Download or read book A Disreputable Opening Repertoire written by Jonathan Tait and published by Everyman Chess. This book was released on with total page 962 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A highly adventurous repertoire designed to meet 1 e4 with 1...e5 and take the initiative! The main problem Black faces in answering 1 e4 with 1...e5 is the plethora of opening systems available to White: the Ruy Lopez, Giuoco Piano, Scotch, Ponziani, King’s Gambit, Vienna, Bishop’s Opening and so on. Each is likely to be White’s pet line, which usually means conducting the chess battle on the opponent’s turf. One solution is to study the main lines of all these openings and hope to remember what to do if they appear on the board. Another, more enterprising approach is to turn the tables and make White fight on your territory. Adopting the latter course, CC-SIM Jonathan Tait shares their investigations into a myriad of disregarded, “disreputable” responses, which can set White thinking as early as move three. These lines are greatly under-estimated by contemporary theory and include weird and wonderful variations such as the Calabrese Counter-Gambit (1 e4 e5 2 Bc4 f5), the Wagenbach Defence to the King’s Gambit (1 e4 e5 2 f4 exf4 3 Nf3 h5), the Romanishin Three Knights (1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Nc3 Bc5), the Two Knights Ulvestad Variation (1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bc4 Nf6 4 Ng5 d5 5 exd5 b5) and ultra-sharp lines of the Jaenisch Gambit (1 e4 e5 2 Nf3 Nc6 3 Bb5 f5). The theory of the variations in this book is generally poorly understood. This has made them successful at all forms of play, including against online computer-assisted assault.
Download or read book Smerdon s Scandinavian written by David Smerdon and published by . This book was released on 2015-08-15 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Grandmaster David Smerdon gives the Scandinavian a welcome twist by using it as an all-out attacking weapon. The repertoire he presents is one he has successfully employed at grandmaster level over many years, and the backbone is provided by the razor-sharp Portuguese and Icelandic gambits.
Download or read book Play the Open Games as Black written by John Emms and published by Gambit Publications. This book was released on 2000 with total page 232 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: This book fills a gaping chasm in chess literature. For years, those who wish to take on the black side of the Ruy Lopez have had to muddle their way through against the variety of alternative openings at White's disposal, because there have been no good books to assist them. This is a detailed guide, written from Black's viewpoint, to facing such openings as the King's Gambit, Vienna, Scotch, Four Knights, Italian Game, Bishop's opening, and the variety of oddball gambits White can try.
Download or read book A Ferocious Opening Repertoire written by Cyrus Lakdawala and published by Gloucester Publishers Plc. This book was released on 2011 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Cyrus Lakdawala presents an aggressive opening repertoire, based on the Veresov Opening. This repertoire is perfect for those who have little time for study but enjoy taking opponents out of their comfort zones.
Download or read book Modern Chess Opening Repertoire for White written by James Rizzitano and published by Gambit Publications. This book was released on 2021-11 with total page 176 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: James Rizzitano's goal in this book is to provide you with a one-volume, theoretically sound, dynamic opening repertoire beginning with 1 e4. Studying the choices of the current top players, he identifies these secrets of their success: Play openings where you have a relatively safe king. Take the bishop-pair in a semi-open position if it is offered to you. Avoid creating unnecessary weaknesses in your own position. Accept questionable gambits and material sacrifices. Absorb any space advantage conceded by the opponent. His choice of lines to recommend is based on these principles, and supported by detailed work with the current top computer engines. While serious work on chess openings confirms the basic truth that White can't simply force a large advantage from the start position, we can greatly narrow Black's path to safety, and tilt the practical struggle in our favour. To have a chance of half a point, our opponents will need to solve difficult tactical and strategic problems deep into the middlegame. The main lines recommended are: Giuoco Piano (via Bishop's Opening move-order) Modern Advance Caro-Kann Tarrasch French Rossolimo and Moscow Sicilians, and 2...e6 3 c3 Traditional main lines vs Scandinavian and Alekhine Tricky piece-play options against the Pirc and Modern International Master James Rizzitano dominated New England chess from 1976 to 1989, winning 157 of 336 events in which he competed. His career highlights include victories over Alburt, Benjamin, Benko, Christiansen, Dlugy, I.Gurevich, and Wolff. In more recent years Rizzitano made a return to competitive chess, and has written five books for Gambit, including How to Beat 1 d4 and Play the Najdorf Sicilian.
