Charushin - The Tactician's Handbook

Premier volume - on dira d'introduction - d'un cours complet en six (trois sont sortis, les trois autres doivent suivre dans quelques mois) dû au plus célèbre joueur américain actuel. Le plan du livre est original : il consiste pour l'essentiel en quatre chapitres consacrés chacun à l'un des aspects fondamentaux du jeu : Force, Temps, Espace et Structure (de pions évidemment). De nombreux exercices animent l'ensemble, qui s'achève par huit parties complètes commentées. Un très bon ouvrage pour débutants... anglophones.

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

During his long journey as a chess player and coach, GM Axel Smith came to the realization that understanding colour-complex strategies is one of the key differences between strong and weak players. After many years of delivering lectures and training material to his students, Smith produced a Chessable course on the topic, which has been extensively edited and reorganized by Quality Chess to produce this book.

In these pages, the award-winning author breaks down colour complexes into various sub-topics such as blockades, opposite-coloured bishops and exchange sacrifices, with carefully chosen exercises to test and reinforce the reader’s newfound understanding. Use Black & White Magic to improve your chess strength!

GM Axel Smith is the award-winning author of The Woodpecker Method, Pump Up Your Rating, e3 Poison and Street Smart Chess, which were all enthusiastically received by readers and reviewers. Using the Woodpecker as part of his training, as an adult he improved from a rating of 2100 to becoming a Grandmaster. 264 pages

Every serious trainer must insist on strategy work, because strategy will be a powerful and probably decisive weapon against players who neglected it in their own chess study. That was my motivation to write this book, to present crucial elements and principles of strategy and to reveal its secrets to you, dear reader. After careful study of the book you will be fully equipped with strategic concepts, patterns and definitely you will catch “how it works” in chess game.
KEY CONCEPTS OF CHESS STRATEGY
(Center, Open lines, Bishop pair, Squares, Space)
PAWN STRUCTURES
(Passed pawn, Hanging pawns, Pawn majority, Doubled pawns,
Isolated pawns, Backward pawn, Pawn chains, Pawn Islands and weaknesses)
PRINCIPLES OF CHESS STRATEGY
(Harmony, Activity and Initiative, Restriction and Prophylactic play)
From the Foreword by GM Dragoljub Jacimovic:
I know that this book has been prepared for a long time, and being familiar with the author’s methodology and the huge number of games from which he selected the most instructive jewels, I truly believe that this work will be an exemplary book worthy of every praise and highly useful to players of different categories. 250 pages

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