Here's an entertaining and informative manual for beginners, but it's filled with tips and techniques learners will retain and successfully employ as their skill develops and they match themselves against experienced players. With annotated illustrations and more than 300 examples, this fascinating manual demonstrates*Openings used by international masters, including the Ruy Lopez, the Queen's Gambit Declined, the Sicilian Defense, and others*Basic and advanced strategies, tactics, sacrifices, and pawn structure to help learners master the chess middle game*End game, with emphasis on use of rooks and pawnsIt's a comprehensive and compact reference that will find a ready place in school and private chess clubs. This book will also be a favorite among individuals who wish to discover chess as a pleasurable way to spend a social evening.

    From local Madrid idol to Kop hero and European Championship winner, he talks here for the first time about the unique challenges faced in his two seasons in England, with candid snapshots of his early years in Spain and life in the North West on and off the field. Born in Madrid in March 1984, he played for his first football team at age five as a goalkeeper and signed as a professional for Atletico Madrid at 15, making his first-team debut two years later. After 200 appearances for Atletico, he was signed for a club-record 20 million by Liverpool in July 2007, and in his debut season in the Premier League became the first Liverpool player in 12 years to score 20 goals. He made his debut for Spain in 2003, has amassed over 50 caps to date, and has played in two European Championships and one World Cup. He scored the winning goal for Spain in the 2008 European Championships Final. He has an older brother and sister, and has a current personal fortune estimated at more than 14 million.

    That's what Ben Lindbergh and Sam Miller got to do when the Sonoma Stompers, an independent minor-league team in California, offered them the chance to run the team's baseball operations according to the most advanced statistics. The Only Rule Is It Has to Work is unlike any other baseball tale you've ever read.We tag along as Lindbergh and Miller apply their number-crunching insights to all aspects of assembling and running a team. We meet colorful figures like general manager Theo Fightmaster and boundary-breakers like the first openly gay professional player and the first Japanese manager in American professional baseball. Even José Canseco makes a cameo appearance.Will sabermetrics bring the Stompers a championship, or will they fall on their face? Will the team have a competitive advantage or is the old folk wisdom really true after all? Will the players be able to maximize their talents and attract the attention of big-league scouts, or will this be a fast track to oblivion?It's a wild ride, as the authors' infectious enthusiasm and feel for the absurd make the Stompers' story one that will speak to numbers geeks and traditionalists alike. And it proves that you don't need a bat or a glove to make a genuine contribution to the game.

    But occasionally over the years he’s found it impossible to turn down a particularly enticing assignment or, in the case of the 2012-13 Premier League, just unable to resist writing about that most spectacular of seasons. Fortunately for those who love great writing about soccer, all these fugitive pieces are collected in Fan Mail. You can follow the fortunes, as Hornby did, of a hopelessly out-of-their-depth Cambridge United in the old Second Division, discover why Perry Groves was an unlikely hero among Arsenal fans, enjoy Hornby trying to explain the World Cup to Americans, and share with him the pain of watching his national team.

    Book by Meltzer, Dave

    Stuck in a rut, baseball was dying. Then Steinbrenner bought the Yankees, a second-division club with wife-swapping pitchers, leaving the House That Ruth Built not with a slam but a simper. He vowed not to interfere—before soon changing his mind. Across town, Tom Seaver led the Mets’ stellar pitching line-up, and iconic outfielder Willie Mays was preparing to say goodbye. For months, the Mets, under Yogi Berra, couldn’t get it right. Meanwhile, the A’s were breaking a ban on facial hair while maverick owner Charlie Finley was fighting to keep them underpaid. But beneath the muttonchops and mayhem, lay another world. Elvis commanded a larger audience than the Apollo landings. A Dodge Dart cost $2,800, gas was a quarter per gallon. A fiscal crisis loomed; Vietnam had ended, the vice president resigned, and Watergate had taken over. It was one of the most exciting years in the game’s history, the first with the designated hitter and the last before arbitration and free agency. The two World Series opponents went head-to-head above the baby steps of a dynasty that soon dwarfed both league champions. It was a turbulent time for the country and the game, neither of which would ever be the same again.

