An instructional book about the crucial questions that masters ask themselves before committing to a move – a checklist for all players to ask themselves before making their own moves. Beginners learn to ask themselves the key questions. As they improve, they ask more sophisticated questions: 'What did my opponent's last move allow me to do?", 'Where is his position weakest?", 'Should I take an irrevocable step now or wait?', 'What does my opponent want me to do?'. For chess master players these are almost subconscious checklist. Andy Soltis runs through the checklist of things to ask before making a move with fascinating and illuminating examples of real chess games, from Karpov to Judith Polgar, from Magnus Carlsen to Fabiano Caruana. A key to improving is to ask all of these questions and find the right answers, for players looking to improve. The advice of Chess Masters is good advice for all chess players and the best way to take your play to the next level.

In London in 1944, war orphans, Belle and Joe, discover a link between their Uncle’s ‘Shop of Mechanical Marvels’ and The Turkish Chessmaster, a chess-playing automaton, which leads them into a time-travelling adventure with ‘The Turk’s’ inventor Baron Von Kempelen. Helping the Baron they find themselves in a risky confrontation with the Russian Army; a narrow escape at the court of Maria Theresa and a game of chess with Napoleon. Despite their adventures, Belle and Joe long for a permanent home. Determined to solve the mystery of ‘The Turk’, they are inevitably led to the Museum in Philadelphia in 1844, where the Chessmaster has been revealed as merely a conjuring trick. Or has it?

Raja Rao, b. 1909, Indo-English novelist.

This book portrays British chess life in the nineteenth century through biographical studies of ten players who shaped the modern game. From Captain Evans, inventor of the famous gambit, to Isidor Gunsberg, England's first challenger for the world championship, personal narratives are blended with game annotations to reassess players' achievements and character. The author has combined deep reading in primary sources with genealogical research to reveal new facts and correct previous misunderstandings. Major chapters on Howard Staunton and William Steinitz, in particular, highlight the tensions between Englishmen and immigrants, amateurs and professionals. The contrasting long careers of Henry Bird and Joseph Blackburne provide a thread of continuity. The lives of several other important figures in Victorian chess are also presented. More than 160 games (with diagrams), several annotated in detail, and 50 photographs and line drawings are included. Appendices provide career records for all ten; there are extensive notes, a bibliography and indexes.

The Chess Traveler and Pioneer by Michael Abron __________________________________

Twenty-five chess games chosen, arranged, and annotated to help amateurs learn how to avoid a variety of weak strategic and tactical moves. Selected, with commentary, by World Chess Champion Max Euwe and by Walter Meiden, an amateur player, the games point out graphically how the chess master exploits characteristic errors of the amateur.

Learn the principles of good software design and then turn those principles into great code. This book introduces you to software engineering — from the application of engineering principles to the development of software. You'll see how to run a software development project, examine the different phases of a project, and learn how to design and implement programs that solve specific problems. This book is also about code construction — how to write great programs and make them work. This new third edition is revamped to reflect significant changes in the software development landscape with updated design and coding examples and figures. Extreme programming takes a backseat, making way for expanded coverage of the most crucial agile methodologies today: Scrum, Lean Software Development, Kanban, and Dark Scrum. Agile principles are revised to explore further functionalities of requirement gathering. The authors venture beyond imperative and object-oriented languages, exploring the realm of scripting languages in an expanded chapter on Code Construction. The Project Management Essentials chapter has been revamped and expanded to incorporate "SoftAware Development” to discuss the crucial interpersonal nature of joint software creation. Whether you're new to programming or have written hundreds of applications, in this book you'll re-examine what you already do, and you'll investigate ways to improve. Using the Java language, you'll look deeply into coding standards, debugging, unit testing, modularity, and other characteristics of good programs. You Will Learn Modern agile methodologies How to work on and with development teams How to leverage the capabilities of modern computer systems with parallel programming How to work with design patterns to exploit application development best practices How to use modern tools for development, collaboration, and source code controls Who This Book Is For Early career software developers, or upper-level students in software engineering courses

If you think your job is hopelessly difficult, you may be right. Particularly if your job is public administration. Those who study or practice public management know full well the difficulties faced by administrators of complex bureaucratic systems. What they don't know is why some jobs in the public sector are harder than others and how good managers cope with those jobs. Drawing on leadership theory and social psychology, Erwin Hargrove and John Glidewell provide the first systematic analysis of the factors that determine the inherent difficulty of public management jobs and of the coping strategies employed by successful managers. To test their argument, Hargrove and Glidewell focus on those jobs fraught with extreme difficulties—"impossible" jobs. What differentiates impossible from possible jobs are (1) the publicly perceived legitimacy of the commissioner's clientele; (2) the intensity of the conflict among the agency's constituencies; (3) the public's confidence in the authority of the commissioner's profession; and (4) the strength of the agency's "myth," or long-term, idealistic goal. Hargrove and Glidewell flesh out their analysis with six case studies that focus on the roles played by leaders of specific agencies. Each essay summarizes the institutional strengths and weaknesses, specifies what makes the job impossible, and then compares the skills and strategies that incumbents have employed in coping with such jobs. Readers will come away with a thorough understanding of the conflicting social, psychological, and political forces that act on commissioners in impossible jobs.