International Master and former US Open Champion Timothy Taylor draws upon his wealth of personal experience to offer an instructive and entertaining account of how to improve your understanding of chess and your results. This book is awash with invaluable advice and helpful tips on all stages of the game - opening, middlegame and endgame. Taylor emphasizes the practical aspects of chess: how to really make the most of your ability; how to win at all costs; and how to absorb the lessons of defeat to come back stronger. Grab every advantage over your opponents and be in the best possible shape for battle. True Combat Chess will show you the way.
- An essential guide to winning chess
- Full of useful advice on improving results
- Ideal for players of all levels
Timothy Taylor is an experienced tournament player who has enjoyed several notable successes. He is also a renowned chess writer; one of his previous books, How to Defeat the Smith-Morra Gambit , became a US Chess Federation bestseller, while his first book for Everyman Chess, Bird's Opening , provoked much positive interest. Outside of chess, he is the author of two published novels, Elaine the Fair and Amanda , and he also directed the film Wicked Pursuits .
"The way of combat is never based on personal choice and fancies, but constantly changes from moment to moment" - Bruce Lee
After my internet chess column, True Combat, was terminated with extreme prejudice in January 2007, I received many encouraging emails. Most of these were simple and welcome expressions of support, such as "this was my favourite column on the site" or "I hope you can continue the column somewhere else", etc. However, the more detailed letters touched on what I think is the heart of what made True Combat a popular feature among chess aficionados who actually play. The essential point is simply this - my problems were their problems.
The players who wrote me were not IMs or GMs, but their struggles were essentially the same as my own. I have a hard time beating GMs - a B player has a hard time beating A players. I get a bad pairing or the tournament director makes a bad call - my readers have had the same experience. I get a won game - and don't win - everybody who plays knows this one.
In other words, I'm in the trenches, battling through modern chess as it is actually played. Meanwhile, some other, perhaps more famous chess authors, gave up tournament chess - gave up true combat - so long ago that they have never played a serious game with a digital clock!
The brave new world of computers has seriously changed the way we prepare for our games, but as for actual play - let's think again about that digital clock. Nothing has changed the actual combat experience of tournament chess more than the digital clock and its companion, one session chess.
When Capablanca challenged Lasker for the World Championship, the time limit was fifteen moves per hour with the session limited to four hours. Then the game was adjourned, and played off the next day, at that same slow rate of speed. No wonder the old masters played the endgame so well!
I realize that adjournments are a thing of the past, due to the fear of computer assistance - but one must also recognize the loss of chess quality that comes with this necessity.
Here in the USA, the standard rate of play for a "serious" game is forty moves in two hours (averaging to five moves faster per hour than Lasker-Capablanca) followed by one hour of sudden death. This means that if the game goes a total of one hundred moves, the last sixty would be played at the rate of... sixty moves per hour, or four times the speed of Dr Emanuel and Don Jose! This sort of "speed at all costs" way of playing chess can turn a theoretically drawn position into a loss (Game 11 in this book), or even worse, a player with much better over the board chances might lose on time (see Game 13).
Furthermore, instead of one four-hour session per day, most American tournaments feature two six-hour sessions per day! And then we are supposed to play perfectly in the twelfth hour, especially since we had a ten minute break between rounds!
I love to play (on the rare occasions when I get a chance) in international tournaments where there is one game a day, and I particularly love to play in the First Saturday tournaments in Budapest. But the time limit played there - game in two hours, with a thirty second increment - comes with its own set of new problems. A player with no advantage on the board, but a big advantage on the clock (see Game 14) can play virtually eternally, with no chance of running out of time - while the player on the bad side of the chronometer can't so much as sprint to the rest room, for fear of losing on time! And with no second time control, that bathroom break is never going to come— until the game is over. This is not the prettiest form of combat, but it's the reality of twenty-first century chess.
I've been there - I'm going back into the trenches in two weeks to play in a six round Swiss system event - yes, 40/2, SD/1, two games a day.
I'll report back on another day, if I survive!
Timothy Taylor
Parma Heights, Ohio,
January 2009
Content:
005Bibliography
007Introduction
0091 The Critical Move
013 I'm a rook up, I must be lost!
019 If I had known better, I wouldn't have developed a piece
027 Two rooks on one square? That should work!
033 A blunderful opportunity
038 Rooks belong behind passed pawns - sometimes!
0482 Opening Preparation
050 Dreev who?
055 I'm special - someone prepared just for me!
063 Inadequate preparation and positional misevaluation leads to victory
070 Chess has come to this!
074 "I won it last night, at two in the morning!"
0823 The Endgame and the Clock
085 Seventeen moves in two seconds
095 Blitzin' don't pay
203 I think too much
110 Thirty second buzzer chess
120 Saved by Anand!
1304 Winning the Won Game
132 Unlucky thirteen
139 "But darling, why didn't you play it?"
245 "You mean all I get is one measly pawn?"
250 "Material is even, how about a draw?"
256 Three pawns ain't enough
1635 Beating a Grandmaster
163 Bobby Fischer would have killed me
175 Grandmaster dodges phantom punch
180 The Nimzowitsch implodes
184 I take the master class - but don't pass!
193 Routine play don't pay
1986 Underground Innovation
199 Never trust a kid eating muesli
203 Play at your own risk!
206Index of Openings
207Index of Complete Games | 
