"What you are going to find in this first volume is a selection of my most memorable battles on the chessboard during the first of two different periods. It covers the time from my arrival in the USA as an up-and-coming young talent in early 1989, acquiring the freedom to play in any open tournament in the world and quickly…
"This book is about the practical approach to the game of chess. It shaped me as a player and now I would like to share my philosophy with you. My objective is to combat several generally accepted misconceptions, such as a) only studying opening theory will make you a better player, b) one should always follow the first or second…
"If he thinks an idea will work over the board, the notion of risk is irrelevant to him. He wants to be on the attack and believes an objectively inferior position isn’t necessarily bad if his opponent needs to find several difficult defensive moves. “If that’s the only move for my opponent, let’s enter the line and see if he…
"During my chess career I have played almost 4000 classical games, a good deal of them against grandmasters, including world's top players, a number of which I managed to defeat. A lot of these games are interesting and instructive, and studying them will definitely help any player to get new expertise, learn new ideas and therefore improve their chess skill."~…
"The key to each pattern is the status of the squares surrounding the king: which ones are obstructed, which are potential flight squares that can be controlled with the available pieces. Players are advised to know these patterns forwards, backwards and upside down!" ~ Efstratios Grivas
“In my view the average club player will be more pleased with an opening book in which a profusion of ideas is offered. If this is also structured, you can hope that the readers will acquire the necessary understanding of standard positions.” ~ Herman Grooten
"The current trend, developed in recent years, is for Black to capture on d4 with his e-pawn, aiming for Benoni-type pawn structure positions which lead to rather double-edged positions." ~ Ivan Sokolov
"In dit boek treden de grootste schakers uit de geschiedenis voor het voetlicht, de kampioenen die in hun tijd de grootste waren." ~ Paul van der Sterren
"Contrary to what critical pessimists might say, the Reti opening is an ambitious weapon for White. By avoiding the main theoretical debates, White tries to reach an unbalanced position from an early stage of the game, with many different plans available." ~ Adrien Demuth
"Together with the Candidates you should think over the crucial positions, feel the fighting tension and, the most important thing, try to make the right decisions" ~Alexey Kuzmin
"Learning the Najdorf will help all players to understand Sicilians in a better way. Different aspects of chess such as defence, attack and sacrifice, positional themes and tactical storms, can be found in this book." ~ Milos Pavlovic
"I found the idea to switch sides. By this, I mean to look at games from White’s perspective and then from Black’s. A rather interesting concept, as things often appear quite different, depending on the viewpoint." ~ Christian Bauer Teaser [PDF] - Candidate Moves
The problems in the book are accessible to players with a level from modest to confident. The most difficult ones are marked with an asterisk, while the most challenging chapter comes with a help page, that you may check when necessary.
