Your Chess Battle Plan

Stormester Neil McDonald, kjent for flere gode bøker som mange nå er utsolgt, kommer med en instruktiv gjennomgang av alltid aktuelle sjakktemaer bygget på moderne partier på høyt nivå, mange fra 2018 og 2019. Hva er det som avgjør partiene?

En gjennomtenkt og velskrevet bok som vil appellere til mange innen hele ratingspekteret fra cirka 1300 til 2300.

Forlagets egen omtale:

One of the most challenging tasks in a chess game is to find the correct strategy. It is far easy to attack too randomly, to miss a vital opportunity, or even choose the wrong plan altogether. These are all mistakes frequently seen by even quite strong players.

Your Chess Battle Plan focuses on how Magnus Carlsen and other great masters decide on the best strategy in a position and then find the right ways to implement it. Clear advice shows you how to hone in on the most relevant features of a position in order to decide what your general plan needs to be. Factors that are addressed include when to exchange pieces, when to make long-range manoeuvres, when to offer sacrifices and how to identify and focus on key squares. Your Chess Battle Plan will get you thinking along the right strategic lines and using your pieces and pawns in a much more efficient and skilful manner.

• A complete self-improvement programme.
• Advice to evaluate the current level of planning in your own games.
• Utilizes a structured approach, making the most of your study time.

Kapitelene i boka:

• 1 Improving the Activity of your Pieces 6
• 2 Stopping the Opponent Playing Good Moves 38
• 3 Full Grovel Mode 68
• 4 Punishing Faulty Freeing Moves 83
• 5 Exploiting a Hole 102
• 6 Manoeuvring Against Pawns 145
• 7 Promoting a Pawn 184
• 8 Using a Pawn as a Battering Ram 204
• 9 Sacrificing to Gain the Initiative 232
• 10 Deciding the Character of the Game in the Opening 259

Forfatterens forord:

The sixth world champion, Mikhail Botvinnik, described chess as the art of logic. Indeed, if music is the art of sound, and dance is the art of movement, then chess, as the greatest of intellectual games, is the art that most clearly expresses decision making.

As the title of the book suggests, chess is also a war game. Nevertheless, the competitive pleasure we get in beating our opponent and notching up a point cannot be separated from the satisfaction of having our ideas tested and validated. If this wasn’t so, we wouldn’t prize a win over a skilful player more than that over a beginner. And the pain of losing for most players far outweighs the joy of winning – not only has our opponent tri-umphed over us, but our plans have been proved wrong.

Perhaps at the moment you see chess in terms of developing moves, attacking moves and defensive moves. The purpose of this book is to show you these things and a lot more. Imagine you have all your pieces in play in an equal position where there is nothing to at-tack and no threat to deal with. What should you do then? You should manoeuvre and probe, stop the opponent carrying out the advances he wishes, fortify strong points, try to create or seize control of holes, and so on. Such play is a direct challenge to the opponent: it isn’t neutral. It forces him to keep up, to tread a fine line between playing with too much energy or too little. If and when he slips up, you will get the advantage. Then you will have something to build upon.

The games have been chosen not just for their instructional value but also because I find them aesthetically pleasing. I hope you enjoy them and pick up some good battle plans.

Neil McDonald,