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1-800-388-KING (5464) Issue #108
February 4 - 10
Welcome to the USCFSales.com weekly newsletter. You can keep up-to-date with new product releases, read reviews of selected products, and follow the latest news from the U.S. Chess Federation. Plus, try your hand at solving our weekly puzzle. Enjoy! Here & There
at ChessCafe.com The Reader
There are some moves in the opening that are frowned upon, yet they are rarely mentioned in the books because the author misguidedly assumes everyone is familiar with them, and in DVDs the presenter has limited time to cover unusual lines. So the best solution is to ask Gary Lane! Corus
Wijk aan Zee, the famous seaside Dutch town, once again hosted the annual Corus chess tournament. Participants this year included several top young Dutch players and many of today’s exciting young stars. Susan Polgar reports on the event and shares a beautiful letter she recently received. Search Me
A new element on our home page is the ChessCafe.com search box. If you would like to search for, say, every instance that Geurt Gjissen mentioned Article 10.2, you could simply type in “10.2 Geurt” and quickly be provided with more than eighty results. Book Notes  If you don’t have endless time available to study the latest theoretical developments, then GM Neil McDonald has a solution. In How to Play against 1 e4, he advocates a French Defense repertoire for Black that requires only the minimum amount of move memorization. The new book Blindfold Chess provides the first extensive coverage of blindfold chess from its earliest known instances through the present day. It describes the personalities and achievements of some of blindfold chess’s greatest players.
The tournament book that Alekhine produced on New York 1924 became the stuff of legend. He provides real analysis, and with words, not just moves. He imbues the book with personality, on the one hand ruthlessly objective, even with his own mistakes, on the other, candidly subjective.
Reviews in Brief |  How Chess Games are Won and Lost
by Lars Bo Hansen Would you pay $30 for a one-hour private lesson with a grandmaster? How about $30 for a couple dozen lessons with a GM? That’s what this book feels like. Lars Bo Hansen has a talent for really relating to the “average” club player. As he describes his own chess development, “I had to learn a few lessons the hard way, as I never had a chess trainer (except for the first few years where I attended a school chess club every Friday), I had to do everything myself - choose my openings, analyse my own games and those of others, decide which books to study to improve, and so on. There was nothing extraordinary about this - that was (and still is) the basic condition for a young talent growing up in a small Western country like Denmark without much of a chess culture.’ How Chess Games are Won and Lost is a well-written, entertaining and informative book. I had not previously read anything by Lars Bo Hansen, but I’m quite impressed with the clarity of his writing. For any player trying to better grasp the intricacies of the five components of a chess game, this book is a breath of fresh air. Read the full review by Steve Goldberg here. | | |
| | | |  Dangerous Weapons: Flank Openings
by Richard Palliser, Tony Kosten, & James Vigus This book focuses on the more mainstream flank openings. IM Palliser joins with GM Kosten and FM Vigus to bring you new or forgotten ideas in the Reti, English, and Bird’s Opening. The authors note that “several of the ideas included are recent developments,” while others are from long-neglected lines that “have been more than resurrected,” and there are also chapters on the Mikenas Attack and the Kasparov Gambit. As noted in the introduction, the concept behind Dangerous Weapons is “to concentrate on variations that are ambitious, sharp, innovative, disruptive, tricky, enjoyable to analyse; ones not already weighed down by mountains of theory, and ones fairly ignored or discredited.” Kosten wrote six of the chapters, Vigus the two on Bird’s Opening, and Palliser the remainder. The twelve chapters are divided with eight ideas for black and four for white. If you play these lines, you will want this book. | | |
| New Catalog Additions 2/3: Gary’s Adventures in Chess Country
2/1: February Competition Special
2/1: February Scholastic Special
1/31: Albert Beauregard Hodges: The Man Chess Made
1/30: Blindfold Chess
1/29: ABC of the Leningrad Dutch (DVD)
1/28: ABC of the Anti Dutch (DVD)
1/27: Starting Out: d-Pawn Attacks
1/26: Play the Sicilian Kan
1/25: Dangerous Weapons: Flank Openings
1/24: How to Play against 1 e4
1/23: Fighting the Anti-King’s Indians
1/22: The Greatest Ever Chess Tricks and Traps
1/20: Let’s Play Chess
1/19: Mastering the Chess Openings, Vol. 3
1/14: Questions of Modern Chess Theory (restock)
1/8: New York 1924
| Weekly Puzzle | | Quote of the Week | | 
White to Move/Solution Below | | Chess is an interesting game that never stops providing lessons in how the human mind works. Katherine Neville,
The Fire |
Monthly Specials February 2009  | For the February Competition Special, we are pleased to offer The Berkshire Folding Chess Table for the incredible USCF member price of $495.95! - a savings of $250.00! Regularly priced at $750.00, our quality Berkshire Mahogany & Maple Chessboard, produced by old-world Spanish woodworkers, is matched with a folding formica and maple table crafted by New England artisans. The result is the extraordinary, durable Berkshire Folding Chess Table.
|  | For the February Scholastic Special, we are pleased to offer a great book to improve your tactical skills: The ChessCafe Puzzle Book 1 (CD) by Karsten Mueller for the incredible USCF member price of $9.95! - a savings of $10.00! German grandmaster Karsten Mueller combines clear discussions of tactical themes with over 600 well-chosen positions to test, challenge and teach. Although the classic combinations are not ignored, the great emphasis is on positions from modern tournament practice of the last decade. These Specials of the Month are good from February 1 - February 28, 2009. Orders may be placed online, by mail or by phone. These Specials of the Month may be withdrawn at any time and are good only while supplies last. |
 New at Chess Life Online On Wednesday, February 4 at 6 pm PST, Chesspark and WuChess.com will launch the first season of the Chesspark College Association (CCA). Also, read about Southern hospitality at the recent Land of the Sky Open (January 23-25, Asheville, North Carolina), where GM Alexander Ivanov took first. Join the USCF Today 
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Puzzle Answer: 6.Nd6+ 1-0 Martin-Smith, Goodrington 2006 (Source: The Greatest Ever Chess Tricks and Traps) |
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