Avni, Amatzia: Chess Tips for the Improving Player (PB)

Chess Tips for the Improving Player gives practical advice for club players who want to take the next step towards chess mastery. Amatzia Avni looks at live from an unusual angle. His approach is far more creative than merely offering the usual tips such as "develop your pieces" and "control the centre".

Instead of repeating clichés seen before in countless books, the author scrutinized a huge number of chess positions, asking himself, 'What can be learned from them?'

The reader can now benefit from Avni´s painstaking efforts.

Introduction

This work is a collection of tips and practical advice aimed at assisting the reader in improving his play.

I approached the task guided by two basic principles.

Firstly, I wished to address an audience of above-beginner level. Hence, advice such as 'develop your pieces', 'knights before bishops', 'control the centre', 'check that your pieces are defended', 'penetrate your opponent's second rank with your rooks', and other tips of this kind were out. I assumed the reader were familiar with them.

Secondly, I wished the content to be as fresh as possible; to look at things from an unusual angle. So instead of repeating clichés, I scrutinized an extraordinarily large number of positions, asking myself 'what is there to be learned from them'. Instead of stating a rule and then looking for appropriate diagrams to illustrate it, I worked the other way around, from examples towards generalizations. In this way I was not tying myself to old axioms (although repeating the wisdom of our chess ancestors on occasion was inevitable). It was laborious work, but I hope that the result justifies it.

Amatzia Avni,

Ramat-Ilan, Israel

September 2007

Content:
004 Symbols

005 Introduction

005 Acknowledgements

007 1 The Board

021 2 Pieces: Value, Placement, Exchanges

037 3 General Approach

061 4 Rules of Thumb

077 5 In Search of Ideas

095 6 Phases of the Game

109 7 Strategy

127 8 Tactics

143 9 Attack and Defence

161 10 Planning

183 11 Decisions

205 12 Learning

220 Training Exercises

225 Solutions to Exercises

230 Index of Players and Composers