Customer Reviews

Chess Tactics for Students

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(4)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

If it wasn't for the mistakes in both solutions and some obvous typos this would be a very good first tactics book for any age. It needs to be corrected and a couple of problems removed that do not work and replaced by some that do. A better quality control was needed!
Now I feel tactics are one of the most important things for students who are new to improve their game. Getting some tactics workbooks and opening chess traps books are a good way to accomplish improving over all tactics.
This book will still help you get started, but there are a lot of choices of simular books without so many mistakes.

I really like the "large" (about 8" x 11") workbooks that I have gotten on both very basic tactics ("Chess Tactics for Students) and on chess opening traps ("Winning Chess Traps for Juniors").
The print is big and easy to see with big diagrams. I don't like books with tiny little print and diagrams so small you need a magnifying glass (should be included with the book!). I don't have s seeing problem, but I just like my tactics and trap workbooks in the large print format.
"Chess Tactics for Students" was my starting tactics book. It is good for beginners. My only small grips are I found some printing mistakes and wish it had more puzzels to work on (but maybe that is a plus!).
This is a good book for a beginner after they learn how the pieces move.

Although it was field-tested with elementary, middle school, and high school students, this book is not just for younger students. I'm an adult just beginning to study tactics and I found this workbook format engaging. There are two problems per page, and each problem has a couple of kinds of hints -- a direction line and fill-in-the blank move listings that indicate checks and variants. You can cover up these hints if you want more of a challenge.

The sequencing of this book is well thought out. Each chapter focuses on a different kind of tactic (such as discovered check, double attacks, zugzwang, removing the defender, and so on), and the problems often are paired so that once you've solved one problem in 2 moves, the next one is a related problem in 3 moves that might have seemed insoluble before. A final chapter combines all the tactics and asks students to figure out what approach is the best for a given position.

It only took me about a week to pass through this book, but I enjoyed filling it in. The enclosed Answer Key was easy to use, as it reproduces the move sequences in their entirety, rather than just providing the answers to the blanks. Worth the money for beginners of any age.

After finishing this book, I immediately played a game where I was able to move a knight into a royal fork that was simultaneously a discovered check. I don't think I would have "seen" this possibility before reading this book.

Just about any chess teacher will tell you that beginners (rating lower than 1600) need to learn three things: tactics, tactics, tactics. Positional knowledge, opening books, and endgame theory won't help you much if you blunder into letting your opponent fork you or if you miss opportunities to do the same.

Having said that, this book is a great way to start to practice seeing tactical motiffs (mostly forms of a double attack: pins, forks, skewers, and so on). It is divided into chapters with each chapter focused on a different kind of tactic. After a very brief explanation about what the tactic is, there are a number of exercises in which you have to find the tactic for yourself. There are also hints if you are stuck. I found it helpful to make a little cut-out from some paper to cover the hints and only show the board instead. It is too easy to inadvertently see the hints and ruin the challenge.

The book has some very useful advice about how to study: do the first few exercises of each chapter to get an overview of all the tactical motiffs. This will help you start to use and see them in your games. Later, go back and do each chapter thoroughly. Also, chapters are arranged in order of importance; motiffs that occur most frequently are handled first.

This book has a couple of limitations. Although it helps you see a tactic, the very nature of an exercise book is that you know one is there. How do you find them in a real game? You have to know when to look for them. There are certain board factors where you are likely to find tactics (an exposed enemy king often means there are great tactical opportunities). This book does nothing to help you realize this. Look at Silman's "Reassess Your Chess" for a very short, but extremely useful discussion of this issue.

Also, most of the exercises fall under one of the categories, so you know what kind of tactic to look for, making it easier than a real game situation. The last chapter helps because it is a mix of all tactical motiffs, but there are relatively few of these. Reinfeld's book of 1001 problems is probably a nice supplement in this regard.

These are limitations of the book, but not really criticisms. The book does a very good job doing what it is meant to do. The reader should simply realize that there is a bigger picture to look at and supplement accordingly.

I won't repeat what other reviewers have said, but merely add my advice: please don't start by thinking you can read this book once and then move on.

