Every game is different and various factors can and should be considered in the process: standings, emotions, time-trouble (zeitnot), opponent’s character, tiredness, etc. psychology also plays a significant role in decision-making.
That is why we decided to highlight moments from real chess struggles to help you decide under different pressures whenever possible.
This book is not based on medical advice. It is a collection of practical advice related to common dilemmas and problems in a chess game.
We want to help you feel relaxed and well-equipped in similar situations.
If you know what is going on and what to do, you will easily maneuver through ”the bushes of logical and psychological problems“ and find an escape that will affect the final result in your favor!
I am sure that this book will broaden your horizons, make you calm and confident, and greatly help you to perform better.
Boroljub Zlatanovic 2024
Much has been written in chess about specific openings, players and tournaments. From experience, those are not easy books to write (because you need to be analytically laser-sharp), but at least you know what you’re signing up for. By contrast, books like the one you currently hold might be laxer on the minutiae, but as a whole can be harder to conceive and transform into finished reality. While not requiring using cloud engines on depth-56 to find a novelty, they are instead (so to speak) ”painted with a broader brush“.
Two examples of what I mean are Vukovic’s The Art of Attack in Chess and the famous classic, Nimzowitsch’s My System. In each, the author is a professional who brings across nothing more nor less than their philosophy of how the game should be played, and the degree of emotional energy they pour into it manifests in a work that rightly reflects the status of our game, not merely as an academic endeavor but as a cultural one.
The current book is a fitting, if not overdue, addition to hat genre. As a cultural phenomenon, chess exists somewhere on the spectrum between natural philosophy (by which I mean science in its traditional form) and fine art. Viewed statically from the outside, it combines elements of both. Viewed dynamically frm the inside, that same ambiguity which the game of chess straddles can be viewed as being that between logic and psychology.
GM Daniel Fernandez, May 2024.
