GIDDINS - 101 chess questions answered

Après le maître, l’élève... Le plus célèbre des nombreux disciples de Dvoretsky nous offre ici un recueil d’exercices d’apparence classique : dix chapitres, une trentaine de positions par chapitre (après une courte introduction), et à vous de jouer. Mais l’originalité du programme apparaît dans les titres desdits chapitres : « coups-candidats », « le processus d’élimination », « améliorer la position de vos pièces »... Voilà qui change des habituels thèmes tactiques, et donne un livre plus varié et intéressant (et moins cher...) que la plupart de ses concurrents.

Bigre, ça ne rigole pas chez Gambit… Superficiellement comparable au Franco (30 parties complètes commentées, avec accent sur l’offensive à outrance), cet opus se destine en fait à un public moins aguerri et moins motivé (ce dont témoigne le volume bien plus réduit des commentaires).

Have you ever wondered why it takes grandmasters just seconds to see what's happening in a chess position? It's all about pawn structures, as Ivan Sokolov explained in his groundbreaking book Winning Chess Middlegames.

In his 2010 bestseller, Grandmaster Sokolov focused on structures arising from 1.d4 openings; in this new companion guide, 1.e4 players get their turn. This new volume covers a dozen topical structures including various pawn formations in the flexible Ruy Lopez, Italian and Petroff openings. But also Black's doubled f-pawn in the Rauzer Sicilian, the notorious Maroczy Bind, the mysterious Hedgehog, the versatile Sveshnikov and the paradoxical French Winawer. Deeply analysed top-level games illustrate the motifs in all these structures.

Club players who study Winning Chess Middlegames 1.e4 or 1.d4 will:

• significantly improve their middlegame skills
• develop an accurate sense of which positions suit their style
• gain new strategic and practical knowledge of openings

Ivan Sokolov's analysis is profound but accessible, and he doesn't take anything for granted. As reviewer Sean Marsh wrote of the first volume: "The lucid and informative explanations convey a large amount of genuine Grandmasterly wisdom. This is easily one of the best middlegame books of recent times."

Ivan Sokolov is a top grandmaster who was born in Bosnia and lives in the Netherlands. He is a former Yugoslav and Dutch Champion and has beaten World Champions Garry Kasparov, Vladimir Kramnik and Viswanathan Anand. As a coach, he led Uzbekistan to victory at the 2022 Chennai Olympiad. Sokolov has written a dozen highly acclaimed books.