The grand prix attack - Evgeny Sveshnikov (K-2103/s)

Playing the Modern Defense with any regularity is a sign that you truly love chess. From the very first move, you are indicating to your opponent (and to the jury deciding on the brilliancy prizes!) that you would like to play an unbalanced position. Then the thrill of the fight courses through your veins and you simply must trust yourself to handle developments better than the other player. For a very long time this truly was the absolute frontier, the Wild West of opening theory: if it went well you looked like a genius, if it goes badly you got mated in 20 moves, and most likely neither of you ever really made the analysis which you so badly needed to remember at the board.

A certain air of reckless abandon, of pure devil-may-care mischief, was needed to play it successfully, and to some extent still is. Something of this passion was conveyed into printed form by Swedish GM Tiger Hillarp Persson when he wrote his Tiger’s Modern. Even within the Modern, the crème de-la-crème of the opening, when I learned it from his book almost a decade ago was the famous Hippo setup, the epitome of the adventurer’s spirit.

While White goes about stationing his pieces aggressively, controls the centre, etc., Black nonchalantly places nearly all his pawns on the third rank and shuffles his pieces behind them! For some reason this appealed to the 15-year-old me: the idea that I could take the game to my opponent in a way that I chose, rather than by preparing endlessly for some subtlety on move 27 of the Poisoned Pawn Najdorf.

Throughout the year 2010 I played the Modern almost exclusively; it filled the gap between my 1 ... e5 phase and my 1 ... c6 phase. (The latter remained my main reply to 1.e4 until I began learning the Najdorf in 2018, but I do still enjoy regularly mixing it up with the Modern; there are more than 20 references to my own games in the text.) What might surprise you is that 2010 was the year in which my chess career started progressing by leaps and bounds! I became an IM relying very heavily on it; an example from one of my norm tournaments can be seen in Part I (Lahiri-Fernandez.) I embraced the complexity, the audacity and the novelty whole-heartedly, and it embraced me back.

In Magnus Wins With Black Grandmaster Zenon Franco deeply analyses 30 of Magnus Carlsen’s most instructive games where he wins with the black pieces. This book is written in “move by move” style, a good training tool containing exercises and tests. This format is a great platform for studying chess, improving both skills and knowledge, as the reader is continually challenged to find the best moves and the author provides answers to probing questions throughout. It is the second of two volumes written by Franco for Elk and Ruby Publishing House on the games of Magnus Carlsen. His first volume Magnus Wins With White has proved to be an international best seller.

The Dutch Defence is one of Black’s most combative responses to 1.d4, and the Stonewall is the boldest version of this opening. Black immediately seizes space in the centre and clamps down on the e4-square, laying the foundations for a complicated strategic battle.

Many players believe the Stonewall to be a substandard opening, naively assuming that the e5-outpost and bad light-squared bishop must give White the advantage. GM Nikola Sedlak disagrees, and in Playing the Stonewall Dutch he shares the insights that have helped him to rack up a healthy plus score from Black’s side. In addition to providing a complete repertoire in the main lines of the Stonewall, this book also offers useful guidance on dealing with Anti-Dutch variations and various move-order subtleties.

GM Nikola Sedlak is a former Serbian Champion who has won both the EU Individual Open Championship and an Olympiad gold medal. He has played the Stonewall for many years against strong opponents, achieving excellent results.

В этой книге представлены редкие и интересные дебютные варианты (за белых), которые призваны быстро подготовить вас к партии или соревнованию. Также вы сможете познакомиться с ловушками, теоретическими новинками и оригинальными анализами действующего гроссмейстера. Здесь вы найдёте и позиции для решения, которые помогут улучшить вашу тактическую подготовку.

Книга предназначена для широкого круга читателей, увлечённых шахматами.

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When Thinkers Publishing suggested I could try to produce a book on the Alekhine Defense, since for some reason I seem to have the reputation of using maverick openings, this idea looked reasonable. In that Covid period I had nothing better to do after all! After a few months I however realized that Thinkers Publishing had passed me a hot potato (many thanks!), i.e. the arduous task of checking the serious recent works of Kornev and Negi, plus the mammoth book of Chetverik and Kalinichenko, not to mention some "already ancient" suggestions fram John Shaw dated 2016!

You will therefore find some references to those inspiring sources throughout this book (Chetverik & Kalinichenko being abbreviated to C&K). I wasn't sure at first whether I wanted to talk about "all existing" lines of this intriguing opening, and discovered in the process there were quite a few, or whether I would sort them out to offer a Black repertoire. I finally decided on the first approach, to give you, dear reader, a broader choice. Among all the lines included in that book, the Four Pawns Attack Classical, covered in the Bonus Lines chapter, is probably the only one where a Black player would need more knowledge in order to be "safe" from a theoretical standpoint.

Hope you'll enjoy reading this book!

The French Defence is coming back to fashion again!

In the first book ever exclusively devoted to the Exchange French Variation, American grandmaster Alex Fishbein recognizes that the Exchange French is an opening for a player who likes active piece play, fights for the initiative, excels in positions with possibilities on both sides of the board, and finds strategic and tactical nuances that arise out of almost nothing. And if you play the French as Black, then this book will help you deal with White’s 3.exd5.

Authors of French Defense books from the black perspective have recognized for a while that there is no draw here at all and have proposed lines where Black can create interesting play. Indeed, both sides can create complications. The author shows that playing “boring” moves is actually risky with both White and Black. The Exchange French is a vibrant opening, just like any other, and yet there has been very little literature showing how to play it from the white side. That void is filled with this book.

While the main point of this book is to build a White repertoire, any player of the Black side of the French will benefit by reading it. A good number of the sample games end well for Black, whereas in the games in which White gains the upper hand, Fishbein is careful to note improvements for the second player. I have been playing and writing about the French Defense, including this variation, for many years, but I came across a lot that I hadn’t known in nearly every sub-variation.

I suspect that most readers of this book will be pleasantly surprised to find out how rich the play can become in the French Exchange Variation. That alone is enough to reward a careful reading, and Fishbein’s careful exposition of lines and strategies will undoubtedly translate into extra points over the board. – from the Foreword by John Watson

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Aleksandr Rakhmanov was born on 28 August 1989 in Cherepovets, Russia, and started to play chess at the age of seven. He became an IM in 2006, a GM in 2007 and a FIDE trainer in 2020. His current rating is 2651. His peak ratings are 2676 (classical), 2721 (rapid) and 2704 (blitz). In 2007 he won a hat-trick of bronze medals at the Russian, European and World U-18 championships. In 2017 he took 21st place in the World Rapid Championship in Riyadh and in 2019 won gold medal on 3rd board in the European Club Cup in Montenegro, took 18th place in the FIDE Grand Swiss, probably the strongest chess open ever, and participated in the World Cup. As a chess tourist Aleksandr likes to travel and has visited about fifty countries around the world.

A Compact (but Complete) Black Repertoire for Club Players against 1.d4

The Ruy Lopez is perhaps the most classical of all chess openings. It dates back to the 16th century and has featured in the opening repertoire of every modern world champion. It is a highly flexible variation: Bobby Fischer used it to create numerous powerful strategic masterpieces. In the hands of Anatoly Karpov it led to many of his trademark positional squeezes, whereas Garry Kasparov often used it as a springboard for his typically powerful attacks.

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