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Trade in Chess Secrets: The Giants of Strategy: Learn from Kramnik, Karpov, Petrosian, Capablanca and Nimzowitsch (Everyman Chess) for an Amazon.co.uk gift card of up to £3.80, which you can then spend on millions of items across the site. Plus, get an extra £5 when you trade in books worth £10 or more until June 30, 2012. Trade-in values may vary (terms apply). Find more products eligible for trade-in.
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Product Description
Product Description
The chess world has been blessed by a number of wonderful strategists, innovators of the game with their instructive play and profound teachings. In "Chess Secrets: The Giants of Strategy", Neil McDonald chooses his selection of the most prominent strategists in chess history and highlights the major contributions they made. He examines their differing approaches and styles, and from Nimzowitsch to Kramnik, how they followed in each other's footsteps. A careful study of this book will help you to understand and improve in one of the most crucial elements of the game. "Chess Secrets" is a brand new series of books which uncover the mysteries of the most important aspects of chess study: strategy, attacking play, opening play and gambits, classical play, endgames and preparation. In each book, the author chooses and deeply studies a number of great players from chess history who have excelled in a particular field of the game and who have genuinely influenced their descendants. It is an entertaining an instructive guide to chess strategy, from the masters. It is written in an easy-to-read format. It is ideal for improvers, club players and tournament players.
About the Author
English Grandmaster Neil McDonald is an experienced and successful player on the international chess circuit. He is a respected chess coach, who has trained many of the UK's strongest junior players. McDonald is also a talented chess writer and has many outstanding works to his name. Earlier Everyman Chess books include Concise Chess Middlegames and Starting Out: Queen's Gambit Declined.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
I recently finished reading McDonald's "Chess: The art of logical thinking" which I thoroughly enjoyed, and highly recommend as a good companion to this book.
Chess Secrets: The Giants of Strategy follows on from his Logical Thinking in the same thread, this time focussing on 5 of the greatest strategic players: Kramnik, Karpov, Petrosian, Capablanca, Nimzowitch. Karpov and Capablanca are the 2 players I was particularly interested in, and this book includes many instructive games. The games are all top quality, but importantly, the same high quality annotation and instructive value continues in this book. This is the real value of the book, it's everything an improving player could ask for.
If you are a fan of intuitive positional players like Karpov and Capablanca, then grab this book, you will be given a first class tour of their games. This is an exceptionally useful book for intermediate players, e.g. 1800 ELO. The design and layout of the book is excellent, complimenting the high quality of the material. There are plenty of diagrams at the key points in each game allowing the reader to play through the games without a board. I would say this type of book is ideal to just read over without a board.
The book starts off with a 10 page introduction and summary of the 5 Giants, which I think gives an indication how much effort McDonald has put into this book. There are also lots of tidbits of information about these great players sprinkled throughout the book. This is a nice touch that adds value to the book and allows the reader to learn something of the character of each player as well as chess style. Possibly the only thing missing is an index of games at the back and a bibliography.
The book is split into 9 chapters covering different areas of chess strategy (listed below), each chapter containing games from each of the Giants.
1. The Seventh Rank
2. The Outpost and the Open File
3. Planning on a Grand Scale
4. Understanding Pawn Majorities
5. The Power of Pawn Breaks
6. How to Use the Pawn Ram
7. Restraint
8. Blockade
9. Provacation and Prophylaxis
Chess Secrets: The Giants of Strategy follows on from his Logical Thinking in the same thread, this time focussing on 5 of the greatest strategic players: Kramnik, Karpov, Petrosian, Capablanca, Nimzowitch. Karpov and Capablanca are the 2 players I was particularly interested in, and this book includes many instructive games. The games are all top quality, but importantly, the same high quality annotation and instructive value continues in this book. This is the real value of the book, it's everything an improving player could ask for.
If you are a fan of intuitive positional players like Karpov and Capablanca, then grab this book, you will be given a first class tour of their games. This is an exceptionally useful book for intermediate players, e.g. 1800 ELO. The design and layout of the book is excellent, complimenting the high quality of the material. There are plenty of diagrams at the key points in each game allowing the reader to play through the games without a board. I would say this type of book is ideal to just read over without a board.
The book starts off with a 10 page introduction and summary of the 5 Giants, which I think gives an indication how much effort McDonald has put into this book. There are also lots of tidbits of information about these great players sprinkled throughout the book. This is a nice touch that adds value to the book and allows the reader to learn something of the character of each player as well as chess style. Possibly the only thing missing is an index of games at the back and a bibliography.
The book is split into 9 chapters covering different areas of chess strategy (listed below), each chapter containing games from each of the Giants.
1. The Seventh Rank
2. The Outpost and the Open File
3. Planning on a Grand Scale
4. Understanding Pawn Majorities
5. The Power of Pawn Breaks
6. How to Use the Pawn Ram
7. Restraint
8. Blockade
9. Provacation and Prophylaxis
Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta)
Amazon.com:
7 reviews
57 of 61 people found the following review helpful
excellent book!