Download or read book The Unconsoled written by Kazuo Ishiguro and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-09-05 with total page 546 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the universally acclaimed author of The Remains of the Day comes a mesmerizing novel of completely unexpected mood and matter--a seamless, fictional universe, both wholly unrecognizable and familiar. When the public, day-to-day reality of a renowned pianist takes on a life of its own, he finds himself traversing landscapes that are by turns eerie, comical, and strangely malleable.
Download or read book Gambiteer II written by Nigel Davies and published by Gloucester Publishers Plc. This book was released on 2007 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In Gambiteer, opening expert Nigel Davies produces a complete opening repertoire which is certainly not for the faint-hearted: a no holds barred weaponry of wild attacking ideas for both colours. Whilst the first volume dealt with a gambit-style approach for White, this second book concentrates on an ambitious Black repertoire.
Download or read book A Startling Chess Opening Repertoire written by Chris Baker and published by Gambit Publications. This book was released on 2019-09-09 with total page 192 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A new and fully updated edition of a popular chess opening repertoire book. It is based on 1 e4 lines that are slightly off the beaten track, but full of practical sting and cunning traps for unwary opponents. All are based on rapid, healthy development, central control and play against the enemy king. The basic choice of main lines is unchanged from the first edition, but each move has been re-examined and new ideas from practice and analysis incorporated at every turn. The book breaks new ground by making use of the new generation of neural-network based engines inspired by AlphaZero, and is 'future-proofed' by featuring recommendations against rare and untried ideas for Black.
Download or read book Mind and Cosmos written by Thomas Nagel and published by Oxford University Press. This book was released on 2012-11-22 with total page 141 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The modern materialist approach to life has conspicuously failed to explain such central mind-related features of our world as consciousness, intentionality, meaning, and value. This failure to account for something so integral to nature as mind, argues philosopher Thomas Nagel, is a major problem, threatening to unravel the entire naturalistic world picture, extending to biology, evolutionary theory, and cosmology. Since minds are features of biological systems that have developed through evolution, the standard materialist version of evolutionary biology is fundamentally incomplete. And the cosmological history that led to the origin of life and the coming into existence of the conditions for evolution cannot be a merely materialist history, either. An adequate conception of nature would have to explain the appearance in the universe of materially irreducible conscious minds, as such. Nagel's skepticism is not based on religious belief or on a belief in any definite alternative. In Mind and Cosmos, he does suggest that if the materialist account is wrong, then principles of a different kind may also be at work in the history of nature, principles of the growth of order that are in their logical form teleological rather than mechanistic. In spite of the great achievements of the physical sciences, reductive materialism is a world view ripe for displacement. Nagel shows that to recognize its limits is the first step in looking for alternatives, or at least in being open to their possibility.
Download or read book Grandmaster Gambits 1 e4 written by Richard Palliser and published by Everyman Chess. This book was released on with total page 1200 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Are you bored with playing it safe in the opening? Had enough of developing your pieces sensibly, aiming to control the centre and getting your king castled? Do you yearn to tear the opposition apart in the style of the great 19th century masters? Then Grandmaster Gambits 1 e4 is the book for you! The highly successful writing duo of Richard Palliser and Simon (GingerGM) Williams have teamed up again to create a repertoire based on jettisoning a pawn (and often a whole lot more) very early on. Whatever opening your opponent favours against 1 e4, the authors have a dynamic gambiteering counter which will throw them onto their own resources. The Sicilian Defence? Attack it with the Wing Gambit. 1...e5? Tear Black apart with the Max Lange Attack. The French? Suffocate Black with the Advance Variation including Magnus Carlsen’s souped-up version of the Milner-Barry Gambit. The Caro-Kann? Play the Hillbilly Attack with 2 Bc4! Your opponent might laugh but they won’t be laughing when you crash through on f7. Forget about playing “properly” in the opening. Open 1 e4, play the Grandmaster Gambits and rip your unprepared opponents apart!
