Overview

How should a chess player, be they amateur or professional, achieve their full potential? What's the best way to prepare psychologically for the game, opponents, tournaments? How can they set goals at the board and achieve them? What techniques can they employ to react when the game takes an unexpected turn? How should they plan to avoid time trouble, and then handle it (or their opponent's) if it occurs? What about maintaining concentration and controlling emotions at the board? How to use psychology when choosing a move or trying to achieve a draw? What's the best approach to facing much stronger opponents? What should a player do if one's opponent breaks the rules? How to bounce back from losses?Woman Grandmaster Maria Manakova has written a detailed psychological manual on how to navigate these and other key matters for both club players and those setting out on their professional journey. This book contains a huge number of practical and actionable tips, drawn from both Maria's personal experience and that of her professional peers among players and coaches. It provides examples from 24 games, some taken from Maria's career and others played by the greats of the game (among them Carlsen, Kramnik, and Anand). It also contains a generous selection of photos from Maria's life, as well as her own magnificent drawings that illustrate her advice. This book is available in three editions - paperback, hardback and full-color hardback. Maria Manakova (born 1974) is a Serbian WGM of Russian origin with a career-high rating of 2395 who has played for Yugoslavia and Serbia in two Olympiads and three European team championships. Honors include silver medal at the European team championship (1999) representing Yugoslavia, gold medal in the European club championship (2002), Moscow women's champion (2009) and Serbian women's champion (2013). Maria has coached for three decades. Away from the board, she obtained a university degree in journalism and also studied theater. Maria has acted in theater plays and movies, co-hosted a talk show on Russian terrestrial TV, sung in a jazz band, and regularly performs as a singer-guitarist, including solo shows. Several documentary films have been made about Maria, the reason being, according to Boris Spassky, she is ""a woman with a uniquely interesting life story"".Here's what Alexei Shirov had to say about the first edition of her book, published in 2023 in Russian: ""While we 'strong' grandmasters narrow our perception of Earthly chess to one or two lines, Maria Manakova has embraced our entire galaxy in her work. This book will not leave any chess lover unmoved.""Note that the color version of this book is only distributed via specialized chess bookstores and may not be available from general online stores such as Amazon.

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9781916839120

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""The Russian/Serbian chess player Maria Manakova spills out advice of her own, heavily reinforced with long and short comments by famed chess players and trainers of every age and type, about what to do in just about every situation you can imagine, whether on the chessboard or in life... While lots of nonsense has been talked about chess in relation to war and diplomacy, Manakova launches into the far more interesting issue of how chess can help people in many facets of life. In this, the game is, of course, not unique... If you have ever competed in sports and games (SG) of an individual kind, where you might be up against one or several opponents, simultaneously or sequentially, then you'll know all about pressure, preparation and psychology (the ""PPP"" which straddles many of the things Manakova highlights). The challenge is always to get the most out of yourself, whatever the circumstances. And whenever you give your all, disappointments take your all. Retaining any kind of balance - emotional, psychological, even physical - becomes a huge task. Yet it is vital if, the next time, you are going to perform anywhere near your best."" - Peter O'Brien, British Chess Magazine, September 2024

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