Some spare time on your hands? What better way to stay entertained while sharpening your chess skills than this wonderful collection of chess puzzles? Top-class grandmaster Michael Adams presents 100 positions – drawn from a wide variety of sources – that have inspired him over the years, all with clear-cut but often surprising solutions.

There are no unfair positions or ‘gotchas’, so club-level players should have a good chance of finding the right answers – but not until their grey cells have had a really good workout! The book starts with 25 ‘warm-ups’ but later in the book we are getting to moves that could easily be missed – or were actually missed! – in grandmaster games.

Michael Adams has been the UK’s top player for the last quarter of a century, and for years was among the world top ten. He has won a number elite-level events, including Dos Hermanas in 1995 and 1999, and Dortmund in 1998 and 2013 – in each case with former and future world champions in the field. Adams was also a FIDE world championship finalist in 2004, and a Candidate on several occasions. He writes a weekly column in the Daily Telegraph (London) and lives in Somerset, England.

The puzzles in this monthly Gambit series are carefully vetted, so they instruct while providing hours of solving pleasure. It is known among top players that working on high-quality chess puzzles is an excellent way to stay tactically agile. Each ‘Desert Island’ book will feature 100 positions, hand-chosen by a different master or grandmaster.

Previous books in this series:
Desert Island Chess Puzzles 1 by Wesley So, June 2020