Customer Reviews

Chess Tactics for Beginners (Chess lovers' library)

5 star:		(2)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

The author, Fred Reinfeld was known 30-40 years ago as being the author with the largest number of chess books on the market. He was a reasonably strong player and wrote some rather fine books. This is a book where you will find the same problems, without the detail and explanation in his "1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations" - the difference is two fold,
1. You get explanation of the tactics here (good point).
2. Far fewer problems (bad point).
3. His most simple problems to solve - good if you are a beginner or just above.
If you are well beyond the beginning stage get his "One Thousand and One Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations", or "Winning Chess Traps for Juniors". They are not for the super beginner and will get you further quickly.

I teach chess at an elementary school and I think this book does a great job of presenting the basic tactical patterns. The author does this in a very easy to understand format and the problems are simple and understandable. I would reccommend this to anyone that has a student learning chess.

i can keep this short; this book is very very basic. each tactic is explained in a couple of sentences and two examples. then there follow a dozen or so puzzles that range from extremely easy to... easy. i think its sort of a childrens tactics book. im really a beginner at chess - beginner beginner but these puzzles i mostly solved within a minute while watching a movie. assuming that youve read some introduction-to-chess book this book will give you very few new information or concepts, but a couple of easy puzzles.

I came to this book knowing only the basic moves of chess. After finishing this book I was able to see many opportunities I had missed before. This book presents basic chess tactics in the form of puzzles. Each chapter is devoted to one type of situation that arises frequently during play. Solving the ten or so puzzles offered in each chapter gives you the ability to spot similar opportunities when they arise during play. The chapters on discovered check and removing the guard are especially useful. The only drawback to this book is that the answers are given in the old style chess notation. However, there is a tutorial for reading this type of notation at the beginning of the book. As there is no "search inside" for old books like this, I will list the table of contents below.

table of contents:

Chess Notation
Introduction
1. The Knight Fork
2. The Pin
3. The Skewer
4. More Forks
5. Discovered Check
6. Removing the Guard
7. Rook Checkmates
8. Bishop Checkmates
9. Queen Checkmates
10. Knight Checkmates
Solutions

I have been studying tactics now for months on end, constantly, almost nothing but, to the point where I think I have had my eyes bleed. I went through this book in less than 2 hours, cover to cover. I found nothing new, but I really cannot complain loudly, as it did serve a purpose as tactical situations where I was able to apply what I hed read in other books. Most situations I solved in under a minute, and I am not a highly rated player by any stretch of the imagination. Let's put it this way, I think I can get a 4 digit USCF rating in 6 months of so if I keep putting effort in it. While for me it wasn't a very bad book, it just had nothing new in it for me. I had read everything in it before in a few other texts, but like I said, I was able to apply what I had learned in other books going through the puzzles.