Review: Looking for Trouble: Recognizing and Meeting Threats in Chess
“Chess is a fairy tale of 1001 blunders.” – Savielly Tartakower.
Books on tactics normally emphasise problems where the task is to find the winning move in a chess position. But winning moves are not generally available unless a player blunders, as Tartakower wittily points out in the quote above.
Looking For Trouble: Recognizing and Meeting Threats in Chess
Author: Dan Heisman
Publisher: Russell Enterprises
Every Tactic begins with a threat – learn how to identify & react to them, in the opening, middlegame & endgame. Train with 300 carefully selected puzzles to help you master your tactical vision!
NM Dan Heisman’s book Looking for Trouble is based on the cliché “Prevention is better than the cure.” His main theme in this book is to always look for potential winning moves for your opponent before you move (the “prevention”), as seeing your opponent’s winning move after you move is usually too late (the ineffective “cure”).
The subtitle of the book refers to threats, which Heisman defines as follows.
“Threat – a move which, if not stopped by the opponent’s reply, can do something harmful to the opponent and/or useful on the next move.
So you can threaten to win material, checkmate, create a passed pawn, make the opponent’s king unsafe, ruin the opponent’s pawn structure, etc.
In other words, a threat is a move that allows you to do something constructive next move if not stopped.”
Heisman compares the focus of this book on threats with the typical tactics book. He writes:
“Although studying tactical problems improves your play, you will not receive the full benefits if you only use this ability to spot offensive opportunities that arise for yourself on your move. Winning material and checkmating are great, but preventing those same tactics from happening to you is just as important. Your chances of avoiding these common mistakes improve if you also consider these “Play and Win” problems from a defensive standpoint. You should improve your tactical ability both to spot threats generated by your opponent’s previous move and to ensure that your move doesn’t create new tactical opportunities for him as well.”
Heisman contrasts what he calls “acceptable threats” with moves that are objectively bad if the opponent recognises the threat and acts accordingly. He defines three categories of acceptable threats:
“(1) Threats that are stoppable, but the tempo used by the attacker to make the threat is at least as helpful to the attacker as the tempo used to best meet it helps the defender;
(2) Unstoppable threats; and
(3) Threats that are stoppable, but the tempo used by the attacker to make the threat is not as helpful as the tempo used to best meet it is to the defender.”
The book is divided into three sections covering openings (80 problems), middlegames (145 problems plus 10 problems from famous games) and endgames (80 problems). Not surprisingly, the middlegame section has the most problems, as this is usually the critical area for tactical operations.
Apart from the famous games, the problems are taken from games played by the author or his students. Each problem follows the same pattern. As a first step, the reader must find the threat. The second part of the problem is to find the prevention. Each problem is given a star rating, ranging from one star (easy) to five stars (very difficult). The intended audience is players with an Elo rating of 1100 – 2300. As a guide, the author suggested that the three-star problems should be suitable for players around 1500.
Heisman provides detailed commentary to all the problems. His verbal commentary is particularly good for explaining the key features of the problems. While there is some use of chess engine analysis, this is generally limited to some of the more complicated problems. It should also be noted that the book was published in 2013, and chess engines have improved enormously since then. Hence, it’s likely that some of the analysis for the more difficult problems may need corrections. However, any such corrections do not detract from the book.
Two examples from the book are given below, with annotations from the book.
The first example is a three-star problem from the openings section.
The second example is a three-star problem from the middlegames section.
In conclusion, this is an excellent book on a neglected area of chess instruction. The author has been a full-time chess teacher for many years, and he has won awards for his instructional articles. This background helps to make the book accessible to a wide range of players and provides them with plenty of relevant problems to study.
Looking For Trouble: Recognizing and Meeting Threats in Chess
Author: Dan Heisman
Publisher: Russell Enterprises
Every Tactic begins with a threat – learn how to identify & react to them, in the opening, middlegame & endgame. Train with 300 carefully selected puzzles to help you master your tactical vision!
Other books by Dan Heisman:
- Best Pirc and Modern Defense Books: Complete Guide - October 25, 2026
- Best Italian Game Chess Books: Complete Opening Guide - October 20, 2026
- Best Books on the English Opening: A Complete Guide - October 15, 2026