Brilliant, first-hand essays on Bobby Fischer, Garry Kasparov, and dozens of other famous and not-so-famous chess players. Hans Ree, the leading international chess journalist, provides fascinating insight into recent chess developments.

The Human Comedy of Chess: A Grandmaster's Chronicles

Humor & Entertainment

Ree, Hans

Puzzles & Games

Russell Enterprises, Inc.

Mexico’s First Grandmaster – The Genius of Carlos Torre! This book is offered to chessplayers and enthusiasts of all Spanish-speaking countries as an homage to one of the greatest Latin American chess players of all time: Grandmaster Carlos Torre Repetto, originally from Yucatán, Mexico. In recognition of Torre’s formidable accomplishments and triumphs during the years 1924-1926, the Fédération Internationale Des Echecs (FIDE, the International Chess Federation) in 1977 bestowed on Torre the title of International Grandmaster. This is a collection of 105 well-annotated games by Torre against the strongest players of his time. You are invited to enjoy and learn from Torre’s great games, his beautiful combinations and his strategic and tactical concepts. The original print edition has not been available for over a decade, but it is now being re-released as an eBook. Excerpts, including the Table of Contents and the Foreword, of most Russell Enterprises books are available at http://russell-enterprises.com/excerptsdownloads.html.

The Life and Games of Carlos Torre

Kingston, Taylor

Velasco, Gabriel

“Mikhail Tal’s splendid account of his world championship match victory is one of the masterpieces of the golden age of annotation – before insights and feelings and flashes of genius were reduced to mere moves and Informant symbols. This is simply the best book written about a world championship match by a contestant. That shouldn’t be a surprise because Tal was the finest writer to become world champion.” – International Grandmaster and popular chess columnist Andy Soltis. In 1960 Mikhail Botvinnik was the pillar of “scientific” chess and the iron-willed champion of the world. The young attacking genius Mikhail Tal, the “Wizard of Riga,” put the magic back into the game by defeating Botvinnik with spectacular tactics in one of the most dramatic and celebrated world championship matches of all time. This is Tal’s own classic work on the contest. In it he sets the stage and explains every one of the 21 games, telling both the on- and off-the-board story of this titanic clash of styles and thought. Excerpts, including the Table of Contents and the Foreword, of most Russell Enterprises books are available at http://russell-enterprises.com/excerptsdownloads.html.

Tal-Botvinnik, 1960

Tal,mikhail

Demystifies the techniques of chess thinking: don't just memorize moves, learn how to think in chess.

HOW TO THINK IN CHESS

Last, First

Arts & Photography

Every chess player needs a defense to 1 e4, the most popular first move for White. The ideal response is the easy-to-learn, unrefuted and surprising Scandinavian Defense: The Dynamic 3 Qd6 is such a system. It gives players room for creativity and offers strategic ideas they can understand quickly. With brand-new analysis, correspondence master Michael Melts shows that this long-nelglected line is a little-known but venomous response lying in wait for unsuspecting players of White. For beginners, to master- and international-level competitors, the opening covered in this volume offers a complete system against 1 e4. GMs Roman Dzindzichashvili, Kiril Georgiev, legendary world championship contender David Bronstein and dozens of other top players have called on this variation for important encounters. Forty complete and deeply annotated games are presented along with the relevant portions of hundreds of other contests.

Scandinavian Defense: The Dynamic 3... Qd6

Melts, Michael

If you like chess, Heroic Tales: The Best of ChessCafe.com 1996-2001 will be a treasure trove of delight for years to come. From Bobby Fischer to the financial frolics of the World Chess Federation - and everything in between, Heroic Tales brings together in one volume the best modern writing on the game. 
Hilarious over-the-board vignettes, top-flight instruction in every phase of the game, informative book reviews, articles on history, politics and great games - you get 54 pieces from the chess world's most important writers and players. 
The authors are top grandmasters and award-winning journalists: champions like Lev Alburt,Tony Miles, Genna Sosonko and Hans Ree; famous teachers like Bruce Pandolfini and Mark Dvoretsky; popular columnists like Gary Lane and Tim Harding; intrepid investigators of chess curiosities and history like Tim Krabbe and Edward Winter. 
ChessCafe one of the most popular chess websites in the world, earned the U.S. Chess Federation's highest award for journalism in 2002. More than that, it has won the accolades and devotion of readers around the world. Heroic Tales: The Best of ChessCafe.com 1996-2001 collects a gourmet buffet from the four-star offerings at ChessCafe.

