When should we exchange a piece in the endgame and when should we keep it? Why is it so important? How to make a right choice? Different types of endings and guidance on how to make the correct decision were the subject of my book The Correct Exchange in the Endgame. Two editions were very well accepted by chess players of different levels. I am especially happy that many chess coaches and teachers found it useful for their training programs. The book was announced as a silver winner of the Boleslavsky Award 2016 by the FIDE Trainer's Commission. Many readers and coaches expressed a wish to see more instructive exercises, so together with Thinkers Publishing we decided to make an exercise book. It can be widely used by chess teachers in schools, coaches in chess clubs and all chess players. Trying to solve 120 instructive exercises and then going through the correct solutions, you will certainly improve your decision-making ability and analyzing skills, as well as enrich your knowledge and understanding of the final stage of the chess game.

Fifty brain-busting trivia questions about history, geography, pop culture, and more make for an unforgettable after-dinner duel between friends and family!

The French Defence is one of the most solid and strategically rich responses to 1.e4. Many chess opening lines have been analysed to death by computer, but the French is relatively resistant to this growing trend, as the characteristic blocked pawn centre leads to situations where a player with superior understanding can overcome an opponent whose expertise lies in computer-assisted preparation. Acclaimed authors Ntirlis and Aagaard present a complete repertoire for Black based on 3.Nc3 Nf6 and 3.Nd2 c5. With many new discoveries and detailed explanations of positional and strategic motifs, this book is essential reading for those playing this complex opening with either colour.

Stash those watering cans and get your green thumbs ready to win the whole nursery by playing Plant Bingo! Houseplants have the power to transform any room, or game. From Swiss cheese plant and Bunny ears cactus to Elkhorn ferns and Spanish moss, Plant Bingo features all the classics, with no care required. Gather your friends and decide, once and for all, who will be crowned the true ruler of the indoor jungle. With 8 doubled-sided randomized bingo cards, and 48 tokens that features a different plant, this game can keep you and your friends playing all night long. (This box set includes more detailed instructions on how to play.)

This family-friendly game is packed with cheeky monkeys and other mischievous primates from all around the world for hours of bingo fun. It features such firm favourites as the ring-tailed lemur and the chimpanzee, one of our closest living relatives, as well as more unusual creatures like the mustachioed emperor tamarin and the tiny, carnivorous western tarsier, whose eyes are as big as its brain and whose head can rotate 180 Degrees in either direction. Boasting 64 weird, wonderful and beautiful species, Monkey Bingo is filled with fun facts and glorious illustrations that are guaranteed to delight monkey lovers and novices alike. Mark each species off on your card as it's called and be the first to shout BINGO!

A real mirror of 20th century creation, Chess Design presents an exceptional documentation on chess games made by artists, designers, architects, and craftsmen: chessboards themselves, but also artist's drawings, execution plans and photographs of archives. By presenting nearly 300 of these chessboards chronologically, the author offers a new perspective on the history of art and its evolution. Art Nouveau, Secession, Surrealism, Fluxus, Pop Art, most of the great movements that are born and follow one another in the Fine Arts find an echo with these chessboards and the 16 pieces that animate them. These chess games also reflect the evolution of techniques and materials used during this period: wood, glass, ceramics will give way, from the 1950s, to steel, plastic and composite materials. At the border between the plastic arts and the decorative arts, these chessboards are made by big names in the art scene, design or architecture - Alexandre Rodchenko, Jean-Michel Frank, Man Ray, Marcel Duchamp, Alexander Calder, or, more recently, Yoko Ono, Robert Filliou, Yayo Kusama, Victor Vasarely, Zaha Hadid, Frank Gehry or Damien Hirst - as by anonymous people. The synthesis offered by the author constitutes a valuable and innovative historian's work, supported by iconography that is both rich and mostly unpublished. Text in English and French.

An expanded edition of the Origins Award-nominated Lion Rampant, featuring new rules, scenarios, and sample armies. Take to the battlefield as Richard the Lionheart, Joan of Arc or William Wallace - or forge your own legend - with Lion Rampant: Second Edition. From the Dark Ages to the Hundred Years' War, raids, skirmishes, and clashes between small retinues were a crucial part of warfare, and these dramatic small-scale battles are at the heart of this easy-to-learn but tactically rewarding wargame. Lion Rampant: Second Edition is a new, updated version of the hit Osprey Wargames series title, and retains the core gameplay while also incorporating a wealth of new rules and updates from several years' worth of player feedback and development. Whether they are looking to recreate historical encounters or tell their own stories, the varied scenarios, unit types, and sample retinue lists found in this volume provide everything players need to face each other in quick, exciting, and, above all, fun tabletop battles.

