Chess category: 725 books

In 1972 Bobby Fischer famously beat Boris Spassky of the Soviet Union in Reykjavik to win the world title. This book tells the classic story of that match, including the perplexing prelude and the dramatic games. This is a NEW EDITION following the death of Bobby Fischer, with a new introductory tribute...

Deliver the Coup de Grâce! With this instructive manual, players can learn to concentrate on one-, two- and three-move checkmates, focusing on their opponents� last moves and keeping alert to new possibilities, rather than getting blinded by previous calculations. Written by two experienced...

The Catalan is a sophisticated opening system which is popular at all levels of chess. In recent years it has been catapulted into the limelight by Vladimir Kramnik, who has revitalized it with many new ideas and has utilized it with great success against the world's strongest players - on occasion...

Garry Kasparov has held the number one position in chess for almost twenty years. He is considered the greatest player of all time. Now, beginning and intermediate players - 90% of the chess playing audience - can benefit from his wisdom. Packed with diagrams and easy-to-understand pointers showing what...

The player with a positional advantage has a better chance at a direct attack, and this complete guide by a grandmaster shows how to develop a more powerful strategic game. Key squares, bad bishops, pawn structures, and other examples appear in ascending difficulty, with cross-references. For players at every level. 495 black-and-white illustrations.

How did Jonathan Hawkins manage to go from being an average tournament competitor to a player on the brink of clinching the Grandmaster title? The secret was knowing what to study and how to learn as efficiently as possible. Focusing his attention firmly on the endgame, Jonathan devised a number of building...

Learn chess from a World Champion! These 100 games were selected and annotated by Botvinnik himself as the best games he played before becoming World Champion in 1948. Includes contests against Alekhine, Capablanca, Euwe, Keres, Reshevsky, Smyslov, and others. Author explains his theories, the development of Russian chess, and six end game studies.

Confront the Sicilian on Your Own Terms! In 1982, the late Ken Smith’s publishing house Chess Digest published the first edition of Andy Soltis’ small monograph Beating the Sicilian, The Chameleon Variation. It was well received and a second edition came out in 1990. It proposed a very flexible...

Alekhine's games and writings inspired me from an early age...I fell inlove with the rich complexity of his ideas at the chessboard... I hope readers of this book will feel similarly inspired by Alekhine's masterpieces. From the foreword by Garry Kasparov Alexahnder Alekhine captivated the chess world...

The Nimzo-Indian is one of Black's most universally popular and respectable answers to 1 d4. It could be said that no other opening allows Black to play for a win from such a sound positional basis, while its flexibility gives rise to a multitude of different positions rich in tactical and positional...

The Ruy Lopez is an incredibly popular opening at all levels of chess; this is perhaps unsurprising given that it's recognized by most experts as White's greatest chance of obtaining a lasting advantage after the moves 1 e4 e5. Also known as the Spanish Opening, the Lopez is steeped in rich tradition,...

The Sicilian Defence is by far the most popular chess opening. If you play 1 e4 as White, on average you are likely to meet the Sicilian in virtually every other game! You need to be prepared to face the Sicilian at all times, and a ready-to-use repertoire against it is an indispensible weapon.In...

The Caro-Kann Defence remains a very popular option for Black at all levels of chess. It has always enjoyed a solid reputation, but if anything its popularity has increased in recent years with the realization that the Caro-Kann can also be employed with the intention of reaching sharp dynamic positions,...

The Slav has a well-deserved reputation as one of Black's strongest answers to 1 d4, and it's no coincidence that it has been used by almost all the World Champions in chess history. Put simply, the Slav is a classy opening, one which combines reliability with the promise of dynamic counterplay.In...