Heroic Tales: The Best of Chesscafe.Com 1996-2001

Chess can be an obsession that takes over your life, whether you are a wood-pushing novice or a superstar grandmaster. British journalist Sarah Hurst was infected with chess fever at the age of 20 and spent seven years exploring the mysterious world of the amateur and professional player. In pursuit of interviews she slid down an icy hill in Hastings to catch a Chinese women’s world champion, chased Garry Kasparov around London, chatted cheerfully with a manic depressive in Budapest, and roamed the Russian steppe with Kalmyk Buddhists. 
When a newspaper editor Larisa Yudina was murdered within a mile or two of City Chess, the pet project of millionaire dictator Kirsan Ilyumzhinov, Hurst began to expose the darker side of chess politics. She urged professional players to boycott the World Chess Olympiad, pointing to Ilyumzhinov’s corruption and possible involvement in the murder. But chess players had no desire to reject the millions of dollars Ilyumzhinov was pouring into prize funds, and the boycott campaign failed. 
The historical articles in this book show that chess, insanity and politics have always been inextricably connected. Nikolai Krylenko, the founder of the Soviet chess movement, was a public prosecutor at Stalin’s show trials. One of the greatest players of all time, Alexander Alekhine, was an alcoholic who wrote anti-Semitic articles in Nazi newspapers. America’s chess hero, Bobby Fischer, the world champion who single-handedly defeated the Soviet chess battalions, gave up the game after his victory and only resurfaced to break sanctions in Serbia. 
You will be captivated by Hurst’s insights and observations. "The lasting impression of Sarah is of a fearless and humorous person for whom no challenge is insurmountable." Ken Whyld

Curse of Kirsan

Hurst, Sarah

You have no doubt heard the saying that practice makes perfect. Actually, practice makes permanent. If you practice badly, you will perform badly. It is practice in the pursuit of perfection that leads to better performance. Accurate practice is the essential ingredient in achieving success in any complex endeavor. My First Book of Checkmate Workbook offers the opportunity for accurate practice at the all-important task of finding checkmate. Beginning with the simplest checkmate patterns, this book proceeds gradually and methodically through ever more complex puzzles until you are solving problems that can take four, five or six moves to unfold. This is truly practice that will lead to perfection in the exciting field of checkmate.

My First Book of Checkmate Workbook

MacEnulty, David

An exceptionally wide-ranging anthology featuring hundreds of rare chess games, puzzles, photographs, biographies, exposes, bons mots and much more. This is a gem of peasurable, delightful reading.

CHESS OMNIBUS

Identify and Deal with Threats! This book is written to address and underemphasized area of chess training and study, the identification of and reaction to threats. For beginning and intermediate-level players, the study of tactics is paramount. Almost all tactics books take the approach of providing a position where there is a forced win, checkmate, or draw. However Looking for Trouble – now in a revised and enlarged second edition – takes a different tack. It helps you to recognize threats by providing over 300 problems in which you focus on identifying and meeting threats in the opening, middlegame and endgame. The author’s clear explanations are presented in a manner that should greatly benefit players of all levels. About the Author National Master Dan Heisman is a chess writer and professional chess instructor in the Philadelphia area. His best-selling chess books include Elements of Positional Evaluation and Back to Basics: Tactics. Excerpts, including the Table of Contents and the Foreword, of most Russell Enterprises books are available at http://russell-enterprises.com/excerptsdownloads.html.

LOOKING FOR TROUBLE

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Books by Russell Enterprises, Inc.