Aimed at the player who wants to improve his or her understanding of the most important middlegame concepts

A painless course to improve your performance in the central part of the chess battle! In the same lucid style as the first two volumes in this series, 'Practical Opening Tips' and 'Practical Endgame Tips, ' Mednis provides a wealth of common-sense advice that will benefit players of all standards. Here there are no unnatural or esoteric theories about how one should think, just down-to-earth insights from an extremely experienced writer and player. Mednis covers all the main areas of middlegame play - planning, combinations, attacking, and defending. Grandmaster Edmar Mednis is an extremely experienced chess writer, whose work has been praised by no less an authority than leading trainer Mark Dvoretsky

AWARDS: Shortlisted for the Guardian Chess Book of the Year Award Runner-up for the English Chess Federation 2009 Book of the Year Award CHESS Magazine: Best Books of 2009 Back in Print! Ever wondered why grandmasters take only seconds to see what’s really going on in a chess position? It’s all about structures, as Grandmaster Ivan Sokolov explains in this groundbreaking book. ‘Winning Chess Middlegames’ addresses the often ignored but extremely important topic of pawn structures, divided into four main types: doubled pawns, isolated pawns, hanging pawns and pawn majorities. With its highly accessible verbal explanations and deep analyses of top-level games, this book helps you to solve the basic problems of the middlegame: space, tension and initiative. Club players studying this book will:greatly enhance their middlegame skills, develop an accurate feeling as to which particular positions suit their style and acquire new strategic and practical opening knowledge. Ivan Sokolov explains matters profoundly, honestly and objectively including lots of inside stories from top-level chess, neither sparing his colleague grandmasters nor himself in his comments. With a foreword by British Grandmaster Michael Adams.

Opening preparation is useful, but understanding the middlegame is much more important. This book, an improved edition of a Russian classic, teaches amateur chess players 45 extremely effective skills in a crystal-clear manner. Quite a few of the ideas presented here will surprise the reader, because they offer solutions for problems the club player is only subconsciously aware. How do you activate your rook pawn? How do you prevent your opponent from opening a file? How do you restrict the efficacy of your opponents pieces? Which rook belongs on the c-, d- or e-file? What is the best way to exchange a piece? How do you castle artificially? In most cases the techniques are easy to understand and memorize. Bronznik and Terekhin do not burden the reader with deep analysis and only present those variations that are really necessary to get the point. There is a special training section at the end of the book where you can test your skills. ,

In his well know style Ivan focuses on the different aspects of the complex middlegames. He breaks new ground and provides us with a variety of instructive examples. Volume 2 will be released in January 2018 and the final volume in the Spring of 2019.

Hellsten focuses exclusively on endgame play and covers every type of endgame: pawn, rook, minor piece and queen endgames. He examines many fundamental positions that everyone needs to know, as well as the key themes and characteristics of successful endgame play.

A thorough understanding of the middlegame is essential for any aspiring player wishing to improve their game. This book uses examples from practical play to develop tactical and positional skills and awareness to enable you to make the most of your opportunities in the middlegame. It explains the basic ideas of tactical and positional play, provides numerous exercises for readers to test themselves and has a revolutionary layout to help readers absorb the key ideas. (6 7/8 x 9 5/8, 144 pages, b&w illustrations)