Ouweleen/Brouwer Weird and wonderful Volume 1

Version française d'un ouvrage déjà présenté en anglais. Rappelons qu'il s'agit d'un manuel sur les finales élémentaires destiné principalement à ceux qui n'ont jamais étudié le sujet (l'auteur part du b-a-ba) et qui se singularise par son approche didactique : plutôt que le traditionnel plan-par-matériel (finales de pions, de tours, etc.), le MI américain a préféré une approche par niveau : finales pour débutants (le b-a-ba évoqué plus haut), joueurs moyens, confirmés, maîtres, par tranches (approximatives, forcément) de 200 points elo. Très progressif donc, le livre peut être recommandé à tous ceux qui débutent dans ce domaine - mais que les joueurs plus confirmés sachent qu'ils ne trouveront pas forcément beaucoup de matériel inconnu à se mettre sous le dent...

The seconds tick down relentlessly toward zero just as your game approaches the critical stage. Your higher-rated opponent is putting your game under severe pressure, so extreme accuracy is needed to hang tough and avoid falling into a losing position. What do you do now – should you exchange pieces to relieve the pressure, lash out with a sacrifice, probe for weaknesses in the opponent's camp, or maybe just give up and get a lesson on how to bring the point home?

The answer is… none of these! At such do-or-die moments, says Steve Hrop, the first thing to do is to sit on your hands and take a few deep breaths. In Defending Under Pressure and Managing Your Emotions at the Chessboard, the author uses critical moments from his own tournament games (most of them against players rated above 2200) to describe the difficulties of thinking straight when the enemy is at the gates, and then outlines methods and techniques to clear your head, evaluate the position, and find your way to the best move. Techniques include how to avoid redundant pieces that critically limit your mobility; when visualization is more important than calculation: and “freeze-framing” positions to eliminate blunders.

Save the draw – or turn a looming defeat into an astonishing victory – with the tips in this practical training manual! 236 pages

I used to play a lot of chess as a teenager many decades ago. Those days, there were hardly any computers that played the game and there was certainly no Internet. Learning new ideas in the game was possible only through books or magazines and if something was not clear, there weren’t too many people to consult for explanations. I was never a great player and quit when other things in life took precedence. Then, a few years ago, I decided to start playing again and be better than before. This time, there were a lot of resources at hand computers’ analysis, streamers, commentators everywhere. This meant that now, opening theory became monstrous in its size. Learning all of it is now a very difficult task. I realized that the key to any improvement, before memorizing endless variations, lay in understanding the opening phase better and practicing as much as possible hence the reasoning behind this book.

Nery Strasman, 2024  - 256 pages - Hardcover

While today, Reginald Pryce Michell (1873-1938) is largely forgotten, he was a quiet giant of his time. A leading British master, he beat all nationally leading players from Blackburne and Atkins to Golombek, as well as internationally renowned players such as Bogoljubow, Reti and Sultan Khan, and drew former, reigning, and future world champions such as Capablanca, Alekhine, Euwe, and Botwinnik.
His best individual result was in Margate 1923, where he shared second place with Alekhine and Bogoljubow. As a team player, Michell was part of the team that won bronze in the 1927 Chess Olympiad.
In 1947, Julius Du Mont, then editor of British Chess Magazine, wrote a biography on Michell with a selection of his games. The annotations to the original game selection have been considerably expanded, and another thirty thoroughly annotated games have been added by Carsten Hansen. 313 bladen

Victor Bologan is not only a strong and creative chess grandmaster, he has also made a career in Moldovan and world chess politics. His strong will and incredible versatility have enabled him to lead a colourful and interesting life. ‘Believe in yourself’ is his motto and it has taken him to places many of us will never see.

A sparkling description of the many roads Bologan has travelled lies before you. In this autobiography you will read about the adventures of an enterprising youngster in turbulent Moldova, his collaborations with renowned chess coaches such as Vyacheslav Chebanenko, Zigurds Lanka and Mark Dvoretsky, and his alliances with top players such as Alexander Morozevich, Ruslan Ponomariov, Vladimir Kramnik and Garry Kasparov. The book also offers a candid insight into Bologan's activities as Executive Director of the World Chess Federation FIDE and his career in Moldovan national politics.

Central to this book, of course, is Bologan's chess career. His most impressive tournament victory was in Dortmund in 2003, where he beat both Vishy Anand and Vladimir Kramnik. But he also won the incredibly strong Aeroflot Open in Moscow in 1995 and twice came first in a personal favourite, the annual Poikovsky tournament. Bologan has extensively annotated 88 of his best and most attractive games. 424 pages

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