Dudeney Puzzle

Solution to the Dudeney puzzle discussed HERE.  

Make consecutive moves for white and maneuver the King to f1. Stipulations are: No Pawn Moves. The Knight cannot be captured. The King cannot move to g2 because that square is covered by the Knight.

Move along...

Counter Gambits by T.D. Harding

   

  How to win with Black! This is a great book! It's packed with 22 pages, including an updated chapter written in 2001. And, the format is perfect: long-algebraic, bold type for game moves; short-algebraic, light type for analysis. Great diagrams. There are 75 complete games and many more complete games in analysis. It's by Dover so you know it's a good book and the price is only $8.95. 
     OK, so it's old and the analysis on the Benko Gambit, especially, is outdated, but even so reading over the material will at least give you the groundwork to build upon. The Henning-Schara, Budapest, Blumenfield, Albin-Counter Gambit, Falkbeer Counter Gambit and Latvian are covered as well as a few others. 
     If you want some ideas about what to play as Black and like gambits, this book is a good starting place. There are three types of gambits by Black: 1) theoretically sound, 2) risky but worth trying and 3) garbage. And, another great selling point about this book is that Harding doesn’t make the mistake of trying to prove that all gambits are good. He gives his honest opinions and gives many games where Black loses. Not all of his analysis is correct, but that’s not important because you must always do your own analysis!

The Complete Manual of Positional Chess: The Russian Chess School 2.0 - Opening and Middlegame

Published by New in Chess, The Complete Manual of Positional Chess authors are: Konstantin Sakaev a GM and a former Russian Champion who won Olympiad gold in 1998 and 2000 with the Russian team and has served as Vladimir Kramnik's second. Konstantin Landa is a Soviet GM and a FIDE Senior Trainer. This handbook was recently created for chess teachers at the DYSS, the special sports school for young talents in Russia. The authors present a complete set of instructions and tips for trainers and individuls wishing to improve. They teach fundamental knowledge and technical skills, but also how to work on your physical and psychological conditioning. They give basic and advanced tools to improve in many areas: quick development and fighting for the center in the opening, calculating cleanly and taking decisions in the middlegame, tackling the fear of disturbing the material balance. They also touch on computer use.

Best Chess Software

     
     I currently have four chess programs on my laptop: Fritz 12, Chess OK Aquarium, Chess Assistant 16 and an ancient (by computer standards) Shredder Classic 4. 
     While each program has its pluses and minuses, my go-to program is still Fritz 12. While the latest version of Fritz is 15, it costs about $80.  And, you are paying for features that aren't really needed...the e-book version of Capa's Chess Fundamentals. This book can be downloaded from various sources in pdf format for free. 
     The Fritz engine still is not as good as the free Stockfish. The "Friend" mode has been reworked, supposedly to make playing against an engine more realistic. The "on-demand video” gives unlimited access to a database of training videos, etc. That's fine, but there are plenty of places online where you can watch some excellent training videos for free. 
     You get access the ChessBase online database with 8 million games. Again, game databases abound. True, not 8 million, but I am willing to bet that most of those games are played by lower rated players. In any case, my 2 million game database (occasionally update) has served quite well. 
     The “My Games Cloud” allows you to access your server games...if you play any on Playchess which requires a subscription after your free trial membership is up. There are more than 34,000 training tasks with the program. Tactical training is free on several sites.
     The highly touted “Let’s Check” gives you access an analysis database with over 200 million deeply analyzed positions. Just a guess, but I'm betting the odds of the database having exactly the position you are looking for are still pretty slim.  Anyway, why not let your own engine run overnight if you're that interested in a position?
     All these bells and whistles are nice, but for most players they are not worth the money. You can go online and purchase Fritz 12, if you can find it, for about half of what version 15 costs. But version 12 is getting scarce. 
     The next best alternative is probably Fritz 14 which is available by download from Amazon Digital Services for $40. You get 6 months Premium membership and a 1.5 million game database which, if you want to take the time, you can add games to it. Then you download Stockfish and maybe the latest free version of Komodo, which is version 8. And, for half the price, you'll have just about everything you'll need. 
     Of course, if you're looking for totally free, then Arena Chess or SCID are both excellent alternatives. And, if you want something functional, yet somewhat simpler to use then the Tarrasch GUI is an excellent choice.

Chess Duels: My Games with the World Champions by Yasser Seirawan

     This is a great book!!   Four-time US Champion Yasser Seirawan provides a fascinating and highly entertaining account of his games and encounters with the world champions of chess including Garry Kasparov, Anatoly Karpov, Bobby Fischer, Boris Spassky, Tigran Petrosian, Mikhail Tal, Vassily Smyslov, Mikhail Botvinnik and Max Euwe. 
     Seriwan presents an in depth look at not only his wins, but his defeats and that's a rare thing among GMs writing books about their "best" games. His annotations are in plain language and they are first class. You can't help but improve by carefully playing through the games and reading his insights and seeing what he was thinking. 
     Besides the games, there are stories and anecdotes galore. There is an extensive introduction and discussion of each opponent, chess politics and other events of the time are also given. Although he never played Bobby Fischer (that was a surprise to me!), Seirawan includes a 13 pages of his views on Fischer that are simply fascinating. But wait! There's more! There are stories about Korchnoi, Reshevsky, Euwe, Larsen and others. 
     Opinion: I don't like spending money for chess books because most of them never get really read, but this one did and it was worth the $30.