I am not seeking glory with this book, but I certainly had to have a book in tactics! That’s the main idea of the book; to be a companion for trainers and players who seek improvement — simple but effective! The names of the mates are not important. What’s crucial is understanding and subconsciously memorising these patterns in order to recognise when they’re about to occur in a player’s own games. These mating patterns are not confined to chess problems and puzzles. As will be shown, they occur in the games of Grandmasters and even World Champions, past and present! They belong to everybody’s games, even beginners’! Each mate’s theoretical pattern is presented as a diagram, with constructed examples and actual games. It is suggested that students set-up and play through these mates from the losers’ viewpoint as well. Most difficult of all is recognising patterns when they occur horizontally (i.e., rotated 90 degrees) from the normal orientation. The key to each pattern is the status of the squares surrounding the king: which ones are obstructed, which are potential flight squares that can be controlled with the available pieces. Players are advised to know these patterns forwards, backwards and upside down!
Mating the Castled King
Almost every game these days features a castled king, which means almost every attack is an attack on a castled king. This book is a systematic course in exactly that skill — turning a promising position into a forced mate, the moment that most often slips through club players’ fingers.
Its engine is pattern recognition. The heart of the book is a collection of 160 mating finishes, organised by the mechanism behind them: the Greek Gift bishop sacrifice, breakthroughs on the g-, h- and b-files, dragging the king into the open, smothered mates, back-rank themes, and the classic queen-and-bishop or rook-and-knight mating pairs. Seeing the patterns again and again trains your eye to spot them instantly in your own games.
From there it builds toward whole-attack thinking: breakthroughs with pieces and with pawns, typical pawn-storm sacrifices, and finally a set of exercises to test everything. The author draws on twenty years of training experience to present the material in digestible, memorable units.
A practical attacking manual for improving players who keep reaching good positions but missing the knockout. Work through the patterns and the mate-in-fours stop getting away.
TACTICS TRAINER AVAILABLE!
The upgraded 2024 edition of a modern classic
The best advice for chess players who want to improve quickly is: get better at tactics! Because the vast majority of amateur games is decided through tactics you will immediately start beating moreopponents when you improve your tactical skills.
Improve Your Chess Tactics presents more than 700 decisive combinations from tournament practice and is a self-tutor and a sparring-partner in one. Experienced Russian chess master Yakov Neishtadt has selected those examples that have the biggest instructional value for club players.
In the first part of the book Neishtadt teaches a systematic course on the most important tactical themes. The second part consists of an exam with hundreds of tests from real-life chess, in random order so as not to give unwelcome hints on how to solve them. The solutions are not just lists of moves, but include clear,witty and instructive prose.
Yakov Neishtadt (1923-2023) was a famous chess writed and historian. He published dozens of books, in his native Russia and abroad, and was editor-in-chief of the acclaimed Soviet chess magazine 64.
The test positions in this instructive book cover the entire spectrum of what a modern club player should know. The reader is invited to find tactical blows, deep strategic manoeuvres, opening traps, standard endgame plans and other principles in action. The solutions rarely involve spectacular fireworks, as is the case in most chess puzzle books. Instead, you may be asked to find a quiet move or a reasoned evaluation. Solving the puzzles in this unusual and entertaining book is a most effective way to improve your chess. It will help you to develop a vital skill: the ability to take practical decision in critical moments.
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This award-winning instructional series is at the Fundamentals level, which shows players the basic ideas on the road to mastery, using carefully selected positions and advice, plus test puzzles.
Artur Yusupov was ranked No. 3 in the world of chess from 1986 to 1992, just behind the legendary Karpov and Kasparov. He has won everything there is to win in chess except for the World Championship and is now a chess trainer. He has worked with players ranging from current World Champion Anand to local amateurs in Germany, where he resides. He has worked with players ranging from World Champion Anand to local amateurs in Germany, where he resides.
Turbo-Charge Your Tactics 2 concludes a multi-year effort by GM Mykhaylo Oleksiyenko and world-renowned trainer IM Vladimir Grabinsky to create the perfect chess puzzle books. This second volume builds upon the first, using games from the World Champions and their challengers. Most chess games are decided by tactics, so solving tactical puzzles is the most effective path to improvement.
This book also contains a special chapter with expert guidance on how to use chess engines. The engines might analyse precisely but they can also harm our chess understanding if followed blindly, so we must know when and how to use them.
A collection of games in the Indian Defenses showing a catalog of typical mistakes, misunderstandings, mis-evaluations and how to exploit these: either through simple execution or brilliant chess tactics.
TACTICS TRAINER AVAILABLE! In 2017, Romain Edouard launched a brand new series of exercise books, Chess Calculation Training. The series became one of the most popular tactics books amongst advanced players. This new series, Chess Calculation Training for Kids and Club Players, is based on the same model, but aimed at players of a more modest level. In this first volume, you can enjoy 276 chess problems, which arose in real games, and you should checkmate your opponent! The book is divided into eight chapters, starting with basic mates in two, and the difficulty of the exercises increases as you go through the book. It is a fantastic training tool for anyone wanting to improve his tactical skills quickly, and not miss any opportunity to end the game with a glorious checkmate!
In Play Like a Champion, Jennifer Shahade showcases the careers and sparkling tactics of some of the most talented and influential players to ever sit at the chessboard, from the first Women’s World Champion Vera Menchik and Grandmaster Hou Yifan to Phiona “Queen of Katwe” Mutesi. Learn the powerful moves of family chess dynasties including the Polgar and the Botez sisters.
Jennifer walks you through essential and inspiring examples of themes such as Double Attack, Removal of the Guard, and Clearance. You’ll get your turn to solve 700 puzzles from the games of more than one hundred pioneering chess champions. The positions are designed to help chess improvers (from beginner to master) to develop their tactical vision.
Solve the positions here, and you too will start to Play Like a Champion.
Jennifer Shahade is a two-time US Women’s Champion, an Olympic chess medalist, and the first female ever to win the US Junior Open. An award-winning writer, host, and speaker, Jennifer is known for making chess more fun and inclusive. She is also the author of Play Like a Girl!, Chess Queens, and Thinking Sideways (2025).
She lives in Philadelphia with her family.
Revision & Exam 1 – The Fundamentals is the essential companion to Artur Yusupov’s award-winning Fundamentals series. Containing 432 exercises, Revision & Exam 1 offers the perfect way to test your understanding of the material covered in the series.
Whether as a refresher course on the topics in the series, or simply as a brand-new collection of instructive test positions, this book is indispensable for any ambitious and improving chess player.
Artur Yusupov was ranked third in the world from 1986 to 1992, just behind the legendary World Champions Karpov and Kasparov. He has won everything there is to win in chess except for the World Championship. In recent years he has mainly worked as a chess trainer with players ranging from World Champion Anand to local amateurs in Germany, where he resides.
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