Sharpen Your Tactics: 1125 Brilliant Sacrifices, Combinations, and Studies

Nice collection of chess puzzles, which is exactly what I was looking for. I don't play in tournaments nor do I have a rating. I just like to play casually. Still, I want to improve my game.The book is just a large collection of chess puzzles with 6 printed per page. Solutions are provided in the back of the book. The only problem with this set up is that it's easy to accidentally see the solution to the next puzzle. You really have to make a conscious effort not to look. The moves are given using standard chess notation. If you're familiar with that, you're good. Otherwise you'll need to learn it before you can use the book. There is a handy symbol key given in the beginning of the book to explain the meanings of such things as [0-1], #, +-, etc. As the majority of the puzzles are taken from actual games, the solutions also include the names of the players, and the place and year in which the game took place. Those that are not based on an actual game are noted as a theoretical position or composed position. Each puzzle is rated in difficulty from one to four stars. The book is organized so that the problems progress from easy to difficult, although in the middle of the book you will have 1 star puzzles interspersed with 2 and 3 star puzzles. There is no narrative of any kind to explain any of the tactics being used. It's all about learning to recognize certain recurring patterns. It's also important to note that not all of the solutions result in a checkmate. While there are some mate in one or mate in two type puzzles, there are others where you need to find the best moves to gain an advantage. Again, none of this is outright explained in the book. You need to just play through the moves and study the positions yourself.The chess diagrams themselves are pretty crude looking. They are just plain, low res, black and white diagrams much like you would find printed in a newspaper. But they serve their purpose. In any case, I prefer to set up the positions on my analysis chess set and work out the problems using real chess pieces on a real board. As I mentioned earlier, you really need to play through the moves and the best way to do that is on a real chess set. But, I do like that the book is not overly thick, so it is not a big burden to carry around everywhere.I've only begun using this book but I feel that it has already helped sharpened my tactics as the title of the book promises. And besides that, it's a good and fun way to keep my mind active in my free time.

I am an above average chess player, and am making my contribution to the site by reviewing a number of chess books. My reviews are intended to be a bit harsher than average, since Amazon has so many 5 star books its hard to use the rating system to help the selection process. Thus, my reviews are aimed at lowering this average for all but the very best books.This book progresses from very simple tactics (mate in 1) to much more complicated problems. The progression is about right for the somewhat experienced player, but probably too fast for a beginner. The format is pleasant, 6 fairly easy to read problems per page, and solutions in the back. No space is wasted on a lot of didactic text about what a "double attack" is, which should already be obvious for most people ready to read this type of book (if you don't have a rating, or your rating is below 1400, you would probably be better off with a more explanatory chess book). There is a hint regarding how difficult the problem is next to each, with a slow progression of difficulty throughout the book, which I found pleasant. Similar themed tactics are often grouped, enough to help drill a new tactical idea in but not so much that it gets annoying solving the same theme over and over again. The book has a few errors (unmentioned alternative solutions, mislabeling who's move it is, etc.) which can be annoying. Many of the problems are "classics", so those that have read a lot of chess books will likely see a number of problems they have been exposed to already. I guess you could deduce that when you see it advertised that it includes "hundred of tactical bombshells never before published in the west", but the book contains over a thousand problems. That implies A LOT of the problems have been published before. Nevertheless, I found it surprising how many of the problems I recognized.All the nitpicking aside...the fact is almost anyone who buys this book and works on the problems regularly will improve at chess. And really, what more can you ask for in a chess book?