WILLIAMS - How to Win at Chess Quickly!

The vast majority of chess games witness familiar strategies and well known tactical motifs. These are the games that you will find in the anthologies and opening repertoires. Sometimes however, games appear that seem to have been played on a different planet. 

Conventional strategies go out of the window. Familiar tactical themes are nowhere to be seen. Chaos has broken out. The pieces appear to be in open rebellion and are steadfastly refusing to do the natural jobs that they were designed for. 

Having to navigate a path in such a game can be a nightmare. Do you rely purely on calculation? Is it better to trust your instincts? Can you assess the position using “normal” criteria?

In order to answer these questions, prolific chess author and coach Cyrus Lakdawala has assembled a collection of brilliantly unconventional and irrational games. The positions in these games appear almost random. Kings have gone walkabout, pieces are on bizarre squares, huge pawn rollers are sweeping all before them. 

Irrational chess is like nothing you’ve seen before. As well as being highly instructive this is a hugely entertaining book. 

Do not adjust your set. It’s chess, Jim, but not as we know it.

Un nouveau livre, mais une formule qui rappelle singulièrement les vieux “101” : 100 courts chapitres (2 pages pièce) chacun sur un sujet précis, deux exemples pour illustrer ledit sujet et zou, voilà un nouveau chef-d'oeuvre vite pondu Trêve de plaisanterie : l'ensemble se laisse lire et constitue une bonne introduction à des thématiques qu'on aura ensuite profit à approfondir via des ouvrages plus spécialisés.

The Dutch Grandmaster Paul van der Sterren was a professional chess player for over twenty years. At the peak of his career, he qualified for the Candidate Matches for the World Championship - and was only four victories away from the World Title. In Mindful Chess, you will get his long and short answer to whether meditation or mindfulness will help your chess.

As a boy, Van der Sterren became fascinated by chess and became a gladiator at the chess board. To quote Theodore Roosevelt, he met with both victory and defeat, much joy and suffering. When, later in life, he discovered vipassana meditation, he met again with joy and suffering - and approached these issues with the same total devotion as he had brought to chess - thousands and thousands of hours on the cushion and studying Buddhist literature.

The reader will follow the two journeys through chess and meditation. And find answers to questions such as: What is chess? What is meditation? Who am I? What is I? Or will the answer elude you, is too much inexplainable and unknowable?

Paul van der Sterren (1956) was a professional chess player for over twenty years. At the peak of his career, the Dutch grandmaster qualified for the Candidate Matches for the World Championship – and was only four victories away from the World Title. He is the bestselling author of Fundamental Chess Openings (Gambit Publishers). In 2023 New In Chess will publish his books: Mindful Chess and In Black and White - a spiritual and a chess autobiography. 127 pages

Comme il arrive parfois, le plus important bouquin du mois est en fait vieux de presque trente ans Comme son titre l'indique, il est consacré à l'un des éléments-clés de la stratégie échiquéenne : les colonnes ouvertes - et c'est le meilleur ouvrage sur le sujet. Bon, d'accord : c'est le seul ouvrage sur le sujet. Mais considérant a/ l'importance dudit sujet, b/ la réputation de son principal signataire et c/ son excellence didactique, on peut sans doute le considérer comme indispensable.

Chess players can look ahead, formulate a clear plan, and act accordingly. That's why chess is the perfect learning environment for becoming a strategic expert. But how do you train this? It starts with playing many games and analysing them carefully afterwards. At the same time, you should learn from the best by studying the games of the world's strongest players and gradually build their techniques into your play. This book offers you 100 strategic exercises from the games of the best of the best, the World Champions from Bobby Fischer to Ding Liren. You will learn foundational techniques such as: how to improve your worst-placed piece; how to exploit a lead in development; or make the right piece trade; and how to create a strong square; plus numerous others. Solving these exercises will help every ambitious club player better understand how to make and execute plans. 260 pages

This second-volume workbook in Davorin Kuljasevic's How to Study Chess on Your Own series is optimized for chess players with an Elo rating between 1500 and 1800 but is helpful for anyone between 1200 and 2000.  The astounding success of his How to Study Chess on Your Own made clear that thousands of chess players want to improve their game and like to work on their training at least partially by themselves. 199 pages

Troisième opus du GMI danois, après les remarqués Foundations of Chess Strategy et How Chess Games are won and lost. Ce nouvel effort (qui surpasse les deux autres par la longueur du titre) est un peu moins original dans le propos (revisiter les grandes écoles échiquéennes et leur influence sur le jeu moderne) mais la réalisation est de qualité - bonne mise en perspective, commentaires détaillés, style fluide Une excellente et très agréable lecture.