Vladimir Kramnik is a giant of the chess world. He firmly secured his legendary status when he won the World Championship in 2000 by defeating the previously dominant Garry Kasparov - the only player ever to do so in a match. Kramnik held on to his crown for seven years, and today he remains one of the World's elite players. In this book, former American Open Champion Cyrus Lakdawala invites you to join him in a study of his favourite Kramnik games. Lakdawala examines Kramnik's renowned skills in attack and defence, exploiting imbalances, dynamic elements, accumulating advantages and endgame play, and shows how we can all improve by learning from Kramnik's masterpieces. Move by Move provides an ideal platform to study chess. By continually challenging the reader to answer probing questions throughout the book, the Move by Move format greatly encourages the learning and practising of vital skills just as much as the traditional assimilation of knowledge. Carefully selected questions and answers are designed to keep you actively involved and allow you to monitor your progress as you learn. This is an excellent way to improve your chess skills and knowledge.

"A must for every chess player!"--Anatoly Karpov, 12th World Chess Champion

The first volume of the extremely popular series "Opening for White According to Kramnik" was published in 2000. Now 14th world champion Alexander Khalifman presents the audience with two entirely new books.Volume 1a covers the Old Indian Defence, Anti-Gruenfeld, and less popular lines of the King's Indian Defence. The first part of the book analyses 1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 d6 3.d4, where Black delays the development of his bishop to g7, or prepares it for another deployment altogether, for example after e7-e5 and Bf8-e7. These opening set-ups have long had the reputation of being solid, but with not so good prospects for Black. The second part deals with 1.Nf3 Nf6 2.c4 g6 3.Nc3 where Black follows up with 3…d5. Thus he emphasizes that he does not intend to play the KID and he invites his opponent to enter the main lines of the Gruenfeld Defence. White counters however with 4.Qa4+!? facing the opponent with difficult problems while turning the Gruenfeld out of question. In the third part of this book Khalifman begins to analyze the King's Indian Defence, starting with some currently offbeat lines. Its main and most fashionable variations are so complex and strategically independent that Khalifman singled them out in the separate volume 1b.