Zenon Franco has regularly annotated top-level games for more than a quarter of a century. He has drawn upon this vast experience to present 50 hugely instructive games illustrating a wide variety of chess ideas.
Key themes are illustrated by several games, so that we gain a well-rounded appreciation of the relevant ideas, and develop foresight that will enable us to make the right decisions at the board by anticipating problems before they arise.
Topics include:
- Pawn Sacrifice
- Exchange Sacrifice
- The Art of Manoeuvring
- The Second Weakness
- Permanent vs. Temporary Advantages
- Regrouping
- ‘Strange’ Exchanges
- Denying the Opponent Squares
- The Central Breakthrough
About the Author
Zenon Franco is a grandmaster from Paraguay who now lives in Spain. He is an experienced chess trainer, his most notable pupil being Paco Vallejo, now one of the world’s top grandmasters, whom he taught from 1995 to 1999.
Reviews
“It’s actually not fair to say that there are only 50 games, because the author inserts separate, complete games with notes that he compares with the main, numbered games. … Franco manages to develop the relevant ideas in each section from game to game, with each game showing a different or more sophisticated version of the various shared features. … Assembling these grouplets requires a specific set of related games, and the author must have spent a long time finding ones that served such a purpose. I think he succeeded. … What makes the book stand out most is the clarity of Franco’s annotations … highly recommended” — IM John Watson, TWIC
“The annotated games have been selected from various, highly respected sources such as Chess Informant, New in Chess, and from great books by Fischer, Smyslov, Korchnoi, Shirov, Kramnik, Kasparov, Dvoretsky and others. [Franco] focuses on their analysis and adds his own to each game, but do not be misled into thinking that this results in watered down and spoon-fed material. In fact, this is how the games are transformed from well analyzed games to instructive ones. … This book will serve well as a training tool for students, trainers and amateurs alike. It is also simply a good read. There are many topics covering a variety of aspects of the game. The translation is very clear and good, and I think we will be seeing more books by Franco in the future. Excellent!” — Akram Shehata, chesscafe.com