    New York City newspapers reported his death on their front pages. ("Crimson Tears," read the headline in the New York Post, "Nation weeps over death of legendary Bear Bryant, 69.") Three days later, America watched in awe as an estimated quarter of a million mourners lined the fifty-five mile stretch from Tuscaloosa to a Birmingham cemetery to pay their respects as his three-mile long funeral cortege drove by.President Reagan and the three former American presidents sent flowers, as did people as diverse as Bob Hope, ABC's Roone Arledge, advice columnist Ann Landers and the Reverend Billy Graham. Scores of Bryant's former players, including Joe Namath, Lee Roy Jordan, Ken Stabler and Ozzie Newsome, were in attendance. So were Bryant's most distinguished colleagues, the greatest living football coaches, including Southern Cal's John McKay, who said, "It was like a presidential funeral procession. No coach in America could have gotten that. No coach but him. But then, he wasn't just a coach. He was the coach."Bryant's passing was noted with the kind of reverence our country reserved for statesmen or military leaders, though Paul "Bear" Bryant had insisted for much of his life that he was "just a football coach." For millions he was much more, he was the greatest coach the game ever saw, the heir to the tradition established by Knute Rockne. He took his Alabama Crimson Tide teams to an unmatched six national championships. But to the players, journalists and fans whose lives he touched in his more than half a century as a player and coach, he was the last symbol of values that transcended football—courage, discipline, loyalty, and hard work.To his critics, Bryant represented the dark side of big-time college football—brutality, fanaticism and blind adherence to authority. The real Bear Bryant was far more complex than either his admirers or detractors knew. While maintaining a public friendship with Alabama governor George Wallace, he continually sought ways to undermine the governor's segregationist policies, finally forcing a legendary football game in Birmingham with the University of Southern California that opened the floodgates to the integration of football at the University of Alabama, including its coaching staff. Old fashioned in his politics, he was nonetheless an admirer of Robert Kennedy, whom he planning to vote for in 1968.Allen Barra's The Last Coach traces Paul Bryant's rise from a family of truck farmers to recognition as the most successful and influential coach in the game's history. The eleventh of thirteen children, Bryant was born in tiny Moro Bottom, Arkansas in 1913 and grew up in nearby Fordyce—where his legend was born when he wrestled a live bear on the stage of a local theater. Paul was raised by his mother, who barely managed to keep him out of trouble and on the Fordyce High School Redbugs long enough to get a football scholarship at Alabama, where he would meet and marry the love of his life, campus beauty queen Mary Harmon Black.At the height of the Depression, football took Bryant to the Rose Bowl with Alabama's 1934 national champions and on to a career as an assistant and, finally, a head football coach, where he matched wit and grit with the greatest coaches of two generations, men like Tennessee's General Robert Neyland, Oklahoma's Bud Wilkinson, Notre Dame's Ara Parseghian, Ohio State's Woody Hayes, and Penn State's Joe Paterno. Along the way, he stirred controversy with his infamous "Junction Boys" training camp in 1954, during which almost two-thirds of the Texas A football team quit; his legal battle with The Saturday Evening Post over the accusation that he had conspired to fix a college football game, a trial which rocked the sports world; and his pursuit of Amos Alonzo Stagg's all-time record for college coaching victories.Through it all, Bryant's influence has not only endured but prevailed as his former players and assistants continue to define the best in not only college but professional football. A USA Today and Washington Post Best Sports Book.

    A Premier League referee since 1991 and 10 years as an international referee, Graham Poll has handled some of the toughest games in the Premiership involving Arsenal, Manchester United, Liverpool, and Chelsea, as well as European Championships and World Cups—in total more than 1500 matches. What is it like to referee the biggest matches in international football? What really goes on between the players in the tunnel before a match and in the dressing room after? Who are the nastiest footballers? And the funniest? Who is the smartest manager? And are the bureaucrats ruining the beautiful game? Controversial and opinionated, Poll has crossed swords with some of the biggest names in world football and shares private conversations with the likes of Alex Ferguson, Jose Mourinho, Sepp Blatter, and Steve McClaren, and the inside story behind controversial incidents involving Roy Keane, David Beckham, Patrick Vieira, and current England captain John Terry, among others. Poll also talks about the infamous 2006 World Cup match when he failed to send off a Croatian player after three yellow cards in a crucial tie against Australia, returning home early in disgrace and with his career in meltdown. The games, the players, the managers, the suits—the most outspoken referee in the modern game tells it as it really is.

