Better Thinking Better Chess

Finding strong moves doesn't simply depend on how much you know about chess. In fact, greater conceptual knowledge makes choosing a move more complex as it increases the number of directions your mind can take. More important is optimizing your thought process. Grandmaster Joel Benjamin knows that pointing out the moves his students missed is just half the job. They need to understand that they were looking in the wrong direction. Chess engines offer little help in this because they can’t explain why you went astray. What’s more: an engine may send the wrong message! Many chess players don’t realise that the top computer move frequently isn’t the best move to play during the game. This book will improve the structure and effectiveness of your decision making process. You will learn to: -- choose between two attractive continuations -- avoid taking the wrong direction at the start of your deliberations -- know when it is necessary to spend more time -- recognize unlikely moves -- understand when you need to sacrifice material -- and much more. By applying a grandmaster’s train of thought you will more often arrive at strong moves and substantially improve your game.

In an guide to developing a more effective thinking process for chess, an instructor evaluates how players at all levels approach analytical positions and offers lessons based on his findings to help players avoid typical flaws.

This is a well-established training manual which encourages the average player to understand how a grandmaster thinks, and even more important, how he works. Kotov tackles fundamental issues such as knowing how and when to analyze, the tree of analysis, a selection of candidate moves and the factors of success.

Offers a guide to important chess techniques and principles to help players develop the skills needed to beat opponents, from the basics of play to specific tactics and strategies, as well as a look at the world of competitive chess.

This book is designed to immediately improve your game. Eric Schiller, a legendary teacher of bright young stars and champions, shows you in seven lessons that cover every aspect of the game how to rethink the moves you make and become a winning player. The book includes more than 55 key game situations, and is packed with diagrams and insightful callouts so that every page brings you one step closer to being a master! Chess is a game of mistakes; if you can cut down on them, your game will get much stronger. This unique approach shows the mistakes Schiller has made in his own games at each stage of chess development from early scholastic challenges to professional encounters with grandmasters to illustrate the types of errors typically made in real games. In each case, you'll learn how such errors could have been avoided. You'll also see how professional players fall prey to the same problems as amateurs! Featuring instructive lessons in the opening, basic tactics, basic strategy, middlegame, endgame and lesssons learned.

This book features the very best of Dan Heisman's multi-award winning chess column Novice Nook and is full of valuable instruction, insight and practical advice on a wide range of key chess subjects.

A three-time U.S. Champion and Grandmaster and an award-winning educator provide a compact but comprehensive series of chess lessons and essential knowledge to help everyone from beginners to competitors achieve their desired level of proficiency in the game. Original.

The chess playing mind does not work like a machine. Selecting a move results from rather chaotic thought processes and is not the logical outcome of applying a rational method. The only problem with that, says International Master Willy Hendriks, is that most books and courses on improving at chess claim exactly the opposite. The dogma of the chess instruction establishment is that if you only take a good look at certain ‘characteristics’ of a position, then good moves will follow more or less automatically. But this is not how it happens. Chess players, weak and strong, don’t first judge the position, then formulate a plan and afterwards look at moves. It all happens at the same time, and pretending that it is otherwise is counterproductive. There is no use in forcing your students to mentally jump through theoretical hoops, according to experienced chess coach Hendriks. This work shows a healthy distrust of accepted methods to get better at chess. It teaches that winning games does not depend on ticking off a to-do list when looking at a position on the board. It presents club and internet chess players with loads of much-needed no-nonsense training material. In this provocative, entertaining and highly instructive book, Hendriks shows how you can travel light on the road to chess improvement!