This topic, of course, is not new. Many books have been written on it at different times by authors old and modern. Unfortunately, the content of such books is not always error-free, as I have experienced many times. Therefore the emphasis in my book is on the quality of the examples; all of them have been checked and are deeply analyzed.
When writing a book, many authors try to make an impression by choosing the most striking games and fragments. The reader may therefore get the impression that a game of chess consists only of beautiful moves, combinations, spectacular sacrifices and non-standard solutions. Of course, it does not. There is a lot of beauty in chess, but usually most games consist of ‘work in progress’. There are lots of examples of such ‘working’ games in this book, but beauty is also present.
Of course, the format of the book does not permit coverage of all the methods of play in the middlegame. However, the book has enough material to get acquainted with the most important ones, and, with the help of exercises, to understand the meaning of these methods and learn how to use them in practice.
I hope that after reading this book the reader will increase his or her knowledge of the typical and not-so-typical methods of play in the middlegame, become familiar with ideas of non-standard solutions to practical problems arising during the game and be able to apply this knowledge in his or her own games.
Alexey Dreev was twice World junior champion (under 16) in 1983 and 1984, silver medalist under 20 in 1984, European champion under 20 in 1988. With the Russian team, he was three times Olympic gold medalist and once he got the silver, he also won two times the World team championship – in 1997 and 2005. He was the European champion for 2012 in rapid chess.
