Sakaev & Landa - Complete Manual of Positional Chess

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.

Sous-titré ' Mastery ', ce qui est à la fois tout et ne rien dire De fait, on trouvera dans ce troisième (et dernier) tome les sujets les plus variés, de la stratégie à la tactique et de l'ouverture à la finale. Comme dans les précédents volumes, le gros intérêt de l'ouvrage réside dans l'abondance du matériel présenté : 12 exercices par chapitre, multipliés par 24 chapitres, cela fait de quoi s'occuper un moment. Profitable, forcément

Pressure Play by Neil McDonald. Have you ever been tortured at the chessboard? If so, then you have probably been a victim of pressure play.

Elite players are brilliant exponents of pressure play. In situations where they have either a tiny advantage or no advantage at all they are highly adept at constantly setting problems for their unfortunate opponents. The position on the board may appear lifeless but they can probe and find plans and regroupings that will constantly ask their opponents difficult questions. These can be countered only by continual alert and accurate defence and we all know how difficult and wearing that can be.

The arch exponent of pressure play is world champion Magnus Carlsen. Carlsen is superb in this area of the game and consistently defeats world class opposition from simplified positions where he has no advantage whatsoever. How does he do it?

In this book, the highly experienced author and coach Neil McDonald analyses the finest examples of pressure play. In doing so he teases out the fundamental concepts that enable players like Carlsen to torture their opponents mercilessly.

• Paralyse the enemy pieces.

• Target the weakest squares on the board.

• Increase and exploit a space advantage.

Master pressure play and it will be your opponent on the rack, not you.  352 pages