Sacrifice and Initiative in Chess: Seize the Moment to Get the Advantage

This is a very good book. But it is not one I would recommend to a beginer. Mainly dues to large analysis lines the author gives. This is a nice book for someone who has already gone theough My System, Art of Attack, and Chess Training for Post begginers. If you already comfortable with the topics in any of those three books, this is a nice book to use next, If you are new to positional Chess, I would stary with one of the other three books first. Just this week we had a tournament in my town and walking around seeing others play I quickly notice that there are players who had a better position but gave it up, or failed to take advantage of it. One person who was playing a higher rated opponent did not pick up the initive after the stronger player wasted two moves in the opening, instead he wasted two of his own. Another match a person had a plan, and the opponent decided to counter attack, yet the guy with the plan failed to ignore the counter attack not realizing his attack was superior and decisive. This person had a mate threat, or have his opponent lose a queen to stop the mate, yet he got fixated on the counter attack, and fixated on losing a pawn that he decided to postpone his attack and defend the pawn, i doing so his opponent spotted the mate threat and moved away from it. So this one person settled for a draw rather than a win. My point is that many people seem to get fixated on an idea or two and forget about the big picture. This book is rather refreshing in that it will illustrate the big picture, you will see games where you can ignore a person threat, when your threat is even bigger, it will show you why what looks like an obvious move to non masters, is often ignore by masters eg. a master/grand master not taking a hanging piece and making some positional move instead. The book will show you how you can maintain the iniative when you have it and discuss standard attack plans as well as understanding pawn structures. the book is basically an attacking manual similar, but not the same as Art of Attack, this book is more advance. I guess an analogy would be Art of Attack is to Pre-Calculus as Sacrifice and Initiative in Chess is to Calculus. Very good book, but not for a begginer, or someone not yet comfortable with any of the three books I mentioned earlier. The book can be used in several ways, the games are given to you from stary to the end, and then there will be a diagram with the key position. Before I read the book, I just went to the diagram sort of like the puzzle and see if I could figure out the move before reading the annotations, so my first week with the book I used it as a puzzle book, I later went back read the book and the analysis and played the games out on my pc. The analysis part is detailed and I recommend you use a computer or a chess board when looking at the alternatives lines discussed in the analysis section as well as the actual game. Again Excellent book for more advance players that enjoy playing aggressive games.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book. Just so you know a little about me, I am an avid chess player who constantly plays on the internet, my rating is currently 1724, I read a lot of niche chess books (i.e. not "My system", "1953 Zurich Tournament", "Secrets of Modern Chess Strategy" etc) & I don't use computer programs to analyse my games, I do the hard work myself.I highly recommend reading this chess book for any non-Grandmaster player who has already grasped the classical & modern principles of chess. One of the main issues that I have discovered from playing against amateurs is that the vast majority of them are passive in their playing style. This book has 92 games played at the Grandmaster level that will demonstrate ways to seize the initiative & as the author states a few times in this book, the sacrifice is the natural culmination of the initiative, or words to that effect. The 92 games that are covered are split into two parts & 16 chapters that are themed. These games were played by World Champions, Grandmasters & by the author, himself. Some people may not like that the author has selected so many of his own games, however this is a huge plus because who would know better than the players themselves in regards to what variations & ideas were thought about during their own games? About 20% of these games I had already covered a number of times in other chess books, but that is the problem with classic/immortal games, it is hard to overlook them if you are writing a book in which they are prefect examples to illustrate your point(s). I found that in more or less the first half of this book, the author does not get too heavily involved in analysing variations & then in the second half he really gets into it, probably because the focus is on the sacrifice. The emphasis of all these games is on the middlegame, the author just annotates the first more or less 20 moves (most games) & then analyses the middlegame with explanations & variations. Any endgames are just glossed over.I like the way that the author thinks. He reiterates throughout the book the general & key concepts to look out for such as co-ordination or unco-ordination of your own &/or your opponent's pieces, the attackers to defenders ratio, intuition, calculation, the pawns in front or your opponent's King, the change in valuation of the pieces as the character of the game changes, imposing a higher degree threat amongst others. The repetition of such concepts really drills into your memory what to look out for in your own games.Thank you Mr Sokolov for your contribution to this niche topic in chess. As important as positional considerations are in chess, the vast majority of amateurs need to read this book so that they gain some knowledge & confidence to seize the initiative & actually play for a decisive win. Maybe, I am being a bit harsh on my fellow amateurs, but I find the vast majority of them are minimally into tactics & struggle to come up with a plan, afterall, it is a black & white jungle in the middlegame. This book can only be of assistance!!!

It would have been a good book, but it's too much trouble to wade through all the typos.

The kindle edition of this book is so poorly written, a player will not be able to make sense of the games without the aid of a database. Errors start in the book beginning with the first game in the text, Tal-Geller Riga 1958. The kindle version lists black's 9th move as "N5," leaving the reader to guess whether black's knight is being placed on the a or the h file. (In the actual game, black played Na5).The second game is also notated correctly, in Sokolov-Kiril, 1994, the text lists white's fifteenth move "15.Rd4!", which is cause for exclamation indeed, since in the previous position white's rooks are located on a1 and f1.I am only two games into the book, because I have to read it alongside my chess database just to make sense of the games.This poor editing and unreliable notation is a huge decline in the quality of material I've come to expect from New In Chess, and I am surprised that they would have their name attached to such a haphazard, sloppily-made work.I've bought hundreds of books on amazon over several years, and this is the first one which was so poorly put together that it made me feel like giving it a 1-star review to warn people against purchasing it.

High quality information

A must have for a improving player, and very intertaing.

Interesting, but I have not yet read it through.

Really great book.

Book is good but the person who typed the manuscipt into electronic version of Kindle was obviously not a chess player. In my life I have not seen so many errors in notation. E.g. In the game Sokolov v Gheorghiu is written: '23.b4! ... 23...b6- 23...cxb4 loses to 24.Rxb4 (NB illegal move - should have been 24.Qxb4) Qf8 25.Qfe1 (should have been Rfe1) Bd7 26.Qxb7 - so finally the Qb4 is on the right spot. And mistakes like that I found plenty.Nobody is perfect and I have not read the printed version but if someone wants for Kindle edition £18 or so then the quality should be accordingly.It is really shame because Sokolov's book is good and sound and this is not his fault.I have tried to report these errors to Kindle but there is another glitch - I wrote comment but it was impossible to send it.

La forma de explicar y describir cada plan y cada jugada hacen de este libro una joya

El libro contiene partidas con juego dinámico. Las partidas son de alto nivel, se centran en el medio juego, en la lucha por la iniciativa.

Extremely nice book, for club players.A paradigm shift for an average player like me

Good