Del Rosario - Capablanca: A primer of Checkmate

The second volume of Elk and Ruby’s treatise on Viktor Korchnoi, penned by FM Hans Renette and IM Tibor Karolyi, covers the period 1969-1980. This encompasses Korchnoi’s famous world championship fight with Karpov at Baguio City in 1978, his candidates final matches against Karpov in 1974 and Hubner in 1980, as well as the related candidates cycles and major tournament performances. Much biographical colour is supplied on his life and character, with this period including his defection from the Soviet Union to the West in 1976. Like in Volume I, original material is provided from interviews with key protagonists and their relatives, while sources in Russian, German, Dutch and Hungarian as well as English are used to paint the most comprehensive portrait of Korchnoi available.
140 games and fragments are analysed in detail in this work. As well as Karpov and Hubner, opponents include Fischer, Spassky, Petrosian, Smyslov, Portisch, Geller, Najdorf, Timman, Larsen, Mecking, Sosonko, Andersson, Ljubojevic, Polugaevsky, Nunn, and Miles among others. Many new discoveries are made in the analysis. In particular, the authors identify that Korchnoi worked hard to improve his endgame ability significantly during the time that he was boycotted in tournaments by the Soviets, which is most surprising given that he was in his mid-forties by then, and was the best player of his time at endgame tactics. Further, the authors found that his reputation as a pawn grabber was highly exaggerated, and that he carried out a huge number of king attacks on the h-file. They also discovered that Korchnoi more than matched Karpov for openings in the 1978 title bout despite the unprecedented preparation of the Soviet chess machine, and that the key reason he lost that match was time trouble.
The book is supplemented with a generous supply of photos, many taken from the Korchnoi family archive and never before published. 518 pages

18 champions, quatre parties commentées par tête de pipe, histoire de faire connaissance : l'idée n'est pas nouvelle, mais le résultat toujours intéressant pour qui ne suit pas au jour le jour l'actu échiquéenne. Reste que le choix, tant des joueurs (la quasi-retraitée Judit Polgar dans les champions du nouveau millénaire ?) que des parties (quatre parties des années 90 pour Anand) pose question, et se révèle décevant pour le public français - Mamedyarov mais pas Bacrot, Karjakin mais pas Vachier

This remarkable book is a tribute to a man who is probably the greatest chess coach of all time. Mark Dvoretsky was a fascinating, intelligent, honest, decent, hard-working and good-natured man who dedicated his life to chess and its players.

When Dvoretsky started coaching after a fairly successful career as a player, he became a kind of doctor who could quickly spot what his students needed help with. He made them better chess players but also better people. In this book, not only his most famous students Artur Yusupov and Sergey Dolmatov explain what made Dvoretsky so special, but also former World Champions such as Garry Kasparov, Vishy Anand, Veselin Topalov and Magnus Carlsen, and many others.

In addition to a wealth of delightful and often touching stories, Chess Coach contains 39 of Dvoretsky's games, which show what a strong player he was. They have been analysed by Dvoretsky himself and by many of his former students. Several interviews and articles complete this colourful compilation. One of Dvoretsky's own most famous books was called For Friends and Colleagues – as Garry Kasparov writes in his extensive foreword, this book is a worthy reply 'From Friends and Colleagues'.

Mark Dvoretsky (1947-2016) was known as ‘the strongest International Master in the world’ in the mid-1970s when he decided to pursue a career as a chess trainer. His students Artur Yusupov and Sergey Dolmatov became World Championship Candidates. A meticulous chess analyst, Dvoretsky wrote many highly acclaimed books, his most famous being Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual. He became so popular as a coach that dozens of world-class players repeatedly sought his advice. 324 pages

Plus copieux (largement), plus dactualité (relativement) et plus échiquéen (évidemment), ce volumineux pavé vous fera revivre les trois matches de (ahem) championnat du monde disputés par Kramnik entre 2000 et 2006 : linoubliable (contre Kasparov), le crispant (contre Leko) et le regrettable (contre Topalov). Que voulez-vous, passer de Londres à Elista, cest forcément une régression Aux manettes, Evgeny Bareev, qui en plus de son standing était le secondant de Vlad lors des deux premiers affrontements.