This Week at ChessCafe.com: The Dragon Wagon

To make sure you receive these e-mails in your Inbox (and not a junk folder), please add "info@chesscafe.com" to your address book or safe sender list. This week's coupon code is "mystery5". See below for details... Sale ends Tuesday, August 03, 2010. Enjoy great savings on these fine products and more: Basics of Winning Chess {DVD} Find the Winning Move The Rules of Winning Chess Winning Chess Brilliancies Winning Chess Explained Winning Chess Tactics For Juniors  This Week at ChessCafe.com The Dragon Wagon Go with the approach you find most pleasing. Not the Aleppo It is easier to find good lines for Black than for White. Comments on Comments This month I will discuss some of the reader comments. Why We Lose at Chess Looking in a mirror doesn't make you uglier. Step by Step Designed to improve your tactical skills and can be used in a classroom setting. Sam Shankland An interview with the U.S. Junior Closed Championship. Book Notes How can you improve at chess? This is the eternal question asked by players of all levels. Which part of the game should you focus on? How often should you play? Should you change your opening repertoire? What's the best way to learn from your defeats? So many questions ... and yet direct answers are hard to find. It's no wonder aspiring players are left bewildered and in need of direction. In 10 Great Ways to Get Better at Chess grandmaster Nigel Davies provides that direction. He examines the methods used by a number of players who were looking to improve their game, and how they went about achieving their goal. He has drawn heavily on the games and thoughts of players who have been his students over the years and experienced a clear improvement in their play.  In Nunn's Chess Endings, Volume 1, renowned endgame theoretician John Nunn teaches the skills that are most important to success in practical endgames. Going beyond standard texts, Dr Nunn shows how to apply knowledge of standard endgames to find the right methods in tricky real-life practical situations - even when they differ greatly from the idealized forms given by traditional endgame manuals. It is a mystery why nothing was put on sale last week, but you can save even more this week! We are pleased to offer ChessCafe.com customers the opportunity to save an extra $5.00 off our already low price on 10 Great Ways to Get Better at Chess! Simply add the item to your shopping cart, along with The Rules of Winning Chess, which itself is on sale, and, during the checkout process, enter the coupon code "mystery5" (without the quotes) to receive an additional $5.00 discount! This offer expires August 03, 2010 or while supplies last. Weekly Puzzle Quote of the Week White to Move/Solution Below Visualization skills are the most important aspect of chess strength. Nigel Davies 10 Great Ways to Get Better at Chess Reviews in Brief Why We Lose at Chess by Colin Crouch I don't know why so many outstanding chess authors come from the United Kingdom. The climate is no worse than Russia's, the culture no stodgier than the Scandinavian countries, the food no worse than, uh, well, hm. Perhaps it is the food, at that. But whatever the reason, a large crop of tremendous chess authors grace the British Isles, who have succeeded in making English (for Pete's sake) the international language of chess. Colin Crouch may not be the most brilliant among them, but he usually deserves a close reading. His book "Attacking Technique" is a very instructive and pleasant little book that will give the average player some valuable pointers on attacking the enemy King. How to Defend in Chess is without doubt the best book ever written on the topic. It ranks among that elite half-dozen of books whose ideas and precepts migrated into my over-the-board play instantly – my ultimate test of excellence in any work. His latest effort, Why We Lose at Chess, is a slim and rather quirky volume. It is a games collection, with twenty-two of Crouch's selected games annotated by the author. Nothing unusual there. However, unlike most such collections, this one does not feature showpiece victories. Rather, these are twenty-two games in which Crouch made many mistakes, and which he analyzed in an effort to find and fix the causes of those mistakes. He groups his mistakes into fifteen successive "tests" of four positions each, arranging them so that each successive "test" occurs in a later stage of the game – a novel idea, and one I rather like, as a way to help the reader spot problems at successive stages of the game. Read the full review here. New Catalog Additions 1-877-91-CHESS 7/29 Attack on the King I (restock) 7/29 Attack on the King II (restock) 7/21 Learn Chess 7/20 Emanuel Lasker: Second World Chess Champion 7/17 London 1922 7/16 Who is the Champion of the Champions? (Hardcover) 7/15 ChessCafe Puzzle Book 3 7/14 Chess Informant #107 (Book) 7/14 Chess Informant #107 (CD) 7/14 Chess Informant #107 (Book + CD) 7/13 ECO A {4th ed.} (reprint) 7/13 ECO B {4th ed.} (reprint) 7/12 Chess Combinations for Club Players (CD) 7/12 Elementary Chess Combinations (CD) 7/11 Botvinnik's Best Games, Vol. 2 (restock) 7/11 Botvinnik's Best Games, Vol. 3 (restock) 7/10 Chess Endgames 5, Endgame Principles, Activity & Initiative (DVD) 7/9 Nunn's Chess Endings, Vol. 1 7/8 Dangerous Weapons: The French (Ebook) 7/7 Shirov: Guide to the Tkachiev Ruy Lopez (DVD) 7/5 Chess Tactics Level 1 (CD) 7/5 Chess Tactics Level 2 (CD) 7/4 The Chess Biography of Marcel Duchamp, Vol. One (Hardcover) 7/2 Foxy Openings #105: Accelerated Dragon Easily Explained, Part Two (DVD) 7/1 Roman's Lab: Vol. 98, Sicilian Alapin Variation (DVD) 6/30 Smyslov's Best Games 1935-1957 (restock) 6/30 Latest Trends in the Semi-Slav: Anti-Meran (restock) 6/29 CT Art 4.0 (For Download)  Puzzle Answer: 20.Nh4! 1-0 Botvinnik-Alatortsev, Leningrad 1934 If 20...Nxh4 (20...Bxh4 21.Qxh5+ Kg8 22.Qxf5) 21.Qxh5+ Kg8 22.Rxg7# (Source: 10 Great Ways to Get Better at Chess) Copyright 2010 BrainGamz, Inc. 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