Let me ask you a question. What's 4 times 8? What's 6 times 7? Chances are you didn't have to "think" about the answers. The numbers 32 and 42 just popped into your head. Right?

That's what this book should be to you.

To get the best value out of this book you need to MEMORIZE these positions until you are sick to death of looking at them. Although you may not encounter them at first: Trust me - these positions will occur in your games.

I suggest going through the book once in 10 days, then take 8 days, then 7, then 5, then 3, then 2 days and finally do all 400 exercises 1 day. By that stage, completing the book in one sitting should take no more than two hours.

This will increase a beginner's rating by 200 points MIMIMUM and cost no more than the price of the book and a month of 20 minute-a-day practice.

Try it if you don't believe me. Or forget my advice, and I hope to play you one day. Prepare yourself for a thrashing. ;)

This is a good book for students. My only complaint is there are a number of errors. It should have been checked by Fritz

Beginner through 1600. This is one of the BEST books for improving your tactical eye. I like the fact that the author reinforces important ideas by using related problems. The other 5 books are: 1. Chess training pocket book by Alburt. 2. Essential chess endings by Silman. 3. How to reassess your chess by Silman. 4. Chess master at any age by Wetzell. 5. The ideas behind the chess openings by Fine. Start with Bain first then use the other 5 in combination. The KEY is to ANALYSE your OWN GAMES using a computer for tactics and a strong human for positional play. Then store the important positions into chess computer software. Finally, review these positions so that you know them like the back of your hand. Discipline yourself and good luck!

Great for chess beginners, adult or child. If you drill on this material until you can do all the exercises quickly, you'll become a much more dangerous player and enjoy the game more. And the book is fun to use. It starts with very simple exercises and proceeds through basic tactics and checkmates.
There is a revised edition available from the author's website. Errors are corrected, the diagrams are new with an up to date look, and the price is much lower than the used price for the first edition. Just google the name of the book.

I feel like a different player after reading this book. A much better player at that. Dont let the title fool you, this book will benifit players of ALL ages including 30-yr old farts like myself.

The title, "Chess Tactics for Students," might give the adult player pause. After all, it's a book for kids--right? Wrong.
Anyone who studies chess is,by definition, a student. And if you are under 1600(perhaps even if you're above that level), you need to get this book.
The problems are arranged by theme (pins, forks, back rank, removing the guard, etc.), and there are over 30 puzzles per theme, making it a very comprehensive introductory work on basic tactics.
Are they simple? Well, yes and no. They are far easier to work out than some of the very difficult tactics problems in Reinfeld's classic "1001 Brilliant Chess Sacrifices and Combinations," but they are not so easy that you're going to solve them all at a glance. Some of them take real work, and without knowing that you have a fork or a pin to work with, you might have no idea what to do.
But as someone else said, these are the multiplication tables of chess. You should do the exercises over and over until the patterns become ingrained and almost second nature. That's when your real vision of the board will snap into focus and you'll be able to tackle more difficult problems.
As to physically operating with the book: The workbook format makes it very easy to read and analyze, and Bain tells you, beneath every problem, what the winner's task is to be. It may be mate in 3; it may be win the Queen for a Rook; it may be win the pawn on d5, etc. If you still don't get what to do, a Hint on the bottom right of the problem tells you explicitly. For instance, "First capture the bishop with a Queen sacrifice. Notice that the capturing pawn is pinned by the Rook."
Since I am far from a beginner, I cut a little square out of the corner of a 5x8 notecard and use the card to cover up everything except the problem and the statement of whose move it is. If I get really stuck, I carefully uncover the "task" beneath the problem, and that's usually sufficient to get me over the hump to the solution.
Finally, since the book is not VERY expensive, the dedicated student, having gone over the problems many times and solved them repeatedly, might want to consider cutting the book apart and putting eadh problem and its solution on opposite sides of a notecard. Then, when you shuffle them and go through your stack of cards, you'd have no idea whether you were looking at a pin, a fork, a skewer, etc. Nor would you have any idea whether you were to mate or merely win a pawn.
Now THAT would be training!