The greatest chess players in the world reveal their cutthroat insights, concepts, and strategies in this fascinating volume. For individuals looking to play killer chess, this is the definitive guide to ingenious moves, incredible combinations, and brilliant sacrifices from the chess masters.

Bored with the same old openings? Worried about having to learn too much theory? Then this book will come as a godsend. Aaron Summerscale presents a set of exceptionally dangerous opening weapons for White. Each recommended line is based on a solid positional foundation, yet also promises long-term (and short-term!) attacking chances. The variations are not just easy to learn and play, but they also set Black complex problems. * A queen's pawn repertoire based on rapid piece development * Reveals many lethal attacking ideas and traps * Features the legendary '150' and Barry Attacks For this new edition, the publishers enlisted the help of hotshot opening writer Sverre Johnsen, who has updated the coverage where necessary, while retaining the spirit, charm and aims of Summerscale's original work. The killer repertoire remains easy to learn, and is now more dangerous than ever!

Judit Polgar is the strongest female chess player of all time. From an early age on the Hungarian prodigy baffled the world with her sensational triumphs. At the age of 15 she beat Bobby Fischer’s record to become the youngest grandmaster in history. During her glorious career, which she ended in 2014, she defeated World Champions Boris Spassky, Anatoly Karpov, Garry Kasparov, Vishy Anand and Magnus Carlsen. To reach the 8th spot in the FIDE World Rankings (for men) and belong to the very best for many years, as Judit Polgar did, you obviously have to be a brilliant all-round chess player. Still, she will be first and foremost remembered for her attacking skills. Her electrifying combinations and tactical triumphs set her apart. As former U.S. Champion Joel Benjamin said after he lost to her: "She is a tiger at the chessboard. She absolutely has a killer instinct." Award-winning author Charles Hertan has revisited the gold mine of Judit Polgar’s games and selected her best and most instructive tactics. They are arranged by theme and presented with helpful explanations and lots of practical advice. You will be inspired by her clever traps, stunning sacrifices and cunning endgame tricks. You will learn from her tactical vision, calculating skills and counter-intuitive ideas. Strike Like Judit is a riveting guide that will help you win more games as you will find killer moves more easily and more quickly.

Chess is 99% tactics. If this celebrated observation is true for the master, how much more so for beginners and casual players! If you want to win more games, nothing works better than training combinations. There are two types of books on tactics, those that introduce the concepts followed by some examples, and workbooks that contain numerous exercises. Chess masters and trainers Franco Masetti and Roberto Messa have done both: they explain the basic tactical ideas AND provide an enormous amount of exercises for each different theme. Masetti and Messa have created a great first tactics book. It teaches you how to: ¯ identify weak spots in the position of your opponent ¯ recognize patterns of combinations ¯ visualize tricks. 1001 Chess Exercises for Beginners can also be used as a course text book, because only the most didactically productive exercises have been used.

Chess is a cruel game. We all know that feeling when your position has gone awry and everything seems hopeless. You feel like resigning. But don’t give up! This is precisely the moment to switch to swindle mode. Master the art of provoking errors and you will be able to turn the tables and escape with a draw – or sometimes even steal the full point! Swindling is a skill that can be trained. In this book, David Smerdon shows how you can use tricks from psychology to marshal hidden resources and exploit your opponent’s biases. In a lost position, your best practical chance often lies not in the computer’s best moves, but in playing your opponent – however bad the evaluation! With an abundance of eye-popping examples and training exercises, Smerdon identifies the four best friends of every chess swindler: your opponent’s impatience, their hubris, their fear, and their need to stay in control. You’ll also learn about such cunning swindling motifs as the Trojan Horse, the decoy trap, the berserk attack, and ‘window-ledging’. So, come and join the Swindlers’ Club, become a great escape artist and dramatically improve your results. In this instructive and wildly entertaining guide, Smerdon shows you how.

Chess is 99% tactics. This celebrated observation is not only true for beginners, but also for club players (Elo 1500 – 2000). If you want to win more games, nothing works better than training your combination skills. There are two types of books on tactics: those that introduce the concepts followed by some examples, and workbooks that contain lots of exercises. FIDE Master Frank Erwich has done both: he explains all key tactical ideas AND provides an enormous amount of exercises for each different theme. Erwich has created a complete tactics book for ambitious club and tournament players. He teaches you how to reach the next level of identifying weak spots in the position of your opponent, recognizing patterns of combinations, visualizing tricks and calculating effectively. Erwich has also included a new and important element: tests that will improve your defensive skills. 1001 Chess Exercises for Club Players is not a collection of freewheeling puzzles. It serves as a course text book, because only the most didactically productive exercises are featured. Every chapter starts with easy examples, but no worries: the level of difficulty will steadily increase.

Charles Hertan, an experienced chess coach from Massachusetts, has made an astonishing discovery: the failure to consider key winning moves is often due to human bias, since your brain tends to disregard many winning moves because they are counter-intuitive or look unnatural. Charles Hertan?s radically different approach is: use COMPUTER EYES and always look for the most forcing move first! By studying forcing sequences according to Hertan?s method you will develop analytical precision, improve your tactical vision, overcome human bias and staleness, and enjoy the calculation of difficult positions. By recognizing moves that matter, you will win more games!

An easy-to-understand guide to chess strategy -- conceptual planning -- has always been the amateur's dream. This book makes that dream a reality. This comprehensive guide in dictionary form, the first of its kind, makes all aspects of chess strategy quick, easy, and painlessly accessible to players of all degrees of strength. Each strategic concept is listed alphabetically and followed by a clear, easy-to-absorb explanation accompanied by examples of how this strategy is used in practice. Such great World Champions as Steinitz, Capablanca, Petrosian, Fischer, and Karpov have used these strategies in virtually all of their games. Now you can arm yourself with their weapons. As you incorporate these weapons into your own play, they will enrich your appreciation of the game and lead you to one beautiful victory after another.

Perhaps if you owned one of the four or five great chess libraries of the world, you could, by diligent search, find most or all of these delectable nuggets. But who has either the time or the assets. So, Mr. Chernev, who has both, has provided us here with 1000 of the sweetest sugar-coated pills in all chess literature. Each introduced with a brief, pungent or witty commentary. Chess brevities have always exercised a special attraction for lovers of the royal game. It may be well that we welcome the punishment inexorably meted out for some trifling slip. Maybe it's out inherent sadism that makes us enjoy the spectacle of speedy punishment doled out to someone else, just as a fight fan thrills to a one-round knockout. Perhaps it's only our inherent laziness after all, to play over a brevity, one often need not bother to set up the pieces. Be that is it may, its popularity is universal. And here are the best of them, gathered together in one volume, for your pleasure and enjoyment. Many of us know instances galore of beginners becoming a cropper after only a few moves through the "scholar's mate" or some other absurdity not necessarily so primitive. Yet it would be quite wrong to assume that only duffers suffer the ignominy of a speedy knockout. The victim may well be a famous master, as you will discover to your surprise, delight and, most of all, your deep, deep satisfaction. After all, if Morphy can be mated in 12 moves, Capablanca defeated in 13, and Lasker blitzed in 14, who are we to hide our heads in shame?