Chess

Chess openings are the important part of every novice's journey - and the most fun. This title presents the common and important openings with large, frequent diagrams showing various positions along with explanations of the goals, objectives, and concepts behind the moves.

The most complete collection of chess problems ever published, including 5,334 instructional situations, presented by the world's leading chess teacher "Chess" analyzes more than 5,000 unique instructional situations, many taken from real matches, including 306 problems for checkmate in one move, 3,412 mates in two moves, 744 mates in three moves, 600 miniature games, 144 simple endgames, and 128 tournament game combinations. Chapters are organized by problem type. Each problem, combination, and game is keyed to an easy-to-follow solution at the back of the book, so readers can learn as they go. More than 6,000 illustrations make it easy to see the possibilities any position may hold. The book also includes the basic rules of the game and an international bibliography. "Chess" is the ultimate book on winning the game."

Having learnt the basic moves, how exactly should a player improve? In this much loved classic, Irving Chernev explains 33 complete games in detail, telling the reader the reason for every single move. Playing through these games and explanations gives a real insight into the power of the pieces and how to post them most effectively.

Whether you are a total beginner or just think you'd like to play, International Grandmaster Nigel Short can show you how to play and win the "game of kings." With over 140 two-color diagrams and photographs, learn how to set up the board, the moves and origins of the pieces, how to play, how to study other games by following notation, and finishing off an opponent-with tips on gamesmanship.

Paul Morphy: The Pride and Sorrow of Chess tells the full known story of the life of Paul Morphy, from his privileged upbringing in New Orleans to his dominance of the chess world, to the later tragedy of his demise. This new edition of David Lawson's seminal work, still the principal source for all Morphy biographical presentations, also includes new biographical material about the biographer himself, telling the story of the author, his opus, and the previously unknown life that brought him to the research.

Why has one game, alone among the thousands of games invented and played throughout human history, not only survived but thrived within every culture it has touched? What is it about its thirty-two figurative pieces, moving about its sixty-four black and white squares according to very simple rules, that has captivated people for nearly 1,500 years? Why has it driven some of its greatest players into paranoia and madness, and yet is hailed as a remarkably powerful intellectual tool? Nearly everyone has played chess at some point in their lives. Its rules and pieces have served as a metaphor for society, influencing military strategy, mathematics, artificial intelligence, and literature and the arts. It has been condemned as the devil’s game by popes, rabbis, and imams, and lauded as a guide to proper living by other popes, rabbis, and imams. Marcel Duchamp was so absorbed in the game that he ignored his wife on their honeymoon. Caliph Muhammad al-Amin lost his throne (and his head) trying to checkmate a courtier. Ben Franklin used the game as a cover for secret diplomacy. In his wide-ranging and ever-fascinating examination of chess, David Shenk gleefully unearths the hidden history of a game that seems so simple yet contains infinity. From its invention somewhere in India around 500 A.D., to its enthusiastic adoption by the Persians and its spread by Islamic warriors, to its remarkable use as a moral guide in the Middle Ages and its political utility in the Enlightenment, to its crucial importance in the birth of cognitive science and its key role in the aesthetic of modernism in twentieth-century art, to its twenty-first-century importance in the development of artificial intelligence and use as a teaching tool in inner-city America, chess has been a remarkably omnipresent factor in the development of civilization.