Download or read book Dear Life written by Alice Munro and published by Vintage. This book was released on 2012-11-13 with total page 336 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: WINNER OF THE NOBEL PRIZE© IN LITERATURE 2013 A New York Times Notable Book A Washington Post Notable Work of Fiction A Best Book of the Year: The Atlantic, NPR, San Francisco Chronicle, Vogue, AV Club In story after story in this brilliant new collection, Alice Munro pinpoints the moment a person is forever altered by a chance encounter, an action not taken, or a simple twist of fate. Her characters are flawed and fully human: a soldier returning from war and avoiding his fiancée, a wealthy woman deciding whether to confront a blackmailer, an adulterous mother and her neglected children, a guilt-ridden father, a young teacher jilted by her employer. Illumined by Munro’s unflinching insight, these lives draw us in with their quiet depth and surprise us with unexpected turns. And while most are set in her signature territory around Lake Huron, some strike even closer to home: an astonishing suite of four autobiographical tales offers an unprecedented glimpse into Munro’s own childhood. Exalted by her clarity of vision and her unparalleled gift for storytelling, Dear Life shows how strange, perilous, and extraordinary ordinary life can be.
Download or read book Carlsen s Neo M ller written by Ioannis Simeonidis and published by New In Chess. This book was released on 2021-03-25 with total page 351 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: White players will thoroughly dislike the Neo-Møller! The Ruy Lopez is one of the most important chess openings, hugely popular with amateurs and masters alike. Black players allowing the Ruy Lopez main lines are usually condemned to passivity, defending a slightly worse (though solid) position for as long as White chooses this situation to continue. World Champion Magnus Carlsen doesn’t like passivity. He likes unconventional and active systems that allow him to take command and put pressure on his opponent from early on. That’s why Magnus Carlsen revolutionized the old Møller Attack, one of the sharpest and most uncompromising variations against the Ruy Lopez. As yet largely disregarded and unexplored by the majority of players, Carlsen’s new approach allows Black to break free early and start giving White a hard time. FIDE Master Ioannis Simeonidis is the first to investigate this system, cover it in detail, and make it easy to grasp for club players. He has called it the Neo-Møller. Simeonidis has made lots of exciting discoveries, presents many new ideas and shows that it is a reliable and playable system. Since the Neo-Møller is a very early deviation from the main lines, it’s easy for Black to actually get it on the board and take opponents out of their comfort zone. Simeonidis has created a compact, accessible and inspirational book. One thing looks certain: White players of the Ruy Lopez are going to thoroughly dislike the Neo-Møller!
Download or read book Verdi in Victorian London written by Massimo Zicari and published by Open Book Publishers. This book was released on 2016-07-11 with total page 360 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Now a byword for beauty, Verdi’s operas were far from universally acclaimed when they reached London in the second half of the nineteenth century. Why did some critics react so harshly? Who were they and what biases and prejudices animated them? When did their antagonistic attitude change? And why did opera managers continue to produce Verdi’s operas, in spite of their alleged worthlessness? Massimo Zicari’s Verdi in Victorian London reconstructs the reception of Verdi’s operas in London from 1844, when a first critical account was published in the pages of The Athenaeum, to 1901, when Verdi’s death received extensive tribute in The Musical Times. In the 1840s, certain London journalists were positively hostile towards the most talked-about representative of Italian opera, only to change their tune in the years to come. The supercilious critic of The Athenaeum, Henry Fothergill Chorley, declared that Verdi’s melodies were worn, hackneyed and meaningless, his harmonies and progressions crude, his orchestration noisy. The scribes of The Times, The Musical World, The Illustrated London News, and The Musical Times all contributed to the critical hubbub. Yet by the 1850s, Victorian critics, however grudging, could neither deny nor ignore the popularity of Verdi’s operas. Over the final three decades of the nineteenth century, moreover, London’s musical milieu underwent changes of great magnitude, shifting the manner in which Verdi was conceptualized and making room for the powerful influence of Wagner. Nostalgic commentators began to lament the sad state of the Land of Song, referring to the now departed "palmy days of Italian opera." Zicari charts this entire cultural constellation. Verdi in Victorian London is required reading for both academics and opera aficionados. Music specialists will value a historical reconstruction that stems from a large body of first-hand source material, while Verdi lovers and Italian opera addicts will enjoy vivid analysis free from technical jargon. For students, scholars and plain readers alike, this book is an illuminating addition to the study of music reception.
