Professional Documents
Culture Documents
by Bill Harvey
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Sharpen your sword! Puzzle king Bill
Introduction:
Harvey presents 237 violent positions from
15 gambit variations – ranging from the rare Long before I learned how to read chess notation, I
Lisitsin and the neglected Blumenfeld, to the remember marveling over the final position in the
popular Milner-Barry and the fashionable famous "Shower of Gold game, Levitsky-Marshall,
Gajewski – where one side is poised to Breslau 1912. Notation can make a game permanent,
but it is the winning combination that captures a
deliver the final blow. young explorers attention. In any opening,
characteristic
Studying typical tactics is one of the best strategies yield typical tactics. A good grounding in
ways to get to know an opening: you will the combinations that we are likely to face in the
discover the traps and the pitfalls, develop opening we wish to master gives us a clearer
both a sense of danger and a feel for understanding and appreciation of that opening.
opportunities, and learn to stay always on
Gambits are a remedy for chessplayers who have
the alert. In The Gambit Files, the author become complacent. As King Solomon would say,
surveys the common tactical motifs for each "Dont set your heart on your wealth, but never say, I
variation, and then inivites you to hone your have enough. Studying gambits makes us better
cut-and-thrust skills with thematic puzzles. people: Theres greed and fear, along with
braggadocio and uncertainty and to some extent,
theres an
Whether you’re looking to breathe new life
equal measure of each. This is exactly what gets in
into your current openings or to overhaul the way of formalized gambit study. Memorizing lines
your repertoire, The Gambit Files will help often leads to cold, unemotional middlegames. This is
you to slay your opponents faster and with not really what the student seeks.
confidence.
For this book I have reviewed thousands of chess
games for interesting combinations, relying on the
engines Rybka 3 and Fritz 6 to verify that the
About the Author combinations here are sound and unique. These
positions should give the reader a good idea of the
A veteran of hundreds of tournaments in kind of power that must be harnessed, or faced, in a
online, postal and over-the-board gambit. Following the review of the themes and
strategies for each gambit, I have provided a
competition, Bill Harvey has taught chess in collection of puzzles taken from miniatures to help to
schools for a dozen years in the Washington, improve the readers understanding of the variation.
D.C. area, and edited two chess puzzle The solutions are given at the end of the book, with
their starting diagrams for convenience.
columns. Bill Harvey - Alexandria, Virginia - May 2010
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