Netflix’s most watched limited series to date! The thrilling novel of one young woman’s journey through the worlds of chess and drug addiction.​ When eight-year-old Beth Harmon’s parents are killed in an automobile accident, she’s placed in an orphanage in Mount Sterling, Kentucky. Plain and shy, Beth learns to play chess from the janitor in the basement and discovers she is a prodigy. Though penniless, she is desperate to learn more—and steals a chess magazine and enough money to enter a tournament. Beth also steals some of her foster mother’s tranquilizers to which she is becoming addicted. At thirteen, Beth wins the chess tournament. By the age of sixteen she is competing in the US Open Championship and, like Fast Eddie in The Hustler, she hates to lose. By eighteen she is the US champion—and Russia awaits . . . Fast-paced and elegantly written, The Queen’s Gambit is a thriller masquerading as a chess novel—one that’s sure to keep you on the edge of your seat. “The Queen’s Gambit is sheer entertainment. It is a book I reread every few years—for the pure pleasure and skill of it.” —Michael Ondaatje, Man Booker Prize–winning author of The English Patient

Solving tactical puzzles is one of the most effective ways to improve your chess. This convenient book provides 300 exercises, with instructive points highlighted in the solutions. There is something here for everyone. The puzzles in the first two chapters are based on a clear-cut tactic or checkmate, such as those explained in Gambit's best-sellers How to Beat Your Dad at Chess and Chess Tactics for Kids. The endgame challenges highlight tactics and principles in action. In practice it is vital to defend resiliently and seek counterattacking chances - there is an innovative chapter on these rarely-covered themes as well as puzzles where the reader must decide how to punch home an attack. Later chapters help readers develop a vital skill: the ability to make tough chessboard decisions. Attack, sacrifice, grab material, defend or simplify - it's for you to decide! Principles and guidelines are emphasized, together with common sources of error. The final section of puzzles will prove a stern challenge even for the best players, with the reader exposed to the full complexity of modern chess - with a few helpful hints along the way.

As a young man, Paul Hoffman was a brilliant chess player . . . until the pressures of competition drove him to the brink of madness. In King's Gambit, he interweaves a gripping overview of the history of the game and an in-depth look at the state of modern chess into the story of his own attempt to get his game back up to master level -- without losing his mind. It's also a father and son story, as Hoffman grapples with the bizarre legacy of his own dad, who haunts Hoffman's game and life.

Chess might seem a complex and mysterious game, but the ultimate goal is simple: checkmate. Checkmate can occur in all stages of the game, from snap mates in the opening, through middlegame attacks to simplified endgames. Learning how to use our pieces together to corner the enemy king is a fundamental skill that all chess-players must constantly practise, sharpen and develop. This book lays out, in systematic and thorough fashion, a wide range of mating patterns and techniques, in particular showing how each piece-pair can combine to deliver mate. A working knowledge of these ideas enables players to move on to mating combinations, where pieces lay down their lives so that the remaining forces can deliver mate. Gude explains an amazing variety of tactical devices, and illustrates them in unforgettable style with some of the most brilliant mating attacks from practice, new and old. There are chapters on how to attack kings in the centre, as well as standard (and other!) attacks against the castled position. This is a true textbook of checkmate; readers will never be short of mating ideas, and will instinctively know when there is a possibility to launch an attack, or when they must parry the opponent's threats. Fundamental Checkmates also features more than 300 exercises with full solutions. Antonio Gude is an extremely experienced chess writer and teacher from Spain. Several of his books on tactics and for beginners are long-standing best-sellers in Spanish language. Gude has also translated a great many books, including some of the classics of chess literature.

After a thousand years one man's fell magic has returned the Demonic Presence to the land. A young farmer, Aleksei, chosen by a magical Wood, and a prince, Jonas, gifted in the magical meridians of the Archanium, must find a way to defeat the Presence to save themselves and all they love. But what happens when the monsters and figures of prophecy become horrifyingly real? How will Aleksei cope? When the stakes are at their highest, will Jonas falter? Or will both rise to the occasion, reforging themselves into the saviors Prophecy demands they become? In a world of magic and Magi, of Angels and Demons alike, how will they survive their own contorted destiny? This is the story of a seemingly-simple world gone mad, and the reality that every action, no matter how apparently benign, can serve to unravel terrifying truths. This is the story of Aleksei Drago, farmer and Hunter, and Jonas Belgi, prince and Archanium Mage.

Gambits, where one side sacrifices material for an advance in development, are the most exciting and popular openings in chess! This book contains every important gambit opening and variation ever played - more than two thousand opening strategies in all! Each gambit is covered in detail with a diagram showing the standard position representative of the gambit, the move orders taken to get there, and an explanation in plain language of the thinking behind the moves. More than one hundred games show you how the ideas behind the gambit influence the development of the game. 784 pages