires practice, practice and yet more practice! This outstanding book is a product of his many years' work as a full-time chess teacher, and is specifically designed as part of a structured training programme to improve strategic thinking. It focuses on a wide range of key subjects and provides a basic foundation for strategic play. Furthermore, in addition to the many examples, there's an abundance of carefully selected exercises which allow readers to monitor their progress and put into practice what they have just learned. Following such a course is an ideal way for players of all standards to improve. Although designed mainly for students, this book is also an excellent resource for chess teachers and trainers. An essential course in chess strategyContains over 400 pages of Grandmaster adviceIncludes more than 350 training exercises

In this book, tactics expert Richard Palliser presents the reader with an enormous 1500 chess puzzles, all checked for accuracy by the latest computer engines. There is something for players of all levels here: many basic tactics forks, pins, skewers and checkmates to appeal to beginners and improvers, and a considerable number of brain-teasers that will tax even the strongest of players."

Your one-stop guide to the common patterns and practices, showing you how to apply these using the Go programming language About This Book This short, concise, and practical guide is packed with real-world examples of building microservices with Go It is easy to read and will benefit smaller teams who want to extend the functionality of their existing systems Using this practical approach will save your money in terms of maintaining a monolithic architecture and demonstrate capabilities in ease of use Who This Book Is For You should have a working knowledge of programming in Go, including writing and compiling basic applications. However, no knowledge of RESTful architecture, microservices, or web services is expected. If you are looking to apply techniques to your own projects, taking your first steps into microservice architecture, this book is for you. What You Will Learn Plan a microservice architecture and design a microservice Write a microservice with a RESTful API and a database Understand the common idioms and common patterns in microservices architecture Leverage tools and automation that helps microservices become horizontally scalable Get a grounding in containerization with Docker and Docker-Compose, which will greatly accelerate your development lifecycle Manage and secure Microservices at scale with monitoring, logging, service discovery, and automation Test microservices and integrate API tests in Go In Detail Microservice architecture is sweeping the world as the de facto pattern to build web-based applications. Golang is a language particularly well suited to building them. Its strong community, encouragement of idiomatic style, and statically-linked binary artifacts make integrating it with other technologies and managing microservices at scale consistent and intuitive. This book will teach you the common patterns and practices, showing you how to apply these using the Go programming language. It will teach you the fundamental concepts of architectural design and RESTful communication, and show you patterns that provide manageable code that is supportable in development and at scale in production. We will provide you with examples on how to put these concepts and patterns into practice with Go. Whether you are planning a new application or working in an existing monolith, this book will explain and illustrate with practical examples how teams of all sizes can start solving problems with microservices. It will help you understand Docker and Docker-Compose and how it can be used to isolate microservice dependencies and build environments. We finish off by showing you various techniques to monitor, test, and secure your microservices. By the end, you will know the benefits of system resilience of a microservice and the advantages of Go stack. Style and approach The step-by-step tutorial focuses on building microservices. Each chapter expands upon the previous one, teaching you the main skills and techniques required to be a successful microservice practitioner.

Jacob Aagaard presents the reader with a few key concepts in the endgame in chess and invites him to test his skills with a lot of examples from recent tournament practice. Where many endgame books are theoretical and emphasize memorization, Endgame Play is based entirely in the real world, where the ability to react precisely in technical positions is a life skill.

Praise for How I Became a Quant "Led by two top-notch quants, Richard R. Lindsey and Barry Schachter, How I Became a Quant details the quirky world of quantitative analysis through stories told by some of today's most successful quants. For anyone who might have thought otherwise, there are engaging personalities behind all that number crunching!" --Ira Kawaller, Kawaller & Co. and the Kawaller Fund "A fun and fascinating read. This book tells the story of how academics, physicists, mathematicians, and other scientists became professional investors managing billions." --David A. Krell, President and CEO, International Securities Exchange "How I Became a Quant should be must reading for all students with a quantitative aptitude. It provides fascinating examples of the dynamic career opportunities potentially open to anyone with the skills and passion for quantitative analysis." --Roy D. Henriksson, Chief Investment Officer, Advanced Portfolio Management "Quants"--those who design and implement mathematical models for the pricing of derivatives, assessment of risk, or prediction of market movements--are the backbone of today's investment industry. As the greater volatility of current financial markets has driven investors to seek shelter from increasing uncertainty, the quant revolution has given people the opportunity to avoid unwanted financial risk by literally trading it away, or more specifically, paying someone else to take on the unwanted risk. How I Became a Quant reveals the faces behind the quant revolution, offering you?the?chance to learn firsthand what it's like to be a?quant today. In this fascinating collection of Wall Street war stories, more than two dozen quants detail their roots, roles, and contributions, explaining what they do and how they do it, as well as outlining the sometimes unexpected paths they have followed from the halls of academia to the front lines of an investment revolution.

A famed writer, speaker, player and international master has created the one and only endgame book chess enthusiasts need as they move up the ladder from beginner to tournament player to possession of the coveted master title.

"In this eBook, you'll learn the principles of grammar and how to manipulate your words until they're just right. Strengthen your revising and editing skills and become a clear and consistent writer." --

The significantly expanded and updated new edition of a widely used text on reinforcement learning, one of the most active research areas in artificial intelligence. Reinforcement learning, one of the most active research areas in artificial intelligence, is a computational approach to learning whereby an agent tries to maximize the total amount of reward it receives while interacting with a complex, uncertain environment. In Reinforcement Learning, Richard Sutton and Andrew Barto provide a clear and simple account of the field's key ideas and algorithms. This second edition has been significantly expanded and updated, presenting new topics and updating coverage of other topics. Like the first edition, this second edition focuses on core online learning algorithms, with the more mathematical material set off in shaded boxes. Part I covers as much of reinforcement learning as possible without going beyond the tabular case for which exact solutions can be found. Many algorithms presented in this part are new to the second edition, including UCB, Expected Sarsa, and Double Learning. Part II extends these ideas to function approximation, with new sections on such topics as artificial neural networks and the Fourier basis, and offers expanded treatment of off-policy learning and policy-gradient methods. Part III has new chapters on reinforcement learning's relationships to psychology and neuroscience, as well as an updated case-studies chapter including AlphaGo and AlphaGo Zero, Atari game playing, and IBM Watson's wagering strategy. The final chapter discusses the future societal impacts of reinforcement learning.