28 Dec 2007
Format:Paperback
I also want to totally disagree with the first reviewer. First, as to the newsprint or production values or whatever, I have read this book on the train to and from work every day for the past month and it has held up fine (I can't see grading on a book primarily on this aspect anyway!).
More to point, the analysis in the book is simply fantastic! Yes, the author goes over old games (Capablanca, Petrosian, etc.) as well as new (Karpov and Kramnik), but this is not an opening book, where the latest variation is important, it is a strategy book and strategic principles do not become obselete! Furthermore, it is instructive and fascinating to see the same principles applied by players from different eras in different contexts.
Most importantly, this book will improve your chess play (and that's really what its all about). McDonald explains key strategic principles of pawn play (and piece play related to pawn play) in a clear, understandable, enagaging manner that an intermediate player can grasp and apply to his own play. For example, I also bought Soltis's Pawn Structure Chess, which had glowing reviews, and found it much, much less helpful. Soltis's book focused too much on specific variations and not enough on generalizable principles. Moreover, the difference between Soltis's dry and dreary prose and McDonald's lively writing is like night and day.
McDonald wisely limits his subject matter to 7 or 8 related principles (e.g., outposts, pawn majority, pawn break, blockade), but goes over these related principles in just the right depth to bring you to a higher level of understanding without losing the intermediate player. I found that after reading the chapters of this book, when I looked at a game position, I was much more attuned to the important aspects of pawn structure (e.g., the pawn majorities and potential pawn breaks and how to make use of them), similarly to how I am attuned to look for "imbalances" from reading Silman's book. Basically, the book helps you "see" the structure of the position much clearer.
If you buy a lot of opening books, this is one book I would highly recommend to help your play in the middle game. Unlike most middlegame books, which generally just present games with interesting tactics that are not easily generalizable to your own play.
I buy most of my books online or at used book stores, but I saw this book at Borders while I was there with my kids, and - after browsing through it - bought it at full price, and I have not regretted it one bit!! Unlike some of the opening books that I bought three years ago and still have not opened, I have read and reread this book.
More to point, the analysis in the book is simply fantastic! Yes, the author goes over old games (Capablanca, Petrosian, etc.) as well as new (Karpov and Kramnik), but this is not an opening book, where the latest variation is important, it is a strategy book and strategic principles do not become obselete! Furthermore, it is instructive and fascinating to see the same principles applied by players from different eras in different contexts.
Most importantly, this book will improve your chess play (and that's really what its all about). McDonald explains key strategic principles of pawn play (and piece play related to pawn play) in a clear, understandable, enagaging manner that an intermediate player can grasp and apply to his own play. For example, I also bought Soltis's Pawn Structure Chess, which had glowing reviews, and found it much, much less helpful. Soltis's book focused too much on specific variations and not enough on generalizable principles. Moreover, the difference between Soltis's dry and dreary prose and McDonald's lively writing is like night and day.
McDonald wisely limits his subject matter to 7 or 8 related principles (e.g., outposts, pawn majority, pawn break, blockade), but goes over these related principles in just the right depth to bring you to a higher level of understanding without losing the intermediate player. I found that after reading the chapters of this book, when I looked at a game position, I was much more attuned to the important aspects of pawn structure (e.g., the pawn majorities and potential pawn breaks and how to make use of them), similarly to how I am attuned to look for "imbalances" from reading Silman's book. Basically, the book helps you "see" the structure of the position much clearer.
If you buy a lot of opening books, this is one book I would highly recommend to help your play in the middle game. Unlike most middlegame books, which generally just present games with interesting tactics that are not easily generalizable to your own play.
I buy most of my books online or at used book stores, but I saw this book at Borders while I was there with my kids, and - after browsing through it - bought it at full price, and I have not regretted it one bit!! Unlike some of the opening books that I bought three years ago and still have not opened, I have read and reread this book.
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
Great continuity of play
19 Jan 2009
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
Useful examples on pawn play or weak square complexes are shown clearly in the older players games, then extremely similar situations are displayed in the games of Kramnik and Karpov. Everyone says study the games of the old masters but this book shows how to do it. I taught scholastic chess from 1986-2002. I wish I had this book available as just a few examples illustrate the heart and soul of positional play.
Excellent material for instructional use.
Excellent material for instructional use.
22 of 27 people found the following review helpful
A well-written strategic primer
1 Jan 2008
Format:Paperback|Amazon Verified Purchase
This is a nifty little strategic primer, targeted at <1800 USCF (<140BCF) players. Many of the games are well-known and can be found in several other books, but McDonald has done a good job of collecting the most important and easy-to-understand games pertaining to any one of the six or seven themes he covers (rook on the 7th, pawn breakthrough, restraint, etc.) and giving enough verbal explanation so that a reader can understand the underlying logic of the game. I would have liked to have seen Rubinstein included among the giants but it would appear one can't have everything.
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