Description
Wojciech Moranda – Universal Chess Training – ISBN 9789492510907 – 360 pages.
Teaser [PDF 35p] – Wojciech Moranda – Universal Chess Training
Purpose
Are you struggling with your chess development? While dedicating hours and hours on improving your craft, your rating simply does not want to move upwards? Spending loads of money on chess books and DVDs, but feeling no real improvement at all? No worries – the book that you are holding in your hands might represent a game changer!
Years of coaching experience as well as independent research has allowed the author to identify the key skills that will enhance the progress of just about any player rated between 1600 and 2500. Becoming a strong chess thinker is namely not only reserved exclusively for elite players, but actually constitutes the cornerstone of chess training, being no less important than memorising opening theory, acquiring middlegame knowledge or practising endgames.
By studying this book, you will:
– learn how to universally deal with any position you might encounter in your games, even if you happen to see it for the first time in your life,
– have the opportunity to solve 90 unique, hand-picked puzzles, extensively annotated and peculiarly organised for the Readers’ optimal learning effect,
– gain access to more than 300 pages of original grandmaster thoughts and advice, leaving you awestruck and hungry for more afterwards!
Bio
Wojciech Moranda (1988), Grandmaster since 2009, rated FIDE >2600 in standard/rapid/blitz. Poland’s TOP 7 player (February 2020) and FIDE TOP 100 in Rapid (2018). Member of top teams from the German (Schachfreunde Berlin), Belgian (Cercle d’Échecs Fontainois) and Swedish (Visby Schackklubb) league. Captain of the third best Polish team (Wieża Pęgów) as well as the PRO Chess League team, The New York Marshalls.
Professional chess coach, running his own chess school ‘Grandmaster Academy’ seated in Wroclaw (Poland), while training students worldwide, from California to Sydney. His other notable coaching experiences include i.a. working with the National Youth Chess Academy of the Polish Chess Federation (since 2012) and the Polish National Female Chess Team (2013). In his work as a trainer, Wojciech puts special emphasis on improving his students’ thought-process and flawless opening preparation.
Frank M. (verified owner) –
Professional handling of everything
Mateusz –
Soooo, good
Elsa J. –
Been working my way through GM Moranda’s Universal chess training book.
Well presented, offering highly digestible explanations for complex ideas/motifs.
Moranda drops knowledge gems and clever witticisms throughout and allows the reader to see chess through the eyes of a very Strong Grandmaster.
Clearly a lot of effort has been put into the book and it definitely shows, mixed exercises serving to provide Universal chess progress.
I will be bringing this book with me for my future tournaments.
Teclaf Paweł –
A great book with plenty unique positions that can’t be found in any other book. I highly recommend to everyone who wants to lift up his skills. Doesn’t matter if you’re a pro player or an amateur you will surely enjoy this book!
Jonathan Wick –
This book will surely help me on my journey of becoming a man of chess culture! excellent read.
Mieszko –
A unique book, filled with instructive exercises from modern recent games. Author presents his innovative view in a witty way, providing the reader with clear explanations and plenty of practical tips which you can immediately apply in your own games. Highly recommended!
Victor –
I have been reading this book now over the course of a couple of weeks and it’s just excellent. It presents the material in a novel way, giving the exercises first followed by a comprehensive explanation section afterwards. Additionally there are no hints to what the exercises are about. These two elements in combination seems to be adding a dimension that is often sorely missed in most books: Nobody tells you what the theme is in a real game and that is often the real struggle. If you know it, then the candidate moves often suggest themselves.
Else, it’s written in a clear and energetic language, sometimes even witty 🙂 Lots of explanations and avoiding the lazy “long variations” trap. It’s divided into three skill levels, where the final and highest level is really tough! I am about 2100 and feeling quite successful in section 2, hopefully attacking section 3 at some point in the near future:) Highly recommended!
FM Franciszek –
I highly recommend this book to every master and everybody, who wants to reach master level in chess. Author presents 90 modern puzzles and shares his thoughts about them. After solving them your skills will rise up around +-100 FIDE and your attitude towards chess will change, I promise 😀
Nasnaseez –
I have really enjoyed reading this book so far and I would totally recommend it to everyone, who is interested in reaching a high level at playing chess. Awesome book!
