1001 Chess Exercises For Club Players

A complete course for club and tournament players Chess is 99% tactics. This celebrated observation is not only true for beginners, but also for club players (Elo 1500 – 2000). If you want to win more games, nothing works better than training your combination skills. There are two types of books on tactics: those that introduce the concepts followed by some examples, and workbooks that contain lots of exercises. FIDE Master Frank Erwich has done both: he explains all the key tactical ideas AND provides an enormous amount of exercises for each different theme. Erwich has created a complete tactics book for ambitious club and tournament players. He takes you to the next level of identifying weak spots in the position of your opponent, recognizing patterns of combinations, visualizing tricks and calculating effectively. Erwich has also included a new and important element: tests that will improve your defensive skills. 1001 Chess Exercises for Club Players is not a freewheeling collection of puzzles. It serves as a course text book, because only the most didactically productive exercises are featured. Every chapter starts with easy examples, but don’t worry: the level of difficulty will steadily increase.

Chess is 99% tactics. If this celebrated observation is true for the master, how much more so for beginners and casual players! If you want to win more games, nothing works better than training combinations. There are two types of books on tactics, those that introduce the concepts followed by some examples, and workbooks that contain numerous exercises. Chess masters and trainers Franco Masetti and Roberto Messa have done both: they explain the basic tactical ideas AND provide an enormous amount of exercises for each different theme. Masetti and Messa have created a great first tactics book. It teaches you how to: ¯ identify weak spots in the position of your opponent ¯ recognize patterns of combinations ¯ visualize tricks. 1001 Chess Exercises for Beginners can also be used as a course text book, because only the most didactically productive exercises have been used.

This new 3rd edition has, besides various corrections and improvements, a new introduction and a brand-new chapter called ‘Total Control’. In this 35-page chapter Grooten adds the final instructive brick to his formidable, yet very accessible, building: inspired by Tigran Petrosian’s playing style he explains amateurs how to exploit small advantages. With a new set of exercises. ---- Every club player knows the problem: the opening has ended, and now what? First find the right plan, then the good moves will follow! With this book, International Master Herman Grooten presents to amateur players a complete and structured course on: how to recognize key characteristics in all types of positions how to make use of those characteristics to choose the right plan His teachings are based on the famous "Elements" of Wilhelm Steinitz, but Grooten has significantly expanded and updated the work of the first World Champion. He supplies many modern examples, tested in his own practice as a coach of talented youngsters. In Chess Strategy for Club Players you will learn the basic elements of positional understanding: -- pawn structure -- piece placement -- lead in development -- open files -- weaknesses -- space advantage -- king safety -- exploiting small advantages. The author also explains what to do when, in a given position, the basic principles seem to point in different directions. Each chapter of this fundamental primer ends with a set of highly instructive exercises.

For any advanced club player (Elo 1800 - 2300) one thing remains true: if you want to win more games, nothing works better than training your combination skills. After all, studying the endgame will not help you if you are defeated by a deadly tactic long before the ending is reached. In this follow-up to his acclaimed 1001 Chess Exercise for Club Players, FIDE Master Frank Erwich teaches you how to reach the next level of identifying weak spots in the position of your opponent, recognizing patterns of combinations, visualizing tricks and calculating effectively. Erwich repeats the themes of his previous book, focusing on exercises in which the key move is less obvious. He also introduces new, more sophisticated tactical weapons. They are geared towards the reality of the advanced club player: it is not enough to spot simple combinations, at this level you must be able to resist your reflexes and look deeper. Being able to take a piece of your opponent, doesn’t mean you have to. If one of your pieces is attacked you should first research what happens if you don’t move it away. In variations that look forcing you will always search for that deadly Zwischenzug. Quiet moves in general should be your new best friends. In short: an advanced club player should expect the unexpected. One of the celebrated elements of Erwich’s previous book, neglected in other books on tactics, is back: defence! You will also learn how to defend against tactics, as well as how to use tactical weapons when you are under heavy pressure. 1001 Chess Exercises for Advanced Club Players is a complete and structured course, and not just a collection of freewheeling puzzles. Erwich starts every chapter with an instructive explanation of the tactical concept and has carefully selected the most didactically productive exercises.

