CLEARANCE - The Grandmaster Mindset

By going through the chapters you will get acquainted with my way of grandmaster- type thinking. I can assure you of one thing: there are better and weaker grandmasters, but you won’t find a GM who is playing without ideas or, let’s say, without his way of thinking! As you will find out, I am basically trying to detect the problem or goal of the position and then I am starting to scan factors which can lead to the solution. That process you will find in many examples in the book.

To be able to correctly deal with positions in your games, first you need to know who stands better; that is, you need to assess the position correctly. Then when you are searching for moves, you should be able to find the best move in every position; my candidate-moves system will help you with that. In the book there are many examples from tournament praxis, mine and the top players’, even of the World Champion himself! In my coaching career those examples were tested in individual lessons, and also in top group lectures like the one in Croatia which consisted of 1700-rated players and also strong GMs rated around 2600. These examples have stood the test of time and, what’s even better, there are always some questions and suggestions from the participants and I have used these to update the examples, so now you are getting better quality out of my initial material.

- Author GM Alojzije Jankovic