Tactics Books

Do masters methodically cut their way through the branches of a tree of analysis? Is it true that attacking players calculate a dozen moves ahead, while positional specialists rely on abstract principles? What exactly does it mean to “calculate,” anyway?

TACTICS TRAINER AVAILABLE! 404 Puzzles for those who are serious about improving their chess! Tactical puzzle books all seem sort of the same, positions where you are being told what the demand is and you then have to figure it out. Typically having to sacrifice or exploit a tactical feature, the answers can typically be worked out sooner or later. The puzzles in this book are different. For starters, the puzzles are recent, from the latter half of 2018 and they are played by players rated at least 2300. Additionally, the solutions are not always a quick tactical solution, and the first move is typically not enough for a complete answer, instead a series of precise moves is required and not always is it a winning continuation but one leading to an advantage, often a large one, but occasionally a clear or even a small advantage is all you can hope for. The key is, the solver doesn't know just as in game situations. Should the puzzles prove too difficult, then there are hints for the solution, although the hints can be rather cryptic as well.

Maneuvering: The Art of Piece Play

Some of the hardest moments in chess come when there is no forcing line and no obvious plan — when the position simply asks you to improve your pieces. This book is the legendary trainer Mark Dvoretsky’s study of exactly that skill: manoeuvring, and the art of finding the best squares for your pieces.

Piece play is one of the subtlest aspects of positional mastery, and Dvoretsky approaches it the way he approached everything — through carefully chosen, demanding examples and a great deal of active solving rather than passive reading. The material ranges across every phase, from opening manoeuvres through richly complex middlegames to queenless positions and endgames, showing how the same principles of piece improvement run throughout the game.

As always with Dvoretsky, the solutions are detailed and honest: he lays out the reasoning, the candidate moves, and the way a strong player actually arrives at the right regrouping, rather than simply presenting the answer.

This is advanced training material, best suited to strong club players, experts, and above who want to deepen one of the defining skills of high-level chess. Demanding, but among the most rewarding work a serious improver can do.

Move First, Think Later

Most improvement books preach the same method: study the position’s features, form a plan, then choose a move. International Master Willy Hendriks thinks that is largely a comforting myth — and this provocative, much-discussed book sets out to prove it.

Drawing on his experience as a trainer and on research into how players actually think, Hendriks argues that move selection is not the tidy output of a rational checklist; judging, planning, and calculating all happen together, messily and at once, in weak and strong players alike. The dogma that "good moves follow automatically once you assess the characteristics" simply doesn’t match what happens at the board.

In place of method-worship he offers something more honest and more useful: a healthy scepticism toward chess instruction, and a large amount of no-nonsense training material — exercises and discussion designed to build the pattern knowledge that really drives improvement. The tone is sharp, funny, and refreshingly willing to puncture sacred cows.

Best suited to club and online players who suspect the standard advice hasn’t been working — and to any thoughtful improver who enjoys having their assumptions challenged.

In this follow-up to his acclaimed 1001 Chess Exercise for Club Players, FIDE Master Frank Erwich teaches you how to reach the next level of identifying weak spots in the position of your opponent, recognizing patterns of combinations, visualizing tricks and calculating effectively. Erwich repeats the themes of his previous book, focusing on exercises in which the key move is less obvious. He also introduces new, more sophisticated tactical weapons. They are geared towards the reality of the advanced club player (Elo 1800 – 2300): it is not enough to spot simple combinations, at this level you must be able to resist your reflexes and look deeper. In variations that look forcing you will always search for that deadly Zwischenzug. Quiet moves in general should be your new best friends. In short: an advanced club player should expect the unexpected. One of the celebrated elements of Erwich’s previous book, which is neglected in other books on tactics, is back: defence! You will also learn how to defend against tactics, as well as how to use tactical weapons when you are under heavy pressure. This is a complete and structured course, and not just a collection of freewheeling puzzles. Erwich starts every chapter with an instructive explanation of the tactical concept at hand and has carefully selected the most didactically productive exercises.

TACTICS TRAINER AVAILABLE! In this guide International Master Vladimir Barsky teaches the method created by his mentor Viktor Khenkin (1923-2010). It’s based on an ingenious classification of the most frequently occurring mating schemes. A wide range of chess players will find it an extremely useful tool to recognize mating patterns and calculate the often narrow path to the kill. All the 1,000 examples (850 of them in exercise format) that Barsky presents are from games played in 21st century. He has carefully selected the most instructive combinations and lucidly explains the typical techniques to corner your opponent’s king. More often than you would expect, positions that look innocent at first sight, turn out to contain a mating pattern. This is not just another book full of chess puzzles. It’s a brilliantly organized course that has proven to be effective. Finding mate isn’t rocket science, but you need to know what to look for. Vladimir Barsky teaches you exactly that.

