EDUCAÇAO FÍSICA PROFESSOR WILLIAM PEREIRA: ChessCafe.com Weekly Newsletter, July 1

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Issue #11
July 1 - 7

Welcome to the ChessCafe.com weekly newsletter. You can keep up-to-date with new product releases, read reviews of selected products, and follow the latest postings at ChessCafe.com. Plus, try your hand at solving our weekly puzzle. Enjoy!

Here & There

Four Sicilians
One of the most popular topics of opening books in recent years has been the Sicilian Defense. Close to seventy works have been published since the year 2000 alone, and this month Carsten Hansen looks at four new titles to add to the tally.

Scholastic Chess Tips
Susan Polgar has done hundreds of lectures to parents, coaches, and young players over the years. This month she presents the most frequently asked questions about advice and tips for young players and chess parents.

The English Riviera
Gary Lane will be at the British Championships at the seaside town of Torquay and he is inviting ChessCafe.com readers to stop by and ask him questions. The novelist Agatha Christie came from this area and her house attracts thousands of visitors each year.

Intelligent Openings
For the reasonable price of 25 euros per year, once a week you can receive intelligent, interesting opening surveys and analysis presented by a team lead by Dutch IMs Merijn van Delft & Robert Ris. Learn how in this week’s book review.

Book Notes

Chess Informant 104 covers the period from September 1, 2008 to December 31, 2008 and contains 299 annotated games and 317 variations. Contributors include Ivanchuk, Anand, Kramnik, Svidler, Bologan, Benjamin, Christiansen, Timman, and many others.

In Chess Strategy for Club Players, IM Herman Grooten presents a complete and structured course on how to recognize key characteristics in all types of positions and how to make use of those characteristics to choose the right plan.

This month you can enjoy tremendous discounts on a great selection of books, software and sets. Some for as low as 99 cents!! Plus, enjoy free UPS Ground Shipping on all domestic US orders of $75 or more!*

Reviews in Brief

Play the Sicilian Kan
by Johan Hellsten

Johan Hellsten is a grandmaster, a former Swedish champion, and a frequent member of the Swedish Olympiad team. Most recently he has been employed as a chess teacher for the Sports Federation of Chimborazo, Chile. In the preface, he tells us that the Sicilian Kan has been his main weapon against the Open Sicilian for the better part of twelve years, and that he has scored a rather magnificent sixty-four percent as black over the course of several hundred tournament games. Even as a strong grandmaster, such a score with black is quite an accomplishment.

This book is a fine piece of work. It is easily one of the best opening monographs to be released for some time. Anyone who plays the Kan as black or the Open Sicilian as white should buy it. It's target audience spans from players rated 1800 and up to grandmaster level. There is something for everyone in this book. You will learn a lot about this opening, the associated pawn structures, and about chess in general. I hope that we will see more books in the future from this talented Swede.

Read the full review by Carsten Hansen here.

Blindfold Chess
by Eliot Hearst & John Knott

The authors have more than thirty years experience between them in the study of blindfold chess, and they have used this to pen what is likely to be the most comprehensive exposition on the subject ever written. They hunt down the earliest known instances of blindfold play, describe the personalities and achievements of some of the best blindfold players, present 444 blindfold games, and offer a summary of psychological research on blindfold chess.

The book is divided into three parts. Part one investigates the history of blindfold play, beginning before Philidor and carrying through until the present-day Amber events. Part two, the psychology of blindfold chess, encompasses research on general chess skill, psychological studies and commentaries, the techniques of the blindfold champions, and the supposed health hazards of blindfold play. Part three includes the games and reports on record-setting exhibitions. Numerous photographs, appendices, and indexes round out this scholarly work.

New Catalog Additions

6/30: Top TNT, Vol. 3 (CD)
6/30: Chess Informants 101-103 (CD)
6/29: Chess Informant #104 (Book)
6/29: Chess Informant #104 (CD)
6/29: Chess Informant #104 (Book + CD)
6/28: Botvinnik-Smyslov, Three Championship Matches
6/27: Chess Strategy for Club Players
6/26: The Chess Garden (Damaged)
6/25: New In Chess Magazine, 2009/4
6/23: ABC of Chess Openings, 2nd ed. (DVD)
6/22: ChessBase Magazine #130 (DVD)
6/21: My Best Games in the Spanish, Vol. 2 (DVD)
6/20: Shirov: The Philidor Defense (DVD)
6/4: The Two Knights Defence (restock)
6/3: 1.b4: Theory & Practice of the Sokolsky Opening
6/2: Foxy Openings: Sveshnikov Sicilian, Pt 2 (DVD)
6/1: Foxy Openings: Sveshnikov Sicilian, Pt 1 (DVD)