KAROLYI - Karpov's Strategic Wins vol. 1

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.

zymon Winawer was a world top-10 player in the 1870s and 1880s, dueling with such titans as Steinitz, Lasker, Anderssen, Marshall, Chigorin, Zukertort, Louis Paulsen, Janowski, Maroczy, Tarrasch and others, and defeating most of the leading players of his time. He won or took prizes in major international tournaments, including Paris 1867 (second, behind Kolisch and above Steinitz), Leipzig 1877 (fourth, behind Paulsen, Anderssen and Zukertort), Paris 1878 (first equal with Zukertort, though he lost the play-off), Berlin 1881 (third equal with Chigorin, behind Blackburne and Zukertort), Vienna 1882 (first equal with Steinitz), and Nuremberg 1883 (first, ahead of Blackburne).
Winawer was a proponent of fighting chess, regularly deploying the King’s Gambit and Ruy Lopez as white, demonstrating winning combinations as well as positional sacrifices and endgame precision. He attacked the castled king with his h-pawn 150 years before Alpha-Zero. He displayed technique using Horowitz bishops and opening the g-file. At the same time, we see in the book that he also played solid positional chess. Moreover, several opening ideas are named after him, including the popular Winawer Variation of the French Defense.
The Warsaw-born player was not a chess professional and never published any annotated games of his own, but some of his concepts, both in the opening and in the middlegame, are still valid in the 21st century. Indeed, many strategic ideas (blockade, exploiting doubled pawns, maneuvering) described in the works of Nimzowitsch and other hypermodernists can be found, in embryonic form, in the games of Winawer played half a century earlier.
In the first half of this biographical work, Warsaw-based chess historian Tomasz Lissowski, who has co-written books on Kieseritzky and Zukertort among others, portrays Winawer’s life and his sporting achievements in the context of the epoch. This book delivers not only a description of the evolution of chess in Poland in the nineteenth century, but a sense through the prism of chess of the political and social history of Poland and the Austro-Hungarian, German and Russian empires in a period of war and upheaval. It is illustrated by many historical photos from the period.
In the second half of this book, International Master Grigory Bogdanovich paints Winawer’s creative portrait, as well as examining the legacy that this ingenious improviser left to chess culture. The book contains in total 132 annotated instructive games and fragments of Winawer and his contemporaries.301 pages

Over de legendarische Nederlandse schaakwereldkampioen Max Euwe is al veel geschreven, en Euwe produceerde zelf ook tientallen boeken. Maar er was nog geen representatieve verzameling van de beste partijen van deze ‘efficiënte, mensetende tijger’, zoals de Amerikaanse grootmeester William Ewart Napier hem noemde. Max Euwe’s Beste Partijen voorziet in deze lacune. En wie anders had dit boek kunnen schrijven dan Euwe’s opvolger in de Nederlandse schaakwereld – Jan Timman, één van de beste schaakschrijvers van deze tijd. Timman selecteerde tachtig partijen van Euwe. Het is ongelooflijk hoe hoog het niveau was dat Euwe bereikte in de vijftig jaar dat hij actief schaakte, en hoe aantrekkelijk zijn aanvallende speelstijl was. Timman heeft veel nieuws ontdekt in de beste en meest beroemde partijen van Euwe, maar haalt ook een aantal minder bekende briljante partijen voor het voetlicht. Bij zijn analyses komt een aantal interessante paradoxen aan de orde. Zo was Euwe voor het overgrote deel van zijn carrière een amateur, maar wist hij meer van openingstheorie dan vele van zijn tegenstanders op topniveau. Als de underdog onttroonde hij de energieke Alexander Aljechin als wereldkampioen in een epische match in 1935. Op zijn 52ste wist hij nog steeds topspelers als Geller en Najdorf te verslaan met fantastisch aanvalsspel in het beroemde Kandidatentoernooi in Zürich 1953. En toen hij de zeventig al was gepasseerd bleef hij een gevaarlijke opponent voor de jongste generatie Nederlandse schakers. Deze partijenverzameling van een soms onderschatte wereldkampioen, met analyses van topgrootmeester Jan Timman, is een onmisbare aanvulling voor iedereen die is geïnteresseerd in het Nederlandse schaken en in het wereldkampioenschap. Jan Timman, de voormalig nummer twee van de wereldranglijst, is de auteur van vele populaire schaakboeken. Zijn boek Timman’s Titans won de ECF Book of the Year Award in 2017. Zijn recente boeken The Longest Game, Timman’s Triumphs en The Unstoppable American, zijn nu al moderne klassiekers in de schaakliteratuur. 304 paginas