In this book, aimed at strong tournament players (1900-2300 Elo or fast improving juniors) the authors introduce a wider approach to developing middlegame tactical and positional skills that a formidable chess player needs. Specifically, they present 111 positions from games of grandmasters played in 2019, including super-GMs such as Magnus Carlsen, Fabiano Caruana, Ding Liren, Anish Giri, Ian Nepomniachtchi, Daniil Dubov, Wesley So, Hikaru Nakamura, Levon Aronian, and Wang Hao, in which they first explain the mistake made by one of the players in underestimating their opponent’s counterplay, then they analyze how the game progressed where punishment for the mistake is meted out. After that, they return to the starting position to demonstrate the correct or a more promising continuation. Therefore, the text is structured so that each challenge contains the starting diagram twice – before the moves in the actual game, and then, on the page overleaf, before the solution. There are numerous elements that a chess player should keep in mind in the middlegame and the authors have designed this book to address specific middle-game thematic mistakes: unsound sacrifices, creating imaginary threats, imaginary defense against threats, pawn-grabbing, give check or attack material – which is best?, wrong evaluation of changes to the pawn structure, lack of vigilance in decision-making, replacing strategy with tactics and taking wrong positional decisions. Studying these key fragments from grandmaster games will help a player to develop their middlegame approach. Firstly, the student analyzes why a move or series of moves by one of the players was erroneous. What counterplay by the opponent did the player making the mistake underestimate? Secondly, armed with this answer, the student can review the position to try and figure out the better move. If the student is working with a coach, then the coach should first set up the position on the board, demonstrate the erroneous move played, and ask the student to find the refutation to that bad move. After the refutation is found by the student, the coach should once again set up the critical position and ask the student to find the strongest continuation for the initial player. This may be one or more moves, depending on the position. Naturally, in the case of self-study the student can change their approach, either trying to figure out the refutation to the error by covering up the subsequent text, or simply studying the moves in the game before trying to find the better continuation, which is detailed overleaf together with the starting diagram.

The best place to start your tactics training is in the endgame! Chess is 99% tactics – and if you want to win more games, nothing works better than training tactics. Win a piece or find a mate. That will get you results.

Since most of the pieces have left the board, endgame tactics have the clarity that enables you to grasp all basics concepts quickly and comprehensively. In the endgame, you can focus on what is important without any distractions by a couple of random pawns and pieces.

In 1001 Chess Endgame Exercises for Beginners, IM Thomas Willemze does two things at once. He explains all the basic concepts, and provides you with a huge amount of exercises for each theme and each chess piece. Willemze uses all his experience as a coach, and his familiarity with the famous Step Method, to carefully build up your chess knowledge step-by-step. He shows you the strength of all pieces, from the lonely pawn to the almighty queen. And he guides you from the basics to more complex tactics in a highly instructive puzzle rush.

Art of Sacrifice in Chess

Rudolf Spielmann’s The Art of Sacrifice in Chess, first published in the mid-1930s, was instantly recognised as a classic — the book that first tried to classify, systematically, the nature of the chess sacrifice. This is its 21st-century edition, with Spielmann’s original work preserved in full and brought to a modern audience.

Spielmann’s great idea was to distinguish the "real" sacrifice (where you give up material for an unclear, long-term return) from the "sham" sacrifice (where the material comes straight back). Around that he organises a whole taxonomy — sacrifices for development, line-clearance, deflection, king-hunts, the king’s field, the exchange and queen sacrifices — that still shapes how we understand the subject.

For this edition, German grandmaster Karsten Müller has done far more than modernise the notation: he has roughly doubled the book, adding chapters on the Greek Gift and the classic weak points (g7, f7, e6, f6), on the sacrificial magic of Tal and Shirov, on the fine art of defending against sacrifices, and a wealth of exercises to test what you’ve learned.

A timeless subject in an enriched modern package — instructive and hugely enjoyable for any club player who wants to attack with imagination and judgement.

In the fifteen chapters and 480 exercises in this book, we will encounter many subjects, for example attack, defense, surprises and hidden moves, while some chapters will be especially dedicated to four great players – Kasparov, Karpov, Fischer and Kramnik – in order to learn about their styles. The last two chapters are also of a very special kind, ‘Extraordinary Wins’, where you will see moves of the kind you won’t meet very often in life, and ‘Special Section’, with exercises requiring special instructions.

This ebook is a part of Bundle: Chess Calculation Training

Goethe once wrote, “Everything is both simpler than we can imagine, and more complicated than we can conceive.” He could well have had chess endgames in mind. Endgames have fewer pieces on the board than middlegames but this does not necessarily make them “easier” to play or understand.

Tactical expertise is, understandably, generally associated with middlegame (and sometimes opening) positions. However, tactics are also crucial in endgames – a point that is sometimes overlooked. Even some quite simple looking pawn endgames can feature complex tactical ideas. Tactics in endgames also tend to be very different to middlegame tactics. As well as the familiar themes of pins, skewers and forks, endgames also feature unique concepts that rarely occur in middlegames such as pawn breakthroughs, manoeuvring for zugzwang and active use of the king as an aggressive unit.

In this book the highly experienced chess author and coach Cyrus Lakdawala guides the reader through the complexities of endgame tactical play. Lakdawala assembles positions that are most effective to improve tactical ability. Work your way through this book and you will undoubtedly see the results in your own games.

Van Delft has created a unique thematic structure for all types of positional sacrifices. He shows the early historical examples, explains which long-term goals are typical for each fundamental theme and presents lots of instructive modern examples. He then concentrates on those sacrifices that have become standard features of positional play. Solving the exercises he has added will further enhance your skills. Playing a positional sacrifice will always require courage. Merijn van Delft takes you by the hand and not only teaches the essential technical know-how, he also helps you to recognize the opportunities when to take the plunge. Mastering Positional Sacrifices is bound to become a modern-day classic.