A Zillion Chess and Life Hacks

Woman Grandmaster Maria Manakova has written a detailed psychological manual on how to navigate these and other key matters for both club players and those setting out on their professional journey. This book contains a huge number of practical and actionable tips, drawn from both Maria’s personal experience and that of her professional peers among players and coaches. It provides examples from 24 games, some taken from Maria’s career and others played by the greats of the game (among them Carlsen, Kramnik, and Anand). It also contains a generous selection of photos from Maria’s life, as well as her own magnificent drawings that illustrate her advice. This book is available in three editions – paperback, hardback and full-color hardback. Maria Manakova (born 1974) is a Serbian WGM of Russian origin with a career-high rating of 2395 who has played for Yugoslavia and Serbia in two Olympiads and three European team championships. Honors include silver medal at the European team championship (1999) representing Yugoslavia, gold medal in the European club championship (2002), Moscow women’s champion (2009) and Serbian women’s champion (2013). Maria has coached for three decades. Away from the board, she obtained a university degree in journalism and also studied theater. Maria has acted in theater plays and movies, co-hosted a talk show on Russian terrestrial TV, sung in a jazz band, and regularly performs as a singer-guitarist, including solo shows. Several documentary films have been made about Maria, the reason being, according to Boris Spassky, she is “a woman with a uniquely interesting life story”. Here’s what Alexei Shirov had to say about the first edition of her book, published in 2023 in Russian: “While we ‘strong’ grandmasters narrow our perception of Earthly chess to one or two lines, Maria Manakova has embraced our entire galaxy in her work. This book will not leave any chess lover unmoved.”