* The perfect survival guide to the chess openings
* All openings covered
* Detailed verbal explanations of plans for both sides
* Up-to-date and featuring many tips and recommendations
* Insights into the 'character' of each opening
* Written by one of the world's foremost opening experts

The first moves of a chess game define the nature of the whole struggle, as both players stake their claim to the critical squares and start to develop their plans. It is essential to play purposefully and to avoid falling into traps or reaching a position that you don't understand.

This is not a book that provides masses of variations to memorize. Paul van der Sterren instead offers a wealth of ideas and explanation, together with the basic variations of each and every opening. This knowledge will equip players to succeed in the opening up to good club level, and provide a superb grounding in opening play on which to build a more sophisticated repertoire. The strategies he explains will, unlike ever-changing chess opening theory, remain valid as long as chess is played, and so the time spent studying this book will be rewarded many times over.

Grandmaster Paul van der Sterren has won the Dutch Championship on two occasions, and in 1993 reached the Candidates stage of the World Chess Championship. He is an internationally renowned chess writer and editor: he was one of the founding editors of New in Chess, for whose Yearbooks he has contributed more than 150 opening surveys.

In Black and White is probably the most honest autobiography ever published by a chess grandmaster. The Dutchman, born in 1956, covers his rise to the chess elite, his insecurities, and the difficulties he encountered.

The highlight of his career was his qualification for the Candidates Matches, only four steps away from the World Championship. He won a game but lost the match against Gata Kamsky.

The Dutch edition was published in 2011 and has reached cult status. It was very well received by fans and reviewers - and with the English translation will finally get a well-deserved wider audience.

The Dutch Grandmaster Paul van der Sterren was a professional chess player for over twenty years. At the peak of his career, he qualified for the Candidate Matches for the World Championship - and was only four victories away from the World Title. In Mindful Chess, you will get his long and short answer to whether meditation or mindfulness will help your chess.

As a boy, Van der Sterren became fascinated by chess and became a gladiator at the chess board. To quote Theodore Roosevelt, he met with both victory and defeat, much joy and suffering. When, later in life, he discovered vipassana meditation, he met again with joy and suffering - and approached these issues with the same total devotion as he had brought to chess--thousands and thousands of hours on the cushion and studying Buddhist literature.

The reader will follow the two journeys through chess and meditation. And find answers to questions such as: What is chess? What is meditation? Who am I? What is I? Or will the answer elude you, is too much inexplainable and unknowable?

In his well-known entertaining style, the author takes us through the fascinating history of the World Champions of Chess. A striking and beautiful book full of anecdotes, stories and thrilling games played by the titans of our royal game. It is a book you can read time and again and will surely find a treasured place on your bookshelf

Assuming no previous knowledge of the game, Grandmaster Paul van der Sterren teaches you how to play and draws you into the fascinating world of modern chess.

This carefully crafted chess course is divided into true lessons, each building on what has been learned in the previous ones. Before moving on from a topic, you have the chance to test that you have fully understood it with the help of thoughtfully graded exercises.

This is a 21st-century guide. Throughout, there are references to online chess resources and suggestions for online activities, such as training, playing and live broadcasts, and chess-related social media.

Also dotted throughout the book are pieces of chess lore, practical tips and information about great players past and present.