Bezgodov / Oleinikov - Spassky's best games. A chess biography

Op deze geschenk duoset worden kunstwerken van Alphonse Mucha afgebeeld: Monaco-Monte Carlo.  Een zonnestraaltje, om te geven of te krijgen. 

History: In the 1950s and 1960s the Zagreb chess set was one of the most popular chess sets used at the major international chess tournaments. It gained popularity when it was used in the World Championship Candidates Match that was held in Bied, Zagreb in 1959. Design & Quality:   Appropriately weighted and felted these pieces are very stable on board and a pleasure to touch and feel, size of king is 8,8 cm.  For this set we choose a classical walnut board of 50 cm with square of 5 cm.

Oops! He’s Back!
Australian Grandmaster Ian Rogers is back with a new book of silly resignation puzzles - the only chess puzzle book where your solution cannot be worse than the player who mistakenly abandoned the game!
Pit your wits against legends from yesteryear to today, from Anderssen to Korchnoi to Gelfand, knowing that they resigned their games unnecessarily and you, perhaps, could have found a way out.
Oops! I Resigned One More Time! is the sequel to Oops! I Resigned Again!, which has gained a cult following since its release in 2021. Marvel again at 100 extraordinary positions and the stories behind them, in themed sets of five, with sneaking a peek at the answers made easy. 175 pages

The English Defence (1 d4 e6 2 c4 b6) is a dynamic, counter-attacking line, initially investigated by English grandmasters. Black aims to set White difficult problems to solve at the very earliest stage of the game. Black’s play is provocative – aiming to lure White into establishing a big pawn centre. This is a risky strategy as White falls behind in development and Black switfly becomes very active. However, if White’s response is more circumspect then Black can often manoeuvre into favourable structures reminiscent of positions arising from the Nimzo-Indian Defence, the Queen’s Indian Defence or even the Dutch.

José González provides an excellent analysis of this complex opening and carves out a powerful repertoire for Black covering all lines after 1 d4. It is possible for White to avoid the "English battle" by playing either 2 Nf3 or even 2 e4 (a rare move for 1 d4 players but seen occasionally). Gonzalez champions an aggressive variant of the Dutch against 2 Nf3 and outlines a simple but effective French Defence repertoire to counter 2 e4.

• A complete repertoire for Black to counter 1 d4.
• The question and answer approach provides an excellent study method.  318 pages

Chess students love a Puzzle Rush. And solving tactics puzzles certainly helps you improve your pattern recognition and will help you find good moves in tournament games. But there is a downside to most tactics puzzles — we always know who is supposed to win!

Chess in real life is different, not just because no one taps us on the shoulder and tells us to look for a tactic. Sometimes tactics work, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes your opponent has a few tricks up their sleeve, too.

This book shows the reality of chess tactics. It explores a chess player's challenges over the board: attack, defense, and counterattack! It exposes the actual give-and-take nature of chess tactics. 224 pages

Houten bordspel "Shut the box"

This second-volume workbook in Davorin Kuljasevic's How to Study Chess on Your Own series is optimized for chess players with an Elo rating between 1500 and 1800 but is helpful for anyone between 1200 and 2000.  The astounding success of his How to Study Chess on Your Own made clear that thousands of chess players want to improve their game and like to work on their training at least partially by themselves. 199 pages

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.