First Steps books are based around carefully selected instructive games which demonstrate exactly what both sides are trying to achieve. There is enough theory to enable the improving player to get to grips with the opening without feeling overwhelmed.

This book tackles fundamental questions such as: 'How should pawns be used to fight for the centre?' and 'How does the central pawn formation affect planning for both sides?' These issues are central to understanding chess. Marovic discusses central pawn-structures and their impact on play both in the centre and on the wings. He begins by surveying how the pawn's role in controlling the centre has been developed over the last 150 years, and how this has led to the refinement of concepts suchas the 'dynamic' backward pawn and the positional exchange sacrifice. The bulk of the book is devoted to discussions of the main type of centre: Open Centre; Closed/Blocked Centre; Fixed Centre; and in particular the Mobile/Dynamic Centre.

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. Themes that crop up repeatedly include 'weaknesses' that are unexploitable (and therefore are not weaknesses at all), surrendering certain squares in order to gain more important squares, and material sacrifices to exploit major weaknesses. * Strength and weakness on files and diagonals * Vulnerabilities on the first and second ranks * Static weakness and attack * Characteristics of the pieces * Outposts Drazen Marovic is a grandmaster from Croatia, who has won medals as both player and trainer for various national teams. His pupils include Bojan Kurajica, World Under-20 Champion in 1965, and Al Modiahki of Qatar, the first Arabian grandmaster. Marovic has a wealth of experience as a writer, editor and television commentator on chess. He is currently the trainer of the Croatian national team. This is his third book for Gambit. His two previous books discussed various aspects of pawn play, and have been warmly received by the chess-playing public.

It is not difficult to understand why The London System is such a popular chess opening with club players all over the world. Against virtually every Black defence after 1.d4 it offers White an easy-to-learn and reliable set of lines with interesting choices between strategic or more aggressive approaches, while avoiding tons of opening theory. Lately an increasing number of Grandmasters such as Alexander Grischuk, Gata Kamsky, Baadur Jobava, Richard Rapport and even World Champion Magnus Carlsen have played The London System. In this light it is surprising that so little has been published about this fascinating universal weapon. GM Alfonso Romero and FM Oscar de Prado have now filled this gap. In The Agile London System they present both historical material and recent top-level examples to provide a comprehensive overview. The authors explain the typical plans and tactics using illustrative games with clear verbal explanations, and provide lots of tactical and strategic exercises. They reveal the secrets behind sharp ideas such as the Barry Attack and the Jobava Attack and have added an exciting chapter on the especially aggressive Pereyra Attack, developed by the Argentinean master Manuel Pereyra Puebla.

AWARDS: Shortlisted for the Guardian Chess Book of the Year Award Runner-up for the English Chess Federation 2009 Book of the Year Award CHESS Magazine: Best Books of 2009 Back in Print! Ever wondered why grandmasters take only seconds to see what’s really going on in a chess position? It’s all about structures, as Grandmaster Ivan Sokolov explains in this groundbreaking book. ‘Winning Chess Middlegames’ addresses the often ignored but extremely important topic of pawn structures, divided into four main types: doubled pawns, isolated pawns, hanging pawns and pawn majorities. With its highly accessible verbal explanations and deep analyses of top-level games, this book helps you to solve the basic problems of the middlegame: space, tension and initiative. Club players studying this book will:greatly enhance their middlegame skills, develop an accurate feeling as to which particular positions suit their style and acquire new strategic and practical opening knowledge. Ivan Sokolov explains matters profoundly, honestly and objectively including lots of inside stories from top-level chess, neither sparing his colleague grandmasters nor himself in his comments. With a foreword by British Grandmaster Michael Adams.

Chess owes its strategic depth to pawns, which take many roles in the chess struggle. In this text, an experienced grandmaster explores the pawn's multi-facted nature, and provides the reader with a range of pawn-play concepts.

If you want to improve at chess, you must know the characteristics of typical pawn formations. Understanding the pawn structure is a key tool when you are evaluating a position on the board. One simple pawn move can ruin your position or win the game. Post-beginners should know the basic essentials of chess structures and that is what this modern training manual focuses on. Experienced chess teacher Grandmaster Jörg Hickl helps you to recognize the important characteristics of pawn structures, learn how you can and should develop your pieces, identify how you can improve your position and develop a plan of action. This book provides common sense guidance and Jörg Hickl uses practical examples to explain typical structures, strategies and plans. His tips and exercises are both highly enjoyable and to the point.

This book takes the student on a journey through his own mind and returns him to the chess board with a wealth of new-found knowledge and the promise of a significant gain in strength. Most amateurs possess erroneous thinking processes that remain with them throughout their chess lives. These flaws in their mental armour result in stinging defeats and painful reversals. Books can be bought and studied, lessons can be taken -- but in the end, these elusive problems always prove to be extremely difficult to eradicate. Seeking a solution to this dilemma, the author wrote down the thoughts of his students while they played actual games, analysed them, and catalogued the most common misconceptions that arose. This second edition greatly expands on the information contained in the popular first edition.

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.