Lubomir Kavalek Life at play a chess memoir
At the end of his life, Kavalek started writing his memoirs. With humour, wit and passion, he put on paper the compelling story of his adventurous life and rich chess career.
Understanding Pawn Endgames by Valentin Bogdanov, Gambit 2022
Understanding the endgame is fundamental to playing good chess, and at its heart lie positions where just kings and pawns remain on the board. Even when a pawn ending is not actually reached, the players must often assess ones that could arise from an exchange of pieces. And an error calculating a pawn ending is normally fatal.
Questions of pawn-structure, and thus decisions made early in the game, can be fully understood only when we appreciate how they impact the possible pawn endings.
This book takes a practical angle, so is the perfect complement to Secrets of Pawn Endings, which examines their theory in detail. Experienced trainer Bogdanov examines a wealth of pawn endings where strong players made significant errors, and draws lessons and rules of thumb from them. While we are enjoying the entertaining material in this book, we are painlessly absorbing endgame principles and improving our intuitive decision-making skills. We learn how to calculate and identify key positional elements, and appreciate the beautiful tactics and paradoxical ideas that are unique to the world of pawns.
Bobby Fischer 60 best games by Karsten Mueller
This new book on Fischer’s games is a collection of what GM Mueller considers the most instructive games played by Fischer. Thanks to new powerful engines the games have been checked and some errors were discovered in previous analyses. The publisher in my opinion well understand the new young chess players, thanks to the relationship
Carlsen vs Fedoseev Blitz Match!
In a computer age, where most top players have obtained computer like skills, maybe could be important to renew the way world championship matches are played. Not only for getting the interest of new chess players, but also to define who is the strongest chess player in the world, through a series of time controls
Caissa’s Wounded Warrior!
I’m always interested in experimenting, and trying new ideas. In this case I’d like to review a book, while giving some of the actual content which can interest the chess die-hard fans like me! Or at least benefit the amateurs, who are interested in chess improvement. So I thought of coming up with a series
Improve your chess calculation: the Ramesh Chess Course
One of the myths of the chess world is that knowing by heart a series of games, like in Ziyatdinov work, or a series of chess positions like one of Caruana’s trainers mentioned, will bring us to master level. We also have the myth that by doing over and over some positions we will reach
How I got checkmated… today!
Life like chess, or Chinese Chess, is always doing the opposite of what we hope, of what we wish in our hearts would happen. There is definitely no happy ending… generally the ending if one doesn’t have a massive stroke or heart attack, is in a diaper full of… well you can imagine… Today I
Humans and Calculation…
I’m trying to train for the 17th Chinese Chess World Championship, and since in chess we all know the saying: “Openings teach you openings, Endgames teach you chess” I began with very simple endgames, like King and Knight vs King and Elephant (in XiangQi the elephant is a kind of proto-bishop, like the queen today
The importance of Imagination in Chinese chess!
In Chess, as well as in Chinese Chess, there are some positions which are difficult to conquer. As always they defy our visualization in many ways. Let’s take the following position found on a beginner’s book of over a quarter of a century ago! Here I spent a good amount of time analyzing the knight
Comparison between XiangQi and Chess
In October there will be the 17th World XiangQi Championship, generally the true World Champion is the guy who wins the Chinese Championship, but also for this tournament, I don’t remember it to be won by a non-Chinese. Since it will be in Malaysia, a beautiful country, I’m thinking of participating… obviously some preparation is