A transposition in chess is a little like a bait-and-switch marketing ploy. The customer thinks he’s getting a bargain on one piece of merchandise, but he ends up buying another at a much higher price. In the first book devoted to chess transpositions, New York Post columnist and acclaimed chess author Andy Soltis shows how this strategy works over the board. By transposing a series of well-known moves (i.e., making them in an unfamiliar order), a player leads his opponent into an unfavorable position that he would normally have shunned. Using entertaining examples from the games of the masters, Soltis covers a variety of transpositions in virtually every kind of opening: double e-pawn, Sicilian, the Reti, English, Indian, and others.

A lively, personal, and wonderfully informative look at Bobby Fischer, his personality and his playing. Although three decades have passed since Fischer won the world chess title from the former Soviet Union, he still remains a source of fascination and admiration for all players. Andy Soltis, a grandmaster and author of numerous chess books, looks back at his first encounters with Fischer in New York when they were both teenagers; assesses Fischer's exceptional ability to obtain and realize an advantage in play; and analyzes his career right up to his final matches with Boris Spassky. Most important, Soltis comments on and annotates many of Fischer's major matches in detail, explaining the logic behind the moves in illuminating detail. A must for any fan of chess and this remarkably enigmatic champion.