Download or read book Nat Goodwin s Book written by Nathaniel Carll Goodwin and published by . This book was released on 1914 with total page 472 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt:
Download or read book The Outstretched Shadow written by Mercedes Lackey and published by Tor Books. This book was released on 2007-04-01 with total page 740 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The Outstretched Shadow, the first book in The Obsidian Trilogy from Mercedes Lackey and James Mallory Kellen Tavadon, son of the Arch-Mage Lycaelon, thought he knew the way the world worked. His father, leading the wise and benevolent Council of Mages, protected and guided the citizens of the Golden City of the Bells. Young Mages in training--all men, for women were unfit to practice magic--memorized the intricate details of High Magic and aspired to seats on the council. Then he found the forbidden Books of Wild Magic--or did they find him? The three slim volumes woke Kellen to the wide world outside the City's isolating walls. Their Magic was not dead, strangled by rules and regulations. It felt like a living thing, guided by the hearts and minds of those who practiced it and benefited from it. Questioning everything he has known, Kellen discovers too many of the City's dark secrets. Banished, with the Outlaw Hunt on his heels, Kellen invokes Wild Magic--and finds himself running for his life with a unicorn at his side. Kellen's life changes almost faster than he can understand or accept. Rescued by a unicorn, healed by a female Wild Mage who knows more about Kellen than anyone outside the City should, meeting Elven royalty and Elven warriors, and plunged into a world where the magical beings he has learned about as abstract concepts are flesh and blood creatures-Kellen both revels in and fears his new freedom. Especially once he learns about Demons. He'd always thought they were another abstract concept-a stand-in for ultimate evil. But if centaurs and dryads are real, then Demons surely are as well. And the one thing all the Mages of the City agreed on was that practicing Wild Magic corrupted a Mage. Turned him into a Demon. Would that be Kellen's fate? Deep in Obsidian Mountain, the Demons are waiting. Since their defeat in the last great War, they've been biding their time, sowing the seeds of distrust and discontent between their human and Elven enemies. Very soon now, when the Demons rise to make war, there will be no alliance between High and Wild Magic to stand against them. And all the world will belong to the Endarkened. At the Publisher's request, this title is being sold without Digital Rights Management Software (DRM) applied.
Download or read book Fat Bald Jeff written by Leslie Stella and published by Grove/Atlantic, Inc.. This book was released on 2007-12-01 with total page 225 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: “A slacker hell [with] a disgruntled, wisecracking protagonist . . . A hilarious send-up of hippies and hipsters” from the author of Permanent Record (Kirkus Reviews). Addie Prewitt is a copyeditor for the National Association of Libraries. When her boss, the repulsive Coddles, heaps another new project on her department—with no additional remuneration naturally—she decides she’s had enough. While spending her days battling with her roommate about whether Black Sabbath or Neil Diamond will occupy the turntable and her nights beating her overeager suitor away from the door of her boudoir, Addie discovers a piece of vile pornography in Coddles’s dry cleaning. Finally, she has the means to retaliate. Meanwhile, Fat Bald Jeff, the tech-support guy who has to cope with her mechanical self-sabotage, turns out to be even more disaffected than she, and they hatch the ultimate plan to give the pigs some of their own medicine. With a surreal wit and a keen eye that bring to mind Lily Tomlin set loose in Dilbert-world, Fat Bald Jeff is a sharp satire and a paean to the petty humiliations of workers everywhere. “Stella provides a lot of freshly imagined fun . . . There are so many funny lines and scenes that even librarians may like it. As for the lumpen—they’ll love it.” —San Francisco Chronicle “Warm the pockets of your heart watching this bereft waif find a little happiness in life.” —Mademoiselle “Amusing . . . caustic . . . entertaining . . . Read on company time!” —US Weekly “A fun, harmless, and quick read. Don’t look for inspiration, just amusement.” —Booklist
Download or read book Real Men Don t Sing written by Allison McCracken and published by Duke University Press. This book was released on 2015-09-02 with total page 448 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The crooner Rudy Vallée's soft, intimate, and sensual vocal delivery simultaneously captivated millions of adoring fans and drew harsh criticism from those threatened by his sensitive masculinity. Although Vallée and other crooners reflected the gender fluidity of late-1920s popular culture, their challenge to the Depression era's more conservative masculine norms led cultural authorities to stigmatize them as gender and sexual deviants. In Real Men Don't Sing Allison McCracken outlines crooning's history from its origins in minstrelsy through its development as the microphone sound most associated with white recording artists, band singers, and radio stars. She charts early crooners’ rise and fall between 1925 and 1934, contrasting Rudy Vallée with Bing Crosby to demonstrate how attempts to contain crooners created and dictated standards of white masculinity for male singers. Unlike Vallée, Crosby survived the crooner backlash by adapting his voice and persona to adhere to white middle-class masculine norms. The effects of these norms are felt to this day, as critics continue to question the masculinity of youthful, romantic white male singers. Crooners, McCracken shows, not only were the first pop stars: their short-lived yet massive popularity fundamentally changed American culture.
