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Title: Sharpen Your Tactics by Anatoly Lein, Boris Archangelsky, Lou Hays ISBN: 1-880673-13-4 Publisher: Hays Pub Pub. Date: October, 1996 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.44 (16 reviews)
Rating: 5
Summary: The Best Tactics Book Ever?
Comment: I think this is the best chess problems book ever devised becaus: 1). Format. It uses stars, *, **, ***, ****, to tell you how difficult the problem is--maybe a mate in two, or winning a piece after four moves, you don't know the theme or the number of moves, so it's very realistic. 2). Material. These are important, fantastic, yet realistic, positions that, through repetition, will become a pattern in your mind that will help you win OTB. 3. Flexibility. The four-star problems, the most difficult, are not forcing, but are ultra-rich in ideas. When first facing them, I reccomend a Dvoretsky exercise: look at the four-star problem for about ten seconds, then go on instinct and look up the answer.
So far, I've gone through the book one and a half times. I was amazed at how much faster I could get through the problems the second time. My game has sky-rocketed to a level I've never been at in 5 years of study due to this book. My internet rating went from 1700 to 1900 in two months (long games 30/10).
Put away the opening manuals. Go through this book as much and as fast as possible, memorize about 15 Grand Master games, a few key end games, and I think you will go pretty far.
Rating: 5
Summary: Great tactics - improvements of 1001 tactics format
Comment: I really liked the format of this book. I love tactics books. The kind with no text in them, and page after page of nothing but chess diagrams. The kind that people on an airplane look at you funny when you are "reading" them.
This book is very similar to the other tactics books out there, but with some improvements that I think are nice. One improvement is that the tactics are labeled with a * symbol to show how difficult the problem is. The more stars the harder it is. This is a nice break from the Reinfeld books which will have a mate in one followed by a mate in ten, and you have no idea beforehand how hard the problem is going to be. I personally like to have some idea of what I am getting into.
Another nice feature is that the answers show where the game came from. I think that this is a nice touch, and gives credit to the people that actually played the game. A lot of books don't do this, and you see puzzles where you know where the game came from - "Oh yeah this is the opera box game", etc, but the author gives no credit where it is due.
I also like that the answers are in algebraic notation, as opposed to descriptive ("e4" versus "pawn to king 4"). Reinfeld's books still have the old school style. One note is that the notation is not really standard. Bxe3 would be Be3, which is a little odd. I got confused at least once when looking up an answer and did not see the "x". I assumed I had the wrong answer when I didn't. But once you know this is the format they use, you can adjust. But it would be nice to see the standard used in the first place.
Overall great tactics book. If you like doing tactics til your eyes bleed, and want something that could be used as part of a "400 points in 400 days" type of study program, this is a good one to add to your collection.
Rating: 4
Summary: excellent book to develop your tactical muscle
Comment: Beginners beware! There are no explanations in this book. "Sharpen Your Tactics" is simply a book of chess problems, six per page, and a one-line solution in the back. Spend a couple of days with Part 1 of Seirawan's "Winning Chess Tactics" before tackling this tome.
I have not yet made it through the book, but I have reached a point (mid 400s) where the level of difficulty is slowing me down. The gradual progression in difficulty and the repetition of important ideas (i.e., the same move to checkmate over and over again, in different positions) makes me appreciate how much time and thought was put into this volume.
For people who are as bad as I am (haven't played any tournies, but I am rated around 1250 on Yahoo's chess site), I would also recommend getting the Chessmaster 9000 software to help out. Sometimes I just couldn't figure out how a position wins even after looking at the solution, or I couldn't figure out why the solution I came up with wasn't just as good. Setting up the position in Chessmaster 9000 and stepping through the variations has been *very* helpful. Now I just wish that someone would create a CD with all of the chess positions in PGN format....
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Title: Chess Tactics for the Tournament Player by Sam Palatnik, Lev Alburt, Roman Pelts, Larry Parr, Jami Anson ISBN: 1889323020 Publisher: W.W. Norton & Company Pub. Date: November, 1996 List Price(USD): $19.95 |
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Title: Art of Attack in Chess by Vladimir Vukovic ISBN: 1857444000 Publisher: Everyman Chess Pub. Date: 01 January, 1999 List Price(USD): $24.95 |
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Title: One Thousand and One Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations by Fred Reinfeld ISBN: 0879801115 Publisher: Wilshire Book Co Pub. Date: June, 1969 List Price(USD): $12.00 |
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Title: 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate by Fred Reinfeld ISBN: 0879801107 Publisher: Wilshire Book Co Pub. Date: December, 1983 List Price(USD): $10.00 |
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Title: Logical Chess: Move By Move: Every Move Explained New Algebraic Edition by Irving Chernev ISBN: 0713484640 Publisher: Batsford Pub. Date: 30 June, 2003 List Price(USD): $21.95 |
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