Learn Chess the Right Way! Book 3: Mastering Defensive Techniques
In her five-part Learn Chess the Right Way series, former world champion and celebrated coach Susan Polgar guides novice, beginner and intermediate players through the building blocks of practical chess — how to mate, how to win material and how to defend. Each book in the series contains more than 500 puzzles.Volume 3 is about saving yourself: it presents 500 essential defensive techniques. Every chapter opens with a handful of worked examples explaining what to look out for before the exercises begin.Chapter 1: a piece is under attack, and there is exactly one good square to move it to.Chapter 2: a king is in check — find the right way out.Chapter 3: the attacked piece has nowhere safe to go, so another piece must come to its defence.Chapter 4: parrying a direct threat of checkmate.Chapter 5: defending by counterattacking.Chapters 6 and 7: rescuing a game with stalemate or perpetual check.Chapter 8: stopping a pawn just before it promotes.Chapter 9: a piece is about to be trapped; anticipate the attack and keep your material.Chapter 10: a mixed test of defensive ideas, in which you must avoid mate or keep your losses as small as possible.The training reflects more than forty years of Polgar’s work as an elite player and coach.About the AuthorSusan Polgar holds four Women’s World Championship titles and is the top-ranked woman in American chess. She was the world’s number-one woman at 15 and stayed in the top three for more than twenty years. In 2013 she was chosen as U.S. Coach of the Year, and in 2014 FIDE named her Trainer of the Year, making her the first person to collect both awards. SPICE teams under her leadership, at Texas Tech and later at Webster University, have won six straight national Division I collegiate titles.