Chess Stars is a Bulgarian chess publisher founded by Semko Semkov and Sergei Soloviov, and most of its books are opening repertoires. The place to start is the Squeezing series: White repertoires against 1...e5, the Sicilian, the Caro-Kann, the King's Indian and the Queen's Gambit Declined, built on solid systems where understanding the plans counts for as much as memorized moves. Semkov's strategy book Isolani: Beyond the Clichés goes well with them. After those come other repertoires, a middlegame book, an endgame manual and a biography. The Squeezing series The books share one approach: White controls the center, develops and...
Elk and Ruby: a guide to the books
Elk and Ruby is a chess publisher founded in 2017 and based in Canterbury, England. Most of the Elk and Ruby books we stock are history and biography: Soviet chess history, multi-volume career studies of Korchnoi and Petrosian, and a biography of Alekhine that is still being written. A few training books sit alongside them. Its books have been regulars on the English Chess Federation's Book of the Year shortlist, and the first volume of Masterpieces and Dramas of the Soviet Championships won the award in 2021. If you are new to the publisher, Volume I of that series is...
Maxim Blokh: a guide to the books
Maxim Blokh (1960-2016) was a Moscow chess coach who was awarded the ICCF (correspondence) grandmaster title in 1998 for his result in the Konstantinopolsky Memorial. From 1990 to 1994 the young Alexander Grischuk was among his pupils. The Russian Chess Federation's 2016 obituary called his tactics workbooks popular in the chess world and noted that their material is used in the CT-ART training program. All four of the Blokh books we stock are collections of combinations sorted by theme. They range from about 600 combinations (600 Combinations, 96 pages) to almost 1,500 (The Art of Combination in Chess). For a...
Thinkers Publishing: a guide to the books
Thinkers Publishing is a Belgian chess publisher. Its Modernized opening series alone had more than forty titles as of October 2026. This guide picks a selection of the Thinkers Publishing books we stock, in four groups: openings, middlegame and training, endgames, and biography and history. The rest of the Thinkers books we stock, including the newest titles, are in our Thinkers Publishing section. For a club player looking for a training book, Robert Ris's Crucial Chess Skills for the Club Player: Volume 2 is a good place to start. The volumes do not depend on each other. The opening repertoires...
Mark Dvoretsky: a guide to his books
Mark Dvoretsky (1947-2016) was a Moscow trainer whose students won the World Junior Championship three times in four years, and whom the Russian Chess Federation called one of the most authoritative trainers in the world. His books are not all the same kind of book. Some are endgame references, some are exercise books, and some are memoirs. We stock seven titles by him or about him. This guide explains who he was, what each book is, and where to start.Who he wasDvoretsky was born in Moscow on 9 December 1947, and he was a strong player before he was a...
The Benoni and the Benko Gambit: a guide to the books
All three openings start 1.d4 Nf6 2.c4 c5 3.d5, and then they part ways. In the Modern Benoni Black plays 3...e6 and ...exd5, then uses a queenside pawn majority backed by a bishop on g7. In the Czech Benoni Black plays 3...e5 and closes the center: more solid, slower, and at risk of becoming passive, with the breaks ...f5 and ...b5. In the Benko Gambit Black plays 3...b5 and gives a pawn for quick development, the long diagonal, and pressure down the a- and b-files. The Modern Benoni's reputation has gone up and down. For a long time the Taimanov...
The Dutch Defense: a guide to the books
The Dutch starts 1.d4 f5. Black stakes a claim to e4 from the side and accepts a slightly loose king in return for an unbalanced game. It has never been a main line against 1.d4 and is rare at elite level, though it has had serious users: Botvinnik and Bronstein both played it in their 1951 world championship match, and Magnus Carlsen beat Anand and Caruana with the Stonewall in 2015. There are three main systems. In the Leningrad, Black fianchettoes on g7 and usually plays ...d6. In the Stonewall, Black sets pawns on c6, d5, e6 and f5 to...
The Chess School series: a guide to the books
Russian Chess House publishes a run of books under the name Chess School, numbered 1a, 1b, 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. The numbering suggests one ladder from beginner to master. It is only partly that. Four of the books form a single tactics course, one is an endgame manual, and the other two are separate tactics collections by different authors.So the useful question is not which order to read them in. It is where you should start, and which of the books you need at all.The books at a glanceBookAuthorWhat it isPublisher's level1aSergey Ivashchenko700+ tactics problemsabout 900 to 12001bSergey...
The Slav and Semi-Slav: a guide to the books
The Slav starts 1.d4 d5 2.c4 c6. When Black adds ...e6 and ...Nf6, it becomes the Semi-Slav, with its own large body of theory: the Meran, the Moscow and the Botvinnik. Most books choose one or the other, so the first decision is which of the two you want to play.If you are new to the SlavStarting Out: Slav & Semi-SlavGlenn Flear (Everyman Chess, 2005). An introduction to both, with chapters on the main-line Slav, the gambit lines, the Exchange, the Chebanenko (4...a6), and the Semi-Slav's Botvinnik, Moscow and Meran. The publisher pitches it at improving players. The ideas still...
The Ruy Lopez: a guide to the books
After 1.e4 e5 2.Nf3 Nc6 3.Bb5, the Ruy Lopez branches into several quite separate openings, and Black chooses which one. The Berlin with 3...Nf6. The Open with 5...Nxe4. The Marshall Attack, a pawn sacrifice with ...d5. The long Closed lines such as the Zaitsev. Or the Arkhangelsk, with ...b5 and ...Bb7.That shapes the books. White needs one repertoire that answers all of them. Black only needs a book on the defense they actually play.Playing the Ruy Lopez as WhiteThe Modernized Ruy Lopez, Volumes 1 and 2Dariusz Swiercz (Thinkers Publishing, 2021). A complete White repertoire in two books. Volume 1 (520...