Colin Crouch studies his favorite attacking players, and highlights all the important themes of one of the most crucial elements of the game.
Chess Secrets
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"Great Attackers is a book that deserves to be in every chess player's library." John Donaldson "It is always a treat to read a book by Colin Crouch...A very enjoyable and instructive work." Lubomir Kavalek, Washington Post
From the Back Cover
The chess world has witnessed a great number of wonderfully gifted attacking players, geniuses who have dazzled the chess public with their brilliant masterpieces. Everyone has their own favourites, and in Chess Secrets: Great Attackers, Colin Crouch chooses three of his own: Garry Kasparov, Mikhail Tal and Leonid Stein. World Champions Kasparov and Tal need no introduction, while Stein was a highly creative and intuitive player with the ability to destroy the world’s best players with his vicious attacks.
Crouch examines their differing approaches and styles, and highlights some crucial themes, including the idea of controlled risk – in some sacrificial attacks even the greatest players can’t always see everything to the end. A study of this book will help you to enhance your skills in one of the most crucial elements of the game.
*An entertaining and instructive guide to attacking chess
*Learn from the greats of the game
*Discover how famous chess minds work
Chess Secrets is a 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.
Dr Colin Crouch is an International Master, an extremely experienced tournament player and a highly regarded chess writer. His previous books for Everyman Chess include Queens Gambit Declined: 5 Bf4!, which has been highly acclaimed for its thoroughness and originality, with one reviewer describing it as ‘the opening book of the year’. He has been a regular columnist for British Chess Magazine and CHESS.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A different take on the attack,
By
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This review is from: Chess Secrets: Great Attackers: Learn from Kasparov, Tal and Stein (Everyman Chess) (Paperback)
This book follows Neil McDonald's Giants of Strategy in the Chess Secrets series. Subtitled "Learn from Kasparov, Tal, and Stein," the book focuses on three attacking players with very different styles of attack, focusing on games from the 1970's to develop a broader understanding of the attack.
Two things make this book worthwhile. First, Crouch examines 31 attacking games to develop his idea that there are three different ideas of how to play for the attack, based on the amount of speculation the player prefers. He likens this to playing poker. For example, he demonstrates that Tal was almost eager to sacrifice pieces on pure speculation. He analyzes a win against Spassky where the latter ducks a sacrifice that was, in fact, losing -- hardly a novel win in Tal's career! Tal was always very ready to enter complicated attacks in which neither he nor his opponent could tell whether it was a bluff. By contrast, he shows that early in his career, Kasparov was just as committed to the attack as Tal, but focused instead on sacrificing pawns for clear piece mobility. Rarely did Kasparov invest a piece unless he could essentially calculate his way to a win. And Stein's style was even more conservative -- if this can be said of any attacking player. Stein's method was to develop a superior position and then break it wide open, usually without a sacrifice at all. All three players were known as ferocious attackers, but of three very different kinds, based on their willingness to gamble. Second, this book complements McDonald's book. McDonald's focus on strategy develops themes that mostly involve play with pawns and rooks. Indeed, play with pawns and rooks seems to exemplify strategic and positional play. By contrast, Crouch's book naturally focuses on active minor piece play complemented by queen activity. Between the two of them, they give the student an excellent overview of the middlegame. Colin Crouch's last book was on the art of defense, focusing on games by Lasker and Petrosian, and is without doubt the best book ever written on defense. While not up to the previous standard (perhaps because attack has received more attention from other writers), "Great Attackers" is a worthwhile book to study. For further study and mastery of the attack, the following are also excellent. 1) Mihail Marin's Secrets of Attacking Chess, which focuses on the trade-offs between material and development, and draws out a lot of original ideas. 2) Jacob Aagaard's Attacking Manual, which develops several common attacking themes that together would suffice to strengthen the attacking play of any amateur; this is the most comprehensive single-volume work on the attack since Vukovic. 3) Dunnington's Understanding the Sacrifice, which, in addition to covering various types of sacrifice, offers the best overview yet of the use of color complexes in the attack.
8 of 11 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Much analysis, little explanation,
By Chess reader (Ohio, USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Chess Secrets: Great Attackers: Learn from Kasparov, Tal and Stein (Everyman Chess) (Paperback)
It is always fun to read about the wins of great attacking players, and this book does the job fairly well. It gives plenty of comments and analysis, as well as showing the limelight on a great, but relatively unknown player in Leonard Stein. My chief complaint with this book is that the analysis is far too complicated for anyone who is not a master to understand. Often, Crouch will show a line in which white loses a piece for no visible compensation and end with '...and white is better.' Sure we could call up our friend Joe Grandmaster and analyze the entire book with him, or we could go to Rybka and be even more mystified with its evaluation of the position, but most people don't personally know a grandmaster and some don't have Rybka (not that it would help much). This is a good book if you want to see some games of Stein, which is fun, but it is not necessary reading, and is very difficult if you are below 2000 USCF.
0 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Not as good as others in the series.,
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: Chess Secrets: Great Attackers: Learn from Kasparov, Tal and Stein (Everyman Chess) (Paperback)
The author includes some great attacking games but his analysis is a little lengthy for my taste. This book is great for people who like to read with the chess board in front of them... wouldn't take it on an airplane and expect to get through some of the variations without being able to move the pieces around though...
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