The 199 World Championship in Las Vegas produced a surprise winner - after a month-long battle, the Russian Grandmaster Alexander Khalifman emerged from this gruelling knock-out event to become the 14th FIDE World Champion. Alexander Khalifman has been competing in the higher echelons of world chess for many years. He is a player with a broad opening repertoire and a distinctive style, one of his favourite stratagems being the sacrifice of material for long-term positional compensation. A former European Junior Champion and a winner of numerous Russian and international tournaments, he has recently founded a Grandmaster chess school in his native St. Petersburg.

Gennady Nesis, the author of this book, has been Khalifman's personal trainer for 17 years. He is therefore uniquely qualified to describe the career and annotate the best games of the new World Champion.