Myanash –
I highly recommend this book. It provides many interesting and demanding puzzles with great, deep analysis and explanation-so, everything you need to improve your level! Your skills, such as calculation, positional understanding and non-schematic thinking will surely get better. “Universal Chess Training” contains new examples, which you didn’t see earlier. Additionally, the book is written in entertaining style, including unusual comments. Also, you can find a lot of helpful tips and practice advices. I enjoy studing this book and recommend to all ambitious players.
Burak –
This is a very strong candidate for the title of the book of the year 2020.
What you get here are 90 puzzles, all of them taken for the recent GM games (you won’t recognize them!). The positions are of different level, but you really need some decent skills to solve even the ones form the ‚easiest‘ chapter (around 1900 ELO I would say), while the ones in the last chapter are insanely challenging.
What really sets this book apart from the competition, at least in my eyes, are the solutions to the puzzles. Tha author must have put crazy amount of work into making them the beautifully instructive mini lessons that they are.
All in all, a very strong debut from the Polish GM and a book that may even be the best one in this genre since, say, the Hort & Jansa classic.
DEUTSCH (/GERMAN):
Dieses Buch ist ein sehr starker Kandidat für den Titel des Buches des Jahres 2020.
Was man hier bekommt sind 90 Aufgaben, die alle aus den letzten GM-Partien stammen. Die Aufgaben haben unterschiedlichen Schwierigkeitsgrad, aber man braucht schon eine ordentliche Spielstärke, um sogar diejenigen aus dem “einfachsten” Kapitel zu lösen (ab 1900 ELO aufwärts, würde ich einschätzen). Danach wird’s nur noch „besser“ und die Aufgaben im letzten Kapitel sind teilweise wahnsinnig herausfordernd.
Was dieses Buch in meinen Augen so richtig von der Konkurrenz abhebt sind die Lösungen der Aufgaben. Man soll sie sehr genau studieren, denn diese sind sehr instruktiv geschrieben und enthalten zusätzliche Mini-Lektionen. Der Autor muss hier jede Menge Arbeit reingesteckt haben.
Alles in allem ein sehr starkes Debüt des polnischen GM und ein Buch, das mit dem Klassiker von Hort & Jansa ruhig mithalten kann.
Eine klare Kaufempfehlung für ambitionierte Spieler.
Kyron –
Full of unique examples that won’t be found anywhere else. A great handbook for improving your practical chess skills regardless of your rating!
Danio –
Excellent book, progress is certain.
Sebastian M. –
The most compelling and instructive chess book so far!
I got access to ‘Universal Chess Training’ because it was presented to me as a gift. Usually I only partially read through chess books here and there, seeking to find some interesting ideas , but never really finish them back to back. Now I am very much into this book and did already about 100 pages. I really love it! Wojciech Moranda’s first book is not about giving patterns you always find in works of many authors but in contrary teaches unique thinking methods to approach a position, regardless of how familiar you are with specific structures or motivs.
Teaching the way to think rather than repeating what is already there chess wise can in my view only be compared to Aagaard’s GM Repertoire Series, but Moranda’s explanations seem more to the point. His clear-cut explanations are maybe even more important than the result of your solution on the given exercise. I need to say that even the easy exercises contain a lot of difficulty, but in the end you will think in a different way of themes like static and dynamic, antizipation or time.
“What every russian schoolboy knows” in fact seems to refer to russian players, since western european players will definately struggle early on. But this is designed to make you better! I can advise you to fight as hard you can to find a solution and then deeply dig into Moranda’s explanations. They are not only always to the point but also very entertaining, full of useful metaphers, and engine approved.
The explanations are enormously thorough and will teach you a lot of other skills if you are not only concentrating your efforts on looking at the main line.
All in all it feels like a top GM is sitting right at the other side of your chess board, feeding you with exercise after exercise until your alarm ring bells or your wife reminds you that there is also a life out there.
I recommend everyone to study this book if he or she wants to improve heavily!
