Puzzle 500 pièces: Le pont de la Bastei

Everyone knows they should work on their endgame play. So many hard-earned advantages are squandered in ‘simple’ endings ... But, for a good playing ending, necessary to precisely calculate. This book can help to improve your skills and calculation in endings. In this book, we can find a lot of famous endings played in practical games and how some of the top grandmasters coped with them. Improve your knowledge endings with this book. Start to calculate, and learn ending rules!  342 pages

Have you ever wondered why it takes grandmasters just seconds to see what's happening in a chess position? It's all about pawn structures, as Ivan Sokolov explained in his groundbreaking book Winning Chess Middlegames.

In his 2010 bestseller, Grandmaster Sokolov focused on structures arising from 1.d4 openings; in this new companion guide, 1.e4 players get their turn. This new volume covers a dozen topical structures including various pawn formations in the flexible Ruy Lopez, Italian and Petroff openings. But also Black's doubled f-pawn in the Rauzer Sicilian, the notorious Maroczy Bind, the mysterious Hedgehog, the versatile Sveshnikov and the paradoxical French Winawer. Deeply analysed top-level games illustrate the motifs in all these structures.

Club players who study Winning Chess Middlegames 1.e4 or 1.d4 will:

• significantly improve their middlegame skills
• develop an accurate sense of which positions suit their style
• gain new strategic and practical knowledge of openings

Ivan Sokolov's analysis is profound but accessible, and he doesn't take anything for granted. As reviewer Sean Marsh wrote of the first volume: "The lucid and informative explanations convey a large amount of genuine Grandmasterly wisdom. This is easily one of the best middlegame books of recent times."

Ivan Sokolov is a top grandmaster who was born in Bosnia and lives in the Netherlands. He is a former Yugoslav and Dutch Champion and has beaten World Champions Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik and Viswanathan Anand. As a coach, he led Uzbekistan to victory at the 2022 Chennai Olympiad. Sokolov has written a dozen highly acclaimed books.

As go players we all study the game in our own way, be it leisurely or with near-scientific precision. We attempt to distill the moves and find their essence in recurring, understandable patterns. But every once in a while we are struck by a move we have never seen before. A move that is so out of the ordinary that we cannot help but marvel at it. A move to remember. This book is a collection of such moves: the weird and wonderful of go. The first volume bundles together highlights from professional games. Our main selection criterion was that the moves had to surprise: sometimes a move shone at us like an undiscovered gem and other times a sequence looked so bizarre that it made us laugh. Another prerequisite was that the moves were played by humans. Our aim for this book is to share the beauty of human creativity. 246 pages

Simen Agdestein was awarded the title of chess grandmaster at the age of eighteen, the youngest in the world at the time. Two years later he wrote in his diary that he believed he could become the best in the world.

But chess wasn"t his only passion. He also excelled at football and was selected nine times for the Norwegian national team. Foreign clubs wanted to sign him as a professional.

Simen Agdestein"s combined careers are unique and amazing. "I can"t choose between my left and my right arm", he once said of the choice between chess and football.

His international football career was cut short when he refused to play for Norway in a World Cup qualifier against Scotland. He opted instead to play Garry Kasparov in a chess tournament in Belgrade. A few years later, a knee injury put an end to his footballing dreams.

These days Agdestein is a coach and teacher at the Norwegian College for Top Athletes, a fertile breeding ground where his most successful pupil, Magnus Carlsen, also attended. Agdestein continues to compete in chess. In 2023 he won the Norwegian Championship for the ninth time, 41 years after his first successful bid.

Games and Goals is a gripping biography of a unique double talent, revealing his insecurities and ambitions, his doubts and dreams. The author had access to Agdestein"s private letters and diaries and conducted numerous interviews with relatives, friends and Agdestein himself. 272 PAGES

Sergei Tiviakov was unbeaten in a streak of more than a hundred chess games as a professional player. Who better to share the secrets of Rock Solid Chess and the activity and value of pieces than Tiviakov?

The highly acclaimed first volume of his chess strategy trilogy dealt with pawn structures. In this second volume, Sergei moves on to discuss piece play and unique chessboard situations. Topics covered include the bishop pair, opposite-coloured bishops, centralization and the almost-ignored question of when and whether to castle.

Tiviakov also demonstrates how the value of pieces can vary drastically depending on their exact position. He shows how the entire assessment of a position, and the correct strategy for playing it, can be changed by moving a single pawn from one square to another.

In the final chapters, Tiviakov discusses how to play cramped and passive positions, how to play for a win with Black and how to choose your strategy, based on the opponent’s style and other psychological factors.

Illustrated with examples from classic games and from his own games, and supported by instructive exercises, Volume Two of Rock Solid Chess offers invaluable and unique instruction on topics not covered in traditional textbooks. These strategy lessons will significantly improve your chess and are suitable for all readers, from club players to grandmasters.

Sergei Tiviakov is a grandmaster, Olympic gold medallist, three-time Dutch Champion and European Champion.
Yulia Gökbulut is a FIDE Women's Master, chess author and sports writer from Turkey. 251 pages