Learning how to start a game of chess is one of the most daunting tasks facing intermediate adult and young chess players. Award-winning chess teacher and championship scholastic coach Pete Tamburro offers practical guidance for avoiding common pitfalls at the chessboard, as well as effective strategies for meeting troublesome openings and a choice of openings reflecting his focus on ideas over memorization.

Opening, middlegame and endgame are the three universally recognized stages of a game of chess, but what about the art of preparation? Winning starts with planning before the game, teaches legendary chess trainer Vladimir Tukmakov in this enlightening and entertaining work on a neglected subject. Exploring and understanding, prior to the game, the strengths and weaknesses of your next opponent and being aware of your own strong points and shortcomings, are a key to success. Tukmakov describes how planning has become a systematic process, how methodical preparation works, and which critical steps you have to take. The role of the computer in preparing for a game has grown tremendously, and Modern Chess Preparation explains how it is used by top players to get organized for success. But you will also learn the limitations on the use of chess engines and databases and how disastrous it can be to overly respect them and rely on them. A separate chapter is devoted on how to prepare for all-important games, games that will decide a tournament, a match or a even an entire career. Modern Chess Preparation is about more than just opening preparation. It also teaches you how to immerse yourself in order to find the best approach to the game. With powerful anecdotes and many instructive high-level games, Tukmakov explains how, as a competitive chess player, you can organize your homework, focus your efforts, and arrive at a viable game plan. Vladimir Tukmakov is a chess grandmaster and a former national champion of Ukraine. In his active career he won many tournaments as well as gold medals in international team competitions. He is universally acknowledged as an outstanding chess trainer and coach. ,

This is an updated and largely expanded edition of the highly acclaimed Starting Out: The Sicilian. John Emms goes back to basics, studying the fundamental principles of the Sicilian and its many variations.

A Spanish grandmaster explains how creativity can be used to overcome technical obstacles on the chessboard. Once they have obtained an advantage, too many players make the mistake of assuming that the exploitation of this advantage will just be a matter of technique, requiring accuracy but little imagination. Romero shows that the opposite is often the case: sometimes it is the paradoxical solution that works, whereas the mechanical method would fritter away the hard-earned advantage. By following Romero in his investigation of the many outstanding practical examples in this book, readers will inevitably increase their understanding of chess strategy in general, and fine-tune their instinct for sensing those critical moments when non-standard solutions are necessary.

Playing as Black in a game of chess can be difficult. Do you simply try to neutralize White's initiative, or go all-out to complicate the game? Either way, there are many pitfalls, and a lot of study may be needed. In this book, Grandmaster Eingorn shows that it is possible both to play solidly, and to take White out of his comfort zone. He recommends ideas and move-orders that are a little off the beaten track, but which he has very carefully worked out over many years of his own practice. The repertoire, based on playing 1...e6, is strikingly creative and will appeal to those who want a stress-free life as Black. You will get every chance to demonstrate your chess skills, and are very unlikely to be blown off the board by a sharp prepared line. All you need is a flexible approach, and a willingness to try out new structures and ideas. Eingorn's subtle move-orders are particularly effective if White refuses to pick up the gauntlet, as Black can then use his delay in playing ...Nf6 to good effect and take the fight directly to his opponent.

Seven years after his acclaimed and bestselling The Kaufman Repertoire for Black and White, Grandmaster Larry Kaufman is back with his new repertoire book, covering the entire scope of chess openings in one volume. Two important developments made this new book necessary. Larry Kaufman, who routinely himself plays the lines he advocates to others, discovered that after 1.d4 (the recommendation in his previous book) it became nearly impossible to show a consistent advantage for White, especially against the Gruenfeld and the Nimzo/Ragozin defenses. The other factor was that chess engines have become so much stronger in recent years. Komodo, the top chess engine that computer expert Kaufman helped develop, is now able to apply the celebrated Monte Carlo Tree Search algorithm. With Komodo MCTS it is now possible to abandon lines that may be theoretically best against other computers, and instead choose lines that are likely to succeed in actual practice against strong human opponents. Larry Kaufman presents a completely new White repertoire with 1.e4 aiming for an objective advantage in the simplest practical manner. You are presented with two options, while you don't have to play the sharpest lines. The Black repertoire has been thoroughly revised and updated, with some crucial chapters replaced. Kaufman's New Repertoire for Black and White is the first opening book that is primarily based on Monte Carlo search. The highly original analysis has resulted in many improvements on existing theory. This is a ready-to-go and easy-to-digest repertoire with sound, practical lines that do not outdate rapidly and are suitable for masters while accessible for amateurs.

There are hundreds of opening books available, full of deep analysis, but many of them fail to explain the reasons for choosing one computer line over another. And how top players distinguish between good and bad opening lines remains a mystery to most of the chess world.Grandmaster Opening Preparation addresses such questions as how to balance computer preparation with human considerations, along with a wealth of practical advice on how to go about building the opening repertoire which is right for you. The book also provides an in-depth treatment of the evolution in understanding of Isolated Queen's Pawn positions, which will enable the reader to become more effective in a multitude of openings, with either colour.

