1001 Chess Exercises for Beginners: The Tactics Workbook that Explains the Basic Concepts, Too

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g. by the time we reach chapter six – defend your pieces – we encounter the likes of picking the right square, trading the attacker, pinning the attacker, defending a critical square, protecting your piece and counterattack. Might be best to get a smaller, easier tactic book and this one to follow Even though i love the idea of 5334 puzzles, it might not be my first choice because of the randomness of the puzzles (and it is HUGE! By using the Web site, you confirm that you have read, understood, and agreed to be bound by the Terms and Conditions. The introductory texts for each chapter feel a bit perfunctory, and mostly consist of a page or three and some examples.

I'm beginner player (around 1200 ELO rapid) and I found this book to be very good in learning tactics. Taking your time with each exercise, rather than checking the solutions after a few minutes, to find the moves (and anticipating the opponent's response) is where the educational value comes in; some of them even took me a few hours to properly understand. Chess Exercises for Beginners is a very good first puzzle book, and people well past the proper use of the term "beginner" can get some serious use out of it. Simply presenting the positions and their solutions all at once can work, but takes more self-discipline — and, quite importantly, our brains tend to learn through effort and mental strain, not passive observation. Black has the luxury of choosing between two moves that not only save both his threatened pieces, but which also win the white rook.In the endgame, you can focus on what is important without any distractions by a couple of random pawns and pieces. It is here that we explain the ideas behind crucial tactical motifs such as double attack, the pin and skewer, as well as pawn promotion, drawing techniques, etc. The end of the book has a chapter with mixed motifs a grab bag of everything deflection, mate in 3, removing the defender, double attack, back rank weakness, opening a file ect.

It's not a huge deal if you don't expect yourself to solve everything perfectly, but sometimes I found myself asking "Wait, what is this doing here? I was going to mention that earlier but you said that you are a beginner so I tried not to confuse you too much 🙂 A pinned piece is something that you might come across from time to time so keep an eye out for it and see if you can take advantage of that to gain a piece or a better position. I love the fact the it is divided in two parts: One classical with puzzle organized by theme and the other part an revision with no hint (randomn puzzles).

Under each puzzle, there is a small (or not-so-small) hint, like "Apparent defence"; "Time to get close"; "The long diagonal"; "A crucial defender goes". I knew I'd have some difficulty with the problems seeing as I was at the lower end of the intended rating range.

Not that they necessarily needed their own dedicated chapters, but I think they should've been included in the glossary at least. Chess masters Franco Masetti and Roberto Messa have done both: they explain the basic tactical ideas AND provide an enormous amount of exercises for each different theme.As with the previous chapter, a variety of motifs are presented often with several tactical themes in the one position. This one looks a little more complicated that the others (from the reviews I read) but still good enough to be on the list. Sharpen your tactics: 1125 brillant sacrifices, combinations and studies by Anatoly Lein and Archangelsky. First of all, I've never seen a tactics book that doesn't explain the basic concepts of the different tactics. The book might not have mentioned the Re5 option as it's probably trying to show you how a player can get positional or material advantage from a pinned piece.

n\nAlthough the material is much more basic than in the other two volumes and the title includes the word ‘beginners’, it’s not baby food. To me it also seems that the book's solution is a check and not mate or am I missing something here due to being a very beginner ?Thought this book cover chess introduction and some endgames, 90% of the book's contents are tactics problems.