    If he plays for your team, you love him. If he doesn’t . . .Everyone thinks they know Bellamy. Pace and passion. A handful for defenders. Scoring goals and winding up opponents. Winning friends – and making enemies.Blessed with a natural talent, he has enjoyed a colourful career at a host of top clubs. The proud Welshman is one of the top ten appearance makers for his country. But his rise to the top of the game wasn’t easy. It could have all been so different.He came from a loving family but temptations lay in his way. Follow the crowd or follow a dream? Join your mates in a gang on the streets or try to make it as a pro? It was a choice between the two.Bellamy chose football and became a rebel with a cause. He quickly climbed the ladder and shared dressing rooms with some of the biggest stars in football – from Ryan Giggs to Steven Gerrard. His burning desire to succeed made him a winner on the pitch, but that same passion also got him into trouble. There were famous bust-ups with John Arne Riise and Alan Shearer, not to mention rows with Graeme Souness, Rafa Benitez and Roberto Mancini.Away from the spotlight, there is a different side to Bellamy. His earnings from this book will be going to the Craig Bellamy Foundation, a charity which offers children in Sierra Leone the chance to fulfill their sporting potential. He is a devoted Dad and was heartbroken at the tragic and shocking death of his close friend Gary Speed.Craig Bellamy: GoodFella uncovers the real man behind the player and reveals the untold stories of a life inside football’s fast lane.Like Bellamy himself, it doesn’t hold back.

    No passing, running, tackling, or kicking. Hey, there isn't even a field. Yet the draft has become more popular than many other sporting events, including the National Basketball Association (NBA) and National Hockey League (NHL) playoff games, against which it goes head-to-head for viewers. In fact, the draft has spawned its own cottage industry in which names such as Gil Brandt, Mel Kiper, Jr., and Mike Mayock become as well-known as any of the first-round selections.In On the Clock, Ken Rappoport and Barry Wilner chronicle the history of the proceedings. The veteran sports writers take you from the first grab bag in 1936, when Philadelphia chose Heisman Trophy winner Jay Berwanger of the University of Chicago and saw him decline to play in the NFL, to the 2014 draft—considered one of the deepest in talent ever.Along the 78-year journey, learn about the competitions for the top overall spot (Peyton Manning vs. Ryan Leaf), the unhappy No. 1s (John Elway and Tom Cousineau), the big flops (JaMarcus Russell) and the late-rounders-turned-superstars (Tom Brady).Meet the draft wizards, from Paul Brown to Bill Walsh and Jimmy Johnson. And the draft whiffs that cost personnel executives their jobs.On the Clock takes you behind the scenes at one of pro football’s yearly major events. Barry Wilner has been a sportswriter for the Associated Press since 1975. He has covered virtually every major sporting event, including twelve Olympics, nine World Cups, twenty-six Super Bowls, the World Series, and the Stanley Cup finals, and has written thirty-nine books. He lives in Garnerville, New York.Ken Rappoport is the author of more than sixty sports books for adults and young readers. Working for the Associated Press in New York for thirty years, he has written about every major sport. His assignments included the World Series, the NBA Finals, and, as the AP’s national hockey writer, the Stanley Cup Finals and the Olympics. He lives in Egg Harbor Township, New Jersey.

    Inside stories, lurid tales, embarrassing incidents: soccer legend George Best has gathered together his favourite stories of his and his friends’ anecdotes and observations from their experiences in and out of the game over the last forty years.

    John Crace and Spurs were made for each other. But then the team started to play like possible champions. For most fans, these are the glory moments they dream about. For Crace they just opened a new dimension of anxiety: the fear of success. Crace has supported Spurs for 40 years. His wife thinks he suffers from a psychiatric disorder, but fandom is not only one of the ways he negotiates his relationships, it also helps him make some sense of his life. Vertigo is the story of why fandom that starts out in boyish hope always ends in dark comedy.

    With unprecedented access to club officials, players and coaches, author Konrad Marshall takes the reader inside the rooms at the key moments the campaign, chronicling the Tigers' journey towards premiership contention. This is not just a book of wins and losses, it's the story of a professional football club and how it operates at every level: from the fitness staff, to the coaching panel, the players, and the Board. Football has changed enormously since Richmond's last flag, in 1980, and Marshall explains in great detail the enormous amount of work and thought that goes into every decision made-on and off the field. Whether the Tigers make it to the last Saturday in September or not, their story is rich and explosive. A Season with Richmond is full of unparalleled access to all the key moments, including frank and occasionally emotional interviews with all the key figures. A Season with Richmond is a compulsory read for all football fans.