What is a video game? What makes a video game "good"? If a game is supposed to be fun, can it be fun without a good story? If another is supposed to be an accurate simulation, does it still need to be entertaining? With the ever-expanding explosion of new video games and new developments in the gaming world, questions about video game criticism are becoming more complex. The differing definitions that players and critics use to decide what a game is and what makes a game successful, often lead to different ideas of how games succeed or fail. This collection of essays puts on display the variety and ambiguity of video games. Each essay is a work of game criticism that takes a different approach to defining the game and analyzing it. Through analysis and critical methods, these essays discuss whether a game is defined by its rules, its narrative, its technology, or by the activity of playing it, and the tensions between these definitions. With essays on Overwatch, Dark Souls 3, Far Cry 4, Farmville and more, this collection attempts to show the complex changes, challenges and advances to game criticism in the era of video games.

The companion deck to The Junior Tarot Reader's Handbook, which allows new and current fans of tarot to continue growing their practice with divination. This adaptation of Nikki Van De Car's The Junior Tarot Reader's Handbook includes a 78-card deck showcasing Uta Krogmann's gorgeous artwork, in which she took special care to keep imagery inclusive so that any reader can see themselves reflected. The 96-page companion booklet teaches readers a variety of ways to do readings, interpret the cards, and use the deck to help navigate difficult situations (with friends, at home, or at school), all while offering a better understanding of the power we have over our own lives/decisions.

Benjamin Katz is a renowned chess coach with over 20 years experience coaching students of all ability levels throughout the United States. He has helped numerous students improve and achieve chess success. This book details the training program he has developed based on this extensive experience. It cultivates the core skill set required to advance beyond the basics in chess. Included are key strategies, basic endgame positions and techniques, information on what to do when you're stuck, how to convert an advantage, and a high-level opening repertoire for both black and white. There are also numerous practical exercises that utilize a combination of recent examples from the games of Benjamin's students, as well as games played by the top players in the world, both contemporary and from the game's history. Benjamin Katz is a National Chess Master and the co-founder of Growing Minds Chess Academy, a progressive chess instruction company in New York City that incorporates the latest in modern educational theory with tried and trusted approaches to chess learning.

What's the best companion to a round of drinks with friends? A round of bad-ass drinking game fun, of course. Kit includes an 8-page book, a shot glass, a set of standard dice, "dirty" dice, and a deck of 48 cards, each containing one drinking game from the most innocent to the rousing and risque, such as "Tip the Bartender," "Chug-A-Lug," and "Beer-amid." This is sure to add excitement to an otherwise run-of-the-mill bar night.

Zona Alfa is a set of simple, fast-play skirmish rules for scavenging, exploring, and surviving in a near-future, post-apocalyptic Eastern European setting. Players take on the role of bandits, mercenaries, and military units fighting over the blasted Exclusion Zone and its abandoned artefacts. Customise your fighters with a variety of weapons and specialisms to create your ideal warband. With extended rules for campaigns, character progression, terrain, and environmental hazards, Zona Alfa contains all the tools required to engage in blistering firefights within the Exclusion Zone.

Start having fun while improving your grammar with this witty and informative card game for language lovers--based on the New York Times bestseller Dreyer's English.

Whats' wrong with this sentence?

If that misplaced apostrophe flew right up your nose, this is the game for you. Based on the New York Times bestseller by Random House's copy chief Benjamin Dreyer, STET! will help you sharpen those language skills or give you a reason to show them off (you know who you are). There are 100 entertaining sentences waiting for you, the copyeditor, to correct--or, alternatively, to STET. The first person to spot the error, or else call out "STET!" (a copyeditor's term that means "let it stand") if there is no error, gets the card. There are two ways to play: compete for points in a straightforward grammar game, or play with style and syntax and whip the author's sentences into splendid shape. The person with the most cards at the end of the game wins!

It's perfect for every level of writer, from high school students wanting to brush up before a test to co-workers looking for an engaging ice-breaker. With STET!, English has never been more stylish.

