Customer Reviews

Manual of Chess Combinations, Vol. 1A (Chess School)

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I bought this book because I realised that tactical vision was my weakest link in chess. I paid $ 25 for this collection of almost 1200 great positions, all at my rating range or higher. This is great value for money.

I have just finished the first section of volume 2. Actually this is the 6th section if you start counting from volume 1.

This book is oriented for the players from 1600 to 2200 rating. As you move through the sections, you increase the complexity of the positions.

The first surprise when I got this book in my hands was that it has positions from all stages of the game. Although most of the positions are in middlegame, you also find tactics in the opening and a good amount of it in the endgame! It also has positions where is black to play.

In the beginning of the section, the positions are "4 move" mates, in most of the cases. As you go through the section, you start to find "mate or significant material loss" combinations. There are some very interesting queen sacrifices.

In the beginnig of the second section, you find mate in 5 and more complex positions. As you move trought the book the positions become more complex.

If you put efforts in each exercise, you will improve your calculation ability, combinative vision and also your endgame play.

However, to solve the positions from the endgames, in some cases, you should have some basic knowledge of theory. For example, there is an endgame exercise where you should know that K+Q agains K+P is a drawn if: pawn is one step from promoting and it's a "C" or "F" pawn. In this situation the defending side can force a draw by stalemate. If you don't know this theory, it will be more difficult to solve the exercise.

Also, in the endgame section, there are some positions where, at first glance one side is completely lost and you have to find the draw. In some cases you use the stalemate idea.

I recommend this book for players that:
a) are in the rating range 1600 to 2200
b) prefer to play over-the-board rather than on the computer screen
c) need to improve tactical skills
d) apreciate tactics in the endgame

Ok, there are lots of problems here, but I wanted to note one particularly unique aspect of this series that I find excellent:
many of the easier problems are actually subcomponents of later harder problems. You can drill the easier problems, which helps you see parts of more complicated problems easier! This helps prime the mind to better know at what depth you can stop calculating, as you've drilled the end part more, such that simply getting to that previous starting position is enough. Not all problems are this way, but they are sprinkled in, and really help boost confidence in solving complicated problems easily.

One complaint I have is that too many of the problems are mate oriented. This is such a relatively rare component of chess (certainly important to study though), but I'd expect closer to half the problems to be material gain oriented, when it seems closer to 10%!

The variety of positions is excellent, usually quite double-edged (where many of these tactics are most important), material is usually equal. Just thought I'd put a few more comments in there.

What differentiates this series of puzzle book from others is the progressive level of difficulty and it's small size for kids. I bought my son the BIG black (double) brick size chess puzzle book by Polgar. It basically turned my son off big time and he lost interest in chess for a long time partially due to the intimidation. This "Chess School" books are nicely sized with appropriate level of difficulty that my son (when USCF rating around 1200+) felt both the challenge AND reward after solving the problems. After finishing the book in less than a month, his rating went up by 100+ in the next tournament.

My son is very involved in chess, and this book has been one of the most useful study books for him so far. the book is great, service is great, seller is great! Thank you ver much.

With such low price and more than 700 high quality exercsies, do I need to say more???