Lessons with a Grandmaster III [3]

272 pp. Imagine you are a club player who has been given the opportunity to talk at length with a famous grandmaster. How would you make the most of this opportunity? Club players are unaware of the subtleties that exist in grandmaster chess. Great players can analyse chess at a depth that is unfathomable to amateurs. However, having reached such a high level can make it difficult to understand what is lacking in the mind of the amateur. Lessons with a Grandmaster bridges this gap between grandmaster and amateur through a series of conversations between teacher, the renowned Grandmaster Boris Gulko, and student Dr. Joel R. Sneed, a professor of psychology and amateur chess player. The lessons are based on Gulko's own battles against fellow grandmasters, and there is particular focus on strategy, tactics and the role of psychology in chess competition. In this third volume, Gulko and Sneed focus on strategic and tactical ideas, and how to successfully combine the two themes over the board. Among the many subjects examined are attack and defence, exploiting weak squares, fighting for the initiative, Sicilian strategy and the bishop pair.