An advanced club player must look deeper! In this follow-up to his acclaimed 1001 Chess Exercise for Club Players, FIDE Master Frank Erwich teaches you how to reach the next level of identifying weak spots in the position of your opponent, recognizing patterns of combinations, visualizing tricks and calculating effectively. Erwich repeats the themes of his previous book, focusing on exercises in which the key move is less obvious. He also introduces new, more sophisticated tactical weapons. They are geared towards the reality of the advanced club player (Elo 1800 - 2300): it is not enough to spot simple combinations, at this level you must be able to resist your reflexes and look deeper. In variations that look forcing you will always search for that deadly Zwischenzug. Quiet moves in general should be your new best friends. In short: an advanced club player should expect the unexpected. One of the celebrated elements of Erwich's previous book, which is neglected in other books on tactics, is back: defence! You will also learn how to defend against tactics, as well as how to use tactical weapons when you are under heavy pressure. This is a complete and structured course, and not just a collection of freewheeling puzzles. Erwich starts every chapter with an instructive explanation of the tactical concept at hand and has carefully selected the most didactically productive exercises.

Every chess player loves to attack the enemy King. Your goal is clear, your thinking is concrete, your creativity is flowing and direct victory is just around the corner. Few things in life are better than successfully conducting a blistering attack on your opponent’s King! But how good are you actually at attacking? Have you ever analysed your efforts? Looked at calculation errors, missed opportunities and derailed efforts? After the immense success of his award-winning classic Chess Strategy for Club Players, Herman Grooten has now written an equally accessible follow-up primer on attacking chess. He teaches you how to spot opportunities, exploit weaknesses, bringing your forces to the frontline and striking at the right moment. Grooten concentrates on training the most valuable skills for this process: visualizing, structuring, anticipating, calculating, memorizing and other mental aspects. This is not just another collection of useful thematic moves and motifs but a complete and highly structured course of attacking techniques. And with fantastic new examples, clear explanations and many instructive exercises. Giri won the Dutch Championship four times. Other tournament wins include the Wijk aan Zee B-Group in 2010, a shared first place in Malmö 2011 and a victory in Reggio Emilia 2011/12. In 2014 Giri shared second place in Wijk aan Zee. He won the individual bronze medal for his first-board performance for the Dutch team at the 41st Chess Olympiad in Tromsø in Norway. He finished second at the strong Qatar Masters Open. In 2016 he qualified for the Candidates Tournament in Moscow, where he ended on 50%, with fourteen draws. Giri has an all-round playing style and a strong technique. He likes to fight until the end in seemingly harmless positions, trying to squeeze blood from a stone. But whenever he sees an opportunity, he can be a very sharp tactician as well. Try this training app and play the same winning moves as Anish Giri. This app offers you one hundred training exercises, in positions where Giri turned the game in his favour. The puzzles start at a moderate level and gradually get more difficult. Don't give up!

Tactics Time 2 presents 1001 fresh and instructive positions that Tim and Anthea have assembled from real amateur chess games, leaving you able to spot relatively simple patterns like a knight fork, an overloaded piece or a weak back rank.

The Scandinavian Defence is one of the most popular chess openings among amateur players, and it is easy to see why. Black players immediately limit the opening theory they have to know because there is no way White can side-step Black’s first move. What’s more, the Scandinavian requires only very little theoretical knowledge, so it has an extremely low maintenance factor. To cap it all, Black gets a solid structure. And that’s not even the end of the good news, as Thomas Willemze demonstrates. Playing the Scandinavian teaches invaluable techniques that you can use in almost all of your other games. Pressuring the centre, improving your piece coordination, trading the right pieces and exploiting your opponent’s weak points are all typical ‘Scandinavian’ spin-offs that Thomas Willemze teaches you in his trademark lucid style. This book presents everything you need to know to be fully prepared to meet 1.e4. Willemze not just uses examples from the games of elite grandmasters. As an experienced trainer he knows that discussing club player’s adventures are particularly instructive for his target group.