Chess with Morozevich

Description

♟️ Why Morozevich as training material?

Alexander Morozevich was for a decade the most original player in elite chess. He played openings nobody else used, created positions that no engine had analysed and made decisions that the world’s best analysts couldn’t fully justify. He reached world number 2 in 2008 with a completely unacademic style: no deep preparation in main theoretical lines, no «safe» positions and a willingness to take risks that baffled all his opponents.

Kuzmin doesn’t write about Morozevich to admire him — he uses him as a training tool. The positions arising from Morozevich’s games are exactly the ones that present the most difficulties to calculation: there are many possibilities, none is obvious, general rules don’t help and the player must rely on intuition combined with concrete calculation. That type of training is especially valuable because it’s what players who study with «normal» material practise least.

🎯 Who is this book for?

• Advanced players who want to train calculation and decision-making in complex positions beyond the usual patterns
• Chess fans who enjoy creative and irregular chess and want to understand how it works from the inside
• Coaches looking for unconventional training material for advanced students

📖 Contents

The book combines training exercises and annotated games with the thread of Morozevich’s irregular positions:

• Calculation exercises based on real positions from Morozevich’s games
• Analysis of the most complex moments: how Morozevich evaluated positions that no general rule could resolve
• Intuition as a tool: when to trust instinct and when to calculate to the end
• Decision-making in positions with multiple plausible options: how to choose when there’s no obvious answer
• Annotated games with intercalated exercises for the reader to face the positions before seeing the solution

📚 Calculation in irregular positions: the hardest challenge

Standard tactics books train calculation in positions where a combination already exists: the player knows something is there and has to find it. Morozevich’s positions are harder because the player doesn’t know whether a combination exists or not, whether to calculate deeply or trust the general evaluation. That uncertainty is what most paralyses club players in real games — and it’s exactly what this book trains.

👤 About the author

Alexey Kuzmin is a Russian Grandmaster and elite-level coach with extensive experience working with top-level players and designing training material for advanced players. Translated into Spanish by Antonio Gude.

♟️ Why we recommend it at Chesscul

At Chesscul we recommend this book to advanced students who already have a solid pattern base and want to take the next step: learning to play well in positions where patterns don’t help. It’s a demanding book that requires active work with the board, but it develops exactly the skill most club players who plateau at a level need most.

🔗 Recommended companions

• Technique for the Tournament Player: Dvoretsky and Yusupov work on decision-making in endgame positions with the same rigour Kuzmin applies to middlegame calculation.
• Secrets of Chess Transformations: Marovic analyses the strategic transformation mechanisms that Morozevich applied in unconventional ways.
• Fire on the Board II: Shirov is the other great specialist in complex, irregular positions in modern chess — the most natural companion to this book.