NUNN - Initiation à la tactique

Tinted wooden chess pieces, weighted with felted bottoms.

Système requis:
Pentium 300 Mhz, 64 Mo RAM, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, lecteur DVD-ROM, souris, carte son.

Pour tous ceux qui sont fâchés avec l'anglais (et je ne parle pas seulement des fans de rugby), voici la traduction du dernier opus magnus de Watson. Félicitons Olibris, et rappelons seulement que le MI américain fait ici le tour de la théorie contemporaine (sur 1.e4), dans une perspective très générale et hautement pédagogique (non, ce n'est pas un gros mot). On pourra juste regretter une ou deux impasses faites par l'auteur (Sveshnikov), mais c'est vraiment histoire de pinailler.

Système requis:
Pentium 300 Mhz, 64 Mo RAM, Windows XP, Windows Vista, Windows 7, lecteur DVD-ROM, souris, carte son.

Rudolf Spielmann was one of the strongest chess players in the world in the first half of the 20th century. Following his shared second place at the Carlsbad tournament in 1929 with Capablanca, half a point behind Nimzowitsch, he was considered one of the world's top five. His career spread over four decades and included a host of tournament and match victories, such as defeating Bogoljubov over ten games in 1932.

Often known as the Last Romantic in chess with his predilection for the King's Gambit and Vienna Game and love of sacrifices, he bequeathed a rich legacy of ideas and techniques. These combinational and positional master classes are examined here in 213 instructional games and fragments, organized thematically in a way similar to Grigory Bogdanovich's previous volumes on Bogoljubov.

Detailed commentary is provided on games against leading contemporaries. Opponents in this work include five world champions Lasker, Capablanca, Alekhine, Euwe, and Botvinnik, as well as Marshall, Janowski, Tarrasch, Tartakower, Nimzowitsch, Reti, Rubinstein, Romanovsky, Bogoljubov, and many others. Bogdanovich's commentary is richly supplemented by that of stars of the epoch and, above all, of Spielmann himself.

The book further contains a biographical sketch and is supplemented by a large number of tournament photographs and portraits. Spielmann's life was ultimately tragic - a lonely death in Sweden aged just 59 as a Jewish refugee from Nazi Germany following the demise three years earlier of his sponsor, while several family members failed to escape the Holocaust.

Additional materials in the book include a detailed table of tournaments and matches from his career, as well as a translation of Spielmann's fascinating article dating to 1923 called "From the Sickbed of the King's Gambit". 460 pages

Very nice rosewood chessboard combining solid wood and marquetry. Will perfectly suits with rosewood or ebony chess pieces. Green baize below. 

Available in 3 different sizes.

Rook endgames are the most frequently recurring endgames and also one of the most exciting areas of chess, with mind bending tactical opportunities and dizzying nuances available. They have unsurprisingly been a big topic in endgame literature, with a heavy focus on the set theoretical positions and their logic and fixed conclusions (see the excellent Theoretical Rook Endgames by GM Sam Shankland, published as a sister volume to this book as the peak example of this).

Conceptual Rook Endgames goes in a different direction. Focused on two dozen major concepts, the book explains the mechanisms of rook endgames in a novel way, by building foundations with simple examples, which can be seen in the most complicated examples as well. Rook endgames will remain rich and surprising, as they are for the greats, but armed with this book, your comprehension of them will skyrocket.

Grandmaster Jacob Aagaard is the most talented chess writer of his generation. He won the British Championship in 2007, but is mostly known for his multi-award winning books and his work with students that have won club, country, state, national, continental and world championships, as well as Olympiad golds (board and overall), the World Cup and Candidates tournament. Hardcover. 416 p.