There is much published on chess tactics, strategy, openings and endings, but little on how to come up with imaginative solutions through logical thinking and evaluation. This book is dedicated to that task and provides over 700 'fresh' positions, incorporating a variety of schemes of thought for the reader to solve. The examples emphasise the power of logical and resourceful thinking, quick wit and imagination. In each chapter the author presents little-explored concepts, such as progressive and reciprocal thinking, to help the reader achieve decisive results and to make fewer mistakes in calculation. The material has been accumulated by the author over many years as a trainer and will be of great benefit to competitive players seeking to improve their methods of thinking.

Andrei Volokitin is one of a rare breed of chess players: he achieved a ranking in the world's top 20 while still a teenager. This book includes topics that are written in collaboration with his trainer. It features 375 positions where the reader is given a task or asked a question. These tasks resemble those that players regularly face.

lThe sacrifice is one of the most beautiful, rewarding and complex aspects of chess. During a game the decision to give up material in order to get an advantage is probably the most difficult one a player has to take. Often, you have to burn your bridges without being able to fully calculate the consequences. Risks and rewards are racing through your mind, fighting for precedence while the clock keeps ticking. Now is the moment, because after the next move the window for this opportunity may be closed. In this book Ivan Sokolov presents a set of practical tools that will help you to master the art of sacrifice. By concentrating on the aim you are trying to achieve, rather than on the opening you are playing or the piece you might be going to sack, he teaches you how to come to a reasonable risk assessment and how to trust your intuition. There is a separate part on seizing the initiative without actually giving up material. Ivan Sokolov has written an entertaining and instructive guide, packed with useful advice and lots of practical examples.

Garry Kasparov was the highest-rated chess player in the world for over twenty years and is widely considered the greatest player that ever lived. In How Life Imitates Chess Kasparov distills the lessons he learned over a lifetime as a Grandmaster to offer a primer on successful decision-making: how to evaluate opportunities, anticipate the future, devise winning strategies. He relates in a lively, original way all the fundamentals, from the nuts and bolts of strategy, evaluation, and preparation to the subtler, more human arts of developing a personal style and using memory, intuition, imagination and even fantasy. Kasparov takes us through the great matches of his career, including legendary duels against both man (Grandmaster Anatoly Karpov) and machine (IBM chess supercomputer Deep Blue), enhancing the lessons of his many experiences with examples from politics, literature, sports and military history. With candor, wisdom, and humor, Kasparov recounts his victories and his blunders, both from his years as a world-class competitor as well as his new life as a political leader in Russia. An inspiring book that combines unique strategic insight with personal memoir, How Life Imitates Chess is a glimpse inside the mind of one of today's greatest and most innovative thinkers.

Every chess player knows that some moves are harder to see than others. Why is it that, frequently, uncomplicated wins simply do not enter your mind? Even strong grandmasters suffer from blind spots that obscure some of the best ideas during a game. What is more: often both players fail to see the opportunity that is right in front of their eyes. Neiman and Afek have researched this problem and discovered that there are actually reasons why your brain discards certain ideas. In this book they demonstrate different categories of hard-to-see chess moves and clearly explain the psychological, positional and geometric factors which cloud your brain. Invisible Chess Moves with its many unique examples, instructive explanations and illuminative tests, will teach how to discover your blind spots and see the moves which remain invisible for others. Your results at the board will improve dramatically because your brain will stop blocking winning ideas.

The Best Move is a collection of very hard chess problems based on actual grandmaster games. The reader is asked who has the advantage and why. Points are awarded not only for getting the answer right but for seeing deeply into the position. These problems are based primarily on the games of grandmasters Hort and Jansa. This book was later translated into German with some changes in the diagrams and published in 1982-1984.

• A unique exploration of those pivotal moments in which chess games are won or lost – if you know how to spot them • Packed with invaluable tips and tricks on identifying critical moments, illustrated with examples from 280 chess games • Fascinating new book from the author of Imagination in Chess, which has built up a cult following in the chess world This exciting and unique book deals with an aspect of chess that is hard to pin down: those monumental moments in a game when the tide turns and the course of the game is altered. It outlines the different types of critical moment, explaining how to spot them and, crucially, how to combat them, seize the initiative and turn the game to your own advantage. To back up the theory, the author has provided deep analysis of 280 chess positions from games by some of the greatest players in the world.