HANSEN - Improve your Positional Chess

Do you want to do the same chess homework that world-famous grandmasters Fabiano Caruana, Robert Hess and Peter Heine Nielsen did in their formative years as chess players? This book will test you with hundreds of positions created by their coach Miron Sher (1952-2020). Just like Fabiano, Robert and Peter, you are not supposed to stop after the first move. You have to find the last move of the solution!

Miron Sher is one of those legendary coaches who got their chess education in the Soviet Union and in later years spread their knowledge in Western Europe and the United States. He was born in Ukraine, studied in Moscow, coached the Russian national team and emigrated to New York in 1997. There he taught at various schools and worked privately with dozens of students.

Dream Moves focuses on five themes that Sher considered important for chess improvement.

•     An unprotected piece – the trigger to start thinking tactics!
•     In-between moves – they help you spring a surprise on your opponent
•     Open files – a fundamental element of chess strategy
•     The 20% Rule – if your pawn has advanced to the 5th or 6th rank, moving it forward is quite often your best option
•     Dream Move – dream about the final, decisive move, and you will find the way there

The book contains close to one hundred illustrated games and more than three hundred puzzles. Do as the legends did - and use these puzzles to sharpen your tactical skills and improve your understanding of chess.

Miron Sher (1952-2020) is chess grandmaster and legendary coach. He was born in Ukraine, won a dozen international tournaments as a player, and became famous as a trainer in the United States where he lived since 1997. In New York he taught chess at multiple schools, including the Dalton School, IS 318 and Stuyvesant High School. He worked privately with dozens of students such as Fabiano Caruana, Robert Hess and Peter Heine Nielsen. 304 pages

Turbo-Charge Your Tactics 2 concludes a multi-year effort by GM Mykhaylo Oleksiyenko and world-renowned trainer IM Vladimir Grabinsky to create the perfect chess puzzle books. This second volume builds upon the first, using games from the World Champions and their challengers. Most chess games are decided by tactics, so solving tactical puzzles is the most effective path to improvement.

This book also contains a special chapter with expert guidance on how to use chess engines. The engines might analyse precisely but they can also harm our chess understanding if followed blindly, so we must know when and how to use them. Hardcover 280 pages

The book consists of 36 attacking games from the 21st Century divided into four chapters.

Mastering attacking play in chess is a dream that we all long to achieve, but of course the art of attack does not arise by itself.

Constructing positions which favour the attack is the most difficult task.

In this book we shall see games with brilliant finishes, but we shall also draw attention to the different phases through which the struggle passes, in order make such finishes possible.

Attention has been paid not only to what happens on the board but also, wherever possible, to the influence of the analysis engines not only on a player’s preparation for the game, something that has become more important in these early years of the new century, but also on the practical context of the game.

The games are prefaced by brief biographical information and a short description of the events of the game.

After each game some lessons are highlighted. 254 pages

With the ascent of computer technology, humans have a chance to develop their thinking process based on hard evidence. Think Like a Machine explores human limitations and proposes new avenues for human thinking, inspired by computer engines.

In positions taken almost exclusively from modern tournament play, the authors present jaw-dropping continuations which humans struggle to find, not due to lower human computing power, due to conceptual and perceptual limitations. In this book these “crazy” moves are analysed and categorised. If you want to expand your chess imagination, understanding and intuition, Think Like a Machine is the book is for you.

Think Like A Machine is the second chess book co-written by Noam Manella and Zeev Zohar. Manella is a digital and Social Networks Researcher; Zohar is an accountant and businessman. Their previous book, Play Unconventional Chess and Win, was a highlight in chess publishing in 2014.