The number of hours you can spend on opening preparation is endless. Books, videos and databases offer hundreds of ever-widening variations. But how do you find your way through this labyrinth? Where do you start? And, maybe even more importantly: where do you stop? International Master Jeroen Bosch provides a solution to those answers. He presents a structured approach to the study of openings and the preparation for a club match or a tournament game. Every time-strapped chess improver will love Bosch’s approach: instead of studying more hours or memorizing more lines he advises you to start making smart choices. The goal is not to reach a slight advantage in every possible line. The goal is to dictate what will happen on the board. You want to get a position you understand and are happy to play, and make your opponent feel uncomfortable. Jeroen Bosch provides you with all the tools you need to dominate the opening phase of the game: how to use move order and how to use tactics. He explains when to play a main line, when to come up with an opening surprise, or when to risk a gambit. And much, much more.

There is an interesting paradox in the chess community - many coaches and teachers warn players of all levels against the excessive obsession with opening theory and yet the vast majority of chess materials in digital or printed form are dedicated to specific opening variations or positions. While everyone admits that memorizing variations will never guarantee success in over the board or online encounters, there is clearly a demand for products that help chess players of all levels to successfully navigate through the first stage of the game. At the same time, there is a lack of detailed discussion regarding how seasoned players (expert level and above) structure their work on chess openings, store their analysis, come up with new ideas, prepare for tournament games and so on. Rather than provide another set of variations, key positions and critical games in a specific opening area, this book is meant to fill this gap and help the reader to make sense from all the information that is out there and save as much time and energy as possible, while still building a bulletproof opening repertoire. The book is aimed at any chess player who wants to improve their opening play and is looking for some guidance in that area. Despite the large proliferation of computer chess software, there is a lack of explanation for how to tie to it effectively to one's study of openings. In the most advanced book on the subject, 'Opening Preparation', published in 1990s, the renowned coach Mark Dvoretsky, while giving great coverage for other topics, described the system for storing opening analysis on paper cards, with a side note that this was outdated and software should be used instead and that this was a large topic deserving a separate discussion. Since then there was a deafening silence on the subject in chess books, at least partially inspiring this publication, which outlines the system for storing opening analysis that served the author well for almost a decade. The goal of the book is to help the reader to increase their creativity in the opening phase of the game - both at home and during the games - whether you are a serious tournament player, or just play chess for fun at a club or on the Internet. Most of the plans and ideas are coming from Grandmaster games, with additional examples of preparation from the author's own master level games. Whether you enjoy opening preparation already, or it is your weak spot, I hope the book will give you some food for thought and practical suggestions applicable immediately upon reading the book. If rather than remember exact opening moves from the book examples, the reader is instead inspired to come up with their own ideas - the author's mission will be quite accomplished! Good opening preparation is all about picking the right direction for opening research and investing time into fine-tuning the understanding of favourable positions that are most likely to occur in our games. The basic premise throughout the book is to base one's opening preparation on 3 E's: Enjoyable - the positions that you analyze during opening preparation should appeal to your chess taste, and the process itself should feel pleasant and creative. See the section on 'Creativity' for more details. Effective - ultimately it should bring good results during tournament games, and be targeted at the positions that are most likely to occur on the board. This is covered under sections on Cutting Opponent's Options, Transpositions, and so on. Our choice of opening variations is more likely to make our work effective than anything else. Efficient - this is not as important as effectiveness, but we still don't want to waste time and analysis, so various computer tools are suggested to optimize the 'how' of opening analysis, save our work, and efficiently retrieve it. While it has plenty of examples and annotated games, this book deals with opening preparation in general. For books on specific openings, the reader might want to explore other books in the "Opening Preparation" Series: - Spanish Opening - Strategy and Tactics for White - Exchange Slav - Strategy and Tactics covers the particular opening and pawn structure for both sides - Isolated Queen Pawn: Strategy and Tactics spans multiple openings, but focuses on a single common pawn structure

The 100 outstanding games in this volume are Mikhail Botvinnik's own choices as the best games he played before becoming World Champion in 1948. They cover the period from his first big tournament — the USSR Championship of 1927, in which the 16-year-old Botvinnik became a master — to the International Tournament at Groningen in 1946 — in which he demonstrated his qualifications for winning the world championship. Botvinnik, an expert analyst as well as a champion, had annotated these games himself, giving a complete exposition of his strategy and techniques against such leading chess players as Alekhine, Capablanca, Euwe, Keres, Reshevsky, Smyslov, Tartakower, Vidmar, and many others. In a foreword, he discusses his career, his method of play, and the system of training he has adopted for tournament play. A careful study of these 100 games should prove rewarding to anyone interested in modern chess. A full variety of the most popular modern-day opening is provided, including the Ruy Lopez, Sicilian Defense, French Defense, Queen's Gambit Declined, Nimzo-Indian Defense, and others. This volume also includes a long article on the development of chess in Russia, in which Botvinnik discusses Tchigorin, Alekhine, and their influence on the Soviet school of chess; the author's six studies of endgame positions; and Botvinnik's record in tournament and match play through 1948.