This large-format activity book contains a wealth of creative, mindful pursuits and puzzles to soothe the mind and enable you to park any worries and stresses and focus on the moment. Mindfulness is the practice of bringing our attention to the present moment without judgement or evaluation - which sounds as if it might be easy but isn't. Scientifically proven to reduce anxiety and depression, improve concentration, even improve the immune system, enabling us to fight off diseases, training our brain to live in the moment is crucially important to our mental and physical health and wellbeing. In The Mindfulness Activity Book Dr Gareth Moore presents creative challenges that will help you focus on yourself and live in the moment. Featuring over 120 fantastic puzzles, mazes, dot-to-dots, crosswords, spot the difference, hanjie, sudoku and more, as well as colouring pages, this book is perfect for any adult who loves a challenge but also craves a creative outlet that allows them to use their artistic and inventive side too. With the help of this book, you will find that taking time for yourself and concentrating on an activity has real therapeutic, mindful benefits, as it allows you to recharge your batteries and better cope with the stresses we all face every day. Take time for yourself, focus your thoughts and feel the proven benefits of being in the moment.

Over the last forty years, Cousin Sal has made bets with doctors, lawyers, teachers, agents, bookies, writers, comedians, radio DJs, tv producers, baseball players, front office executives, bandleaders, movie stars, publicists, weed lab owners, hedge fund operators, and even professional wrestlers. From his early days growing up in Brooklyn and Long Island flipping baseball cards to now hosting podcasts and TV shows and managing several offshore accounts we don't talk about, Cousin Sal has truly become the average American sports fan's go to source for gambling tips. So here's how not to do it . . . With hilarious tales of love and loss, winning and (a lot) of losing, crazy family and fatherhood, and a life saga that inspired the Phil Collins' song, "Against All Odds," Cousin Sal has now written THE Vegas super-system, MIT-algorithmic, sharp-approved book for how to gamble like a pro -- or at least not how not to go broke and lose your kids to Child Protective Services.

There's something hiding among us: an elusive cryptid is prowling our city streets. The evidence is clear but, without definitive proof, the scientific community will never believe you. There's nothing else to be done - you must track down this cryptid yourself! Play as a determined Scientist manipulating heat, movement, and sonic sensors to scan the city, identify your quarry's true location, and capture them. Or take the role of a Cryptid, snaking your way through the shadows and back alleys of the metropolis that surrounds you, eliminating all evidence of your existence as you go, desperately avoiding capture. Emerging victorious in this high stakes cat-and-mouse chase, played out across a sprawling urban landscape, will require all your ingenuity and foresight. Cryptid: Urban Legends is a tense asymmetric game of competitive deductive reasoning for two players from the creators of Cryptid. Players: 2 Ages: 14+ Playing Time: 20-40 minutes Contents: 41 cards, 10 plastic cubes, 9 plastic discs

Designed for those who have finished a beginner course and would like something easy to carry around for reference, this handy little book will fill a major gap in bridge literature. In a humorous, conversational style, it covers all the basics of Standard bidding as well as offering some ideas on play and defense. The book includes a scoring table and a useful glossary of technical bridge terms. Designed to fit in a purse or pocket, this book will be perfect for those times when you want to point to something and say "Look partner, it says here you should have done this!" and win your argument! This book is aimed at the same market as 'The Biggest Little Bridge Book in the World', which is published by a New York bridge club, and not readily available elsewhere. This guide is, however, much more comprehensive in its content.

One of the greatest rivalries in sports history. On 10 September 1984, Anatoly Karpov and Garry Kasparov started their match for the World Chess Championship in Moscow. The clash between the reigning champion and his brazen young challenger was highly anticipated, but no one could have foreseen what was in store. In the next six years they would play five matches for the highest title and create one of the fiercest rivalries in sports history. The matches lasted a staggering total of 14 months, and the two Ks played 5540 moves in 144 games. The first match became front-page news when after five months FIDE President Florencio Campomanes stepped in to stop the match for reasons that still remain mysterious. A new match was staged and 22-year-old Garry Kasparov became the youngest World Chess Champion in history. His win was not only hailed as a triumph of imaginative attacking chess, but also as a political victory. The representative of perestroika had beaten the old champion, a symbol of Soviet stagnation. Kasparov defended his title in three more matches, all of them full of drama. In The Longest Game Jan Timman chronicles the many twists and turns of this fascinating saga. He includes his behind-the scenes impressions and takes a fresh look at the games.