Invisible Chess Moves

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.

Every chess player knows that some moves are harder to see than others. Even strong grandmasters suffer from blind spots that obscure some of the best ideas during a game. Neiman and Afek discovered that there are actually identifiable reasons why your brain discards certain ideas. They demonstrate different categories of hard-to-see chess moves and teach you how to discover your own blind spots.

If only real life were like a book on chess tactics! But during a game you are on your own, and nobody will whisper in your ear that you have reached a position that is, in fact, a tactical puzzle and all you have to do is solve it. What you need, discovered Emmanuel Neiman in his long career as a chess trainer, is a way to read the signals which indicate that, somewhere in the position you are looking at, there is a tactical blow. What you need is a Chess Tactics Antenna! This trailblazing book by award-winning author Neiman provides a set of tools that enables the average club player to determine the moment he needs to look for win.

A Complete, Solid and Flexible Chess Opening Repertoire for Black & White – with the King’s Fianchetto When experienced chess teacher Emmanuel Neiman learned that some of his pupils hesitated to play in competitions for fear of being crushed in the opening, he wanted to help. Neiman knew that amateurs have little time to seriously study opening theory, so he had to come up with a practical, complete, easy-to-learn and solid opening repertoire that would not outdate rapidly. And that is what he did. Neiman advises amateurs to play (with both colours!) the flexible King’s Fianchetto system, where the Bishop is a defender of the King and at the same time an attacker. No matter what side you are, you use the same basic ideas: as White you are targeting the light squares and as Black the dark squares, while applying roughly the same strategies, plans and tactical motifs. Neiman has teamed up with Samy Shoker, who gained the Grandmaster title by mainly playing the King’s Fianchetto systems (and sometimes beating 2700+ rated players with it!). The result is a complete and practical repertoire which will give club players a sound and flexible middlegame position they can feel at home in. In many lines Neiman and Shoker not only present a solid approach but also a sharp and aggressive alternative. The authors don’t promise you a large advantage every time you play their system, but one thing is certain: after studying this entertaining book you can play the opening confidently and you will be a better all-round player because you have learned many essential middlegame lessons. Even (very) strong players will find the ideas of Neiman and Shoker useful as an easy-to-play occasional weapon.

As a Chess Master who has spent many years playing aggressive and attacking chess, I was quite dismayed during a recent visit to my local bookstore. I was in search of a book that covered an array of attacks against many Pawn formations in an organized fashion. Needless to say, my search came up empty. The books on attacking fell short in many ways. Many of the books were simply a small collection of attack games with no instruction about the art of attacking or about the skills required to become a great attacker. None of them provided the reader with any reference information about attacking or the weaknesses of various Pawn formations. None of them contained games with attacking themes like the Traxler Variation of the Two Knight's Defense, and the Jack Young Fishing Pole. None of them contained any wild attacking ideas that can stream from opening gambits such as the Blackmar-Diemer Gambit, King's Gambit, Scotch Gambit, Nakhmanson Gambit, etc. 500 pages, 435 games, Figurine Chess Notation.

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.

Chess is a cruel game. We all know that feeling when your position has gone awry and everything seems hopeless. You feel like resigning. But don’t give up! This is precisely the moment to switch to swindle mode. Master the art of provoking errors and you will be able to turn the tables and escape with a draw – or sometimes even steal the full point! Swindling is a skill that can be trained. In this book, David Smerdon shows how you can use tricks from psychology to marshal hidden resources and exploit your opponent’s biases. In a lost position, your best practical chance often lies not in what the computer recommends, but in playing your opponent. With an abundance of eye-popping examples and training exercises, Smerdon identifies the four best friends of every chess swindler: your opponent’s impatience, their hubris, their fear, and their need to stay in control. You’ll also learn about such cunning swindling motifs as the Trojan Horse, the Decoy Trap, the Berserk Attack, and ‘Window-Ledging’. So, come and join the Swindlers’ Club, become a great escape artist and dramatically improve your results. In this instructive and highly entertaining guide, Smerdon shows you how.

In order to win a game of chess you very often have to sacrifice material. Gathering the courage to do so while accurately assessing the potential benefits is a real challenge. The big question is always: what’s my compensation? Generations of chess players grew up with the idea that a sacrifice was correct if the material was swiftly returned, with interest. Almost by reflex, they spent lots of time counting, quantifying the static value of their pieces. But is that really the best way to determine the correctness of a sacrifice? In this book, Grandmaster Davorin Kuljasevic teaches you how to look beyond the material balance when you evaluate positions. With loads of instructive examples he shows how the actual value of your pieces fluctuates during the game, depending on many non-material factors. Some of those factors are space-related, such as mobility, harmony, outposts, structures, files and diagonals. Other factors are related to time, and to the way the moves unfold: tempo, initiative, a threat, an attack. Modern chess players need to be able to suppress their need for immediate gratification. In order to gain the upper hand you often have to live with uncertain compensation. With many fascinating examples, Kuljasevic teaches you the essential skill of taking calculated risks. After studying Beyond Material, winning games by sacrificing material will become second nature to you.