Axel –
I recommend this book to everyone who wants to improve themselves in chess. I really like the attitude of GM Moranda, who did a great job and described each exercise very carefully. Moreover, these are unique exercises that you won’t find in any other book! I hope they will choose this book as the book of the year 2020!
Michael (verified owner) –
Dawid Czerw –
This book is something really new on the market. Mostly books are about everything (and nothing!).
In this case author put a lot of effort to choose perfect training exercises. They are all from recent games, solutions are well-explained and also entertaining. I can strongly recommend this book for everyone interested in developing thinking algorithms (players 1600+ can learn a lot – I guess it will be something new and challenging even for 2300+ players).
If you are a club player, who don’t want to train, you can buy this book just to enjoy its’ (chess) beauty 🙂
Will Luo –
I learned a lot from this book, would definitely recommend to players who want to improve quickly
Ryan –
A great book. GM Wojciech Moranda puts a lot of unique puzzles in this book along with very intricate annotations. All these puzzles are ones that you may have not seen before since they all come from recent games. This is a great book as well as a good way to improve your chess skill by many levels.
Troels –
A comprehensive work book for the modern chess improver.
The book features 90 original positions without hints, allowing the reader to treat the positions as if they had them in their own game. Too often, very instructive positions in books are spoiled by tagging them with a theme, which of course never happens over the board.
Even though many of the puzzles are very complicated, Moranda does a great job of explaining the solutions.
Anonymous (verified owner) –
Super fast delivery, looking forward to reading the book.
Andy Hoey (verified owner) –
Great service and excellent quality of book content. I have made several purchases recently of Thinkers Publishing books and I have been very happy with all of them. I feel like TP is a name to lookout for in the coming years. Great work!
Jonathan Rossi –
How many chess books do I own? Probably too many, but this book is unique in my eyes. It doesn’t simply focus on one idea whether that be openings, strategy or tactics for example. Divided into 3 levels of difficulty starting at an intermediate level and working up to Grandmaster level, it covers all aspects such as anticipation & prophylaxis, coordination, statics & dynamics, attack & defence (to name a few), using mainly modern games as exercises on a random basis to help train one’s ability to think in a practical, ‘real life’ situation at the board. The solutions are explained in a manner in which a chess tutor would explain them, leaving you with a true understanding of the nature of the position.
Simply brilliant.
Marcin Molenda (verified owner) –
Kozak książka. Na samej okładce powinno być ostrzeżenie: “Tylko dla ludzi o mocnych nerwach” 😉
Peter Lizak (verified owner) –
Steffen Wirth (verified owner) –
Andrea Favaloro –
This book is very good.Wojciech Moranda made a great job in selecting the 90 exercises,they are taken by recent games and are very deep.The author in fact with this selection managed to show many chess themes in the modern way of playing chess and is possible to see in the explanation of each exercise the strong understanding of the GM Moranda.He is also a great coach and for this reason his work on this book assumes a higher value:not only the modern and dedicated accuracy in selecting the exercises,but also the teaching value of each exercise is excellent and can help better to understand possible mistakes and to strengthen the own knowledge and expand it.
This is really a boot to not miss!
Célia Braga Schich (verified owner) –
Mokhtar K. (verified owner) –
Nad Titus (verified owner) –
Armin Juhasz IM –
My favorite book of 2020! Great work.
Fy Rakotomaharo (verified owner) –
Anonymous (verified owner) –
Daniyal Yunusau (verified owner) –
Great book, fast delivery!
Thomas O’Neill (verified owner) –
Roberto Feola (verified owner) –
If you want to really improve at chess this book does a wonderful job
Keith Dow (verified owner) –
This is a great book that I saw on youtube. It was used by Levy Rozman and Hikaru Nakamura. They both took a look at positions and explained their analysis.
Filip (verified owner) –
Rastislav M. (verified owner) –
Very positive shopping experience, fast delivery, book arrived in excellent condition.
Holger Hank (verified owner) –
Anonymous (verified owner) –
Konstantinos Fegkas (verified owner) –
Your response to my order was immedate and accurate.