AAGAARD - Excelling at Technical Chess

Rook endgames are the most important to study, because they are the type of endgame you will face most often over the board. Working on rook endgames gives the biggest bang for your buck.

World-class grandmaster Sam Shankland explains technical rook endgames in a way that is clearer, better organized, more concise, and easier to understand than any previous work. After learning the vital set positions, the reader is offered lots of rules and guidelines to correctly assess any theoretical rook endgame they have not yet memorized.

Theoretical Rook Endgames is the ideal guide to a vital topic in chess. After reading this book, you will know which positions must be memorized, and which positions are best handled by considering general principles.

The sister volume – Conceptual Rook Endgames by Jacob Aagaard – shows how the theoretical knowledge shown in the present book is used in advanced practical play.

GM Sam Shankland is the 2018 US Champion, 2016 Olympiad gold medal winner for teams and 2014 individual gold medal winner. He has played Board 1 for the US in the World Team Championship and competed with the best players in the world in Wijk aan Zee, St. Louis, Prague and elsewhere. Hardcover 448 pages

There are many secrets in chess, knowledge of which distinguishes a chess virtuoso from an amateur. One of these secrets is the ability to play positions with opposite-colored bishops.

Why is it so important? The point is that the presence of opposite-colored bishops is not always a sign of an impending draw. Due to a number of factors, one of the bishops may turn out to be stronger than its opposite number. This can lead to a successful attack, material gains or obtaining some other advantages that contribute to winning the game.

Grandmaster Alexey Bezgodov has written a book analyzing 174 endgame positions with opposite-colored bishops as training material for advanced players who wish to deepen their endgame skills. Endgame theory, tactics and strategy are all covered, and this will help strong improvers to grind out wins instead of draws, and to avoid losing in difficult positions. Most positions are taken from modern games, and they mostly feature world champions and top grandmasters, including Carlsen, Anand, Kramnik, Kasparov, Karpov, Fischer, Tal, Korchnoi, Andersson, Shirov, Gelfand, Caruana, Nepomniachtchi, and others.

 Endgame Labyrinths presents the reader with 1002 challenging studies selected and truncated, with their usefulness for the practical player in mind. It is common for studies to be extended by less interesting manoeuvres or by incomprehensible sequences, before the main themes come into play. The studies in this book have been pruned to leave the reader with 1002 clear and solvable challenges.

 A few years of extensive selection, analysis, reselection, reanalysis and refining have gone into putting together the study book for the practical player with the most value ever.

 Steffen Nielsen is the reigning World Champion in endgame composition. His creativity and aesthetics in his compositions have had a massive influence on modern competition. He is a strong club player, with a good understanding of the difficulties practical players face over the board. Steffen is also a life-long supporter of the football club AaB, which is less successful...

 GM Jacob Aagaard is one of the leading chess writers and trainers of his generation. His students have played successfully at all levels and continue to do so. His books are used all over the world, by top players and amateurs alike.  Hardcover . 424 pages

All through his career Jan Timman has been captivated by the mystery and splendour of endgame studies. Even during his most successful and busy years as a world class player, Timman continued to compose studies and admire those of others.

For him there has never been any doubt that the journeys in this magical world helped him to grow as a player.

In this fascinating book, Timman has collected a wide range of the finest endgame studies by other composers and explains in his lucid style how they inspired him to create dozens of brand-new studies himself.

As Timman writes in the preface: ‘Never before have I been so productive as an endgame study composer as in the seven months that I wrote this book. It was a sensational experience.’

The Art of the Endgame is a treasure-trove for the lovers of beauty in chess. But it is also of great value for competitive players. Solving endgame studies is a vital part of improving one’s endgame technique: it develops general understanding, calculation skills and resourcefulness.

For this second volume of Magnus Carlsen Endgame Virtuoso, International Master Tibor Karolyi has selected Carlsen’s best endgames from 2018-2022, whereas the first volume covered 1999-2017. Reviewing these new games and explaining what Magnus was doing, the author was thoroughly impressed. 253 pages