Customer Reviews

Winning Chess Tactics, revised (Winning Chess - Everyman Chess)

5 star:		(50)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(9)
2 star:		(9)
1 star:		(4)

 

 

Not overly basic and not too difficult would be the way to size up the tactics in "Winning Chess Tactics" by Yasser Seirawan. It will be honestly admitted by 90 of all chess players that they win or lose most of their games due to the use of a tactic: May be a pin, or a fork, discovered attack or due to a backrank mate idea?

* Tactics are well organized by "theme". The idea of the tactic and limited examples are provided for each.

** The writing style is usually made clear and understandable. I found only a couple of places where I thought different wording could have improved the definition or understanding of a theme.

*** The quality of analysis is there - couldn't find any mistakes in analysis, but there were some silly typos.

**** Most of the important tactical themes are covered but I would also recommend getting a book on chess traps (i.e. Winning Chess Traps: Tactics in the Opening", or "101 Chess Opening Traps") to fill in the gaps and supplement this material.

This is one of the better books on general chess tactics and I can recommend it.

There are three types of books that you should learn tactics from, 1. a general book on tactics that tells you what they are and explains the mechanics of them by name (THIS BOOK!!!), 2. a workbook that has hundreds of tactical puzzles to solve, and 3. chess traps book that covers tactics in openings showing how you get their from the start.

Seirawan's book is very clear and undstandable. A good starting place!

I usually write reviews for books with little customer feedback; in this case, however, I make an exception. This book is intended for beginners, and being one, I feel it appropriate to share some what I hope will be valuable feedback.
First, some personal chess background, which when reviewing a chess book is essential. I'm currently rated from 1300 to 1400 by the Chessmaster program, Yahoo, and Chess.net, which makes me an advanced beginner, I guess.
I've just read and studied through the entire book, and the answer is YES you will improve. My rating increased by ~ 200 points.
I did some research when I decided I wanted to start learning chess seriously, and found that after learning basic chess: piece value, movement, concepts on space, time, some basic openings, basic rook and queen endings, etc .. the next step was working on improving my tactics.
This is the only book on tactics I've studied so far, but I've looked over a couple more. Seirawan's compares nicely. It has thorough explanations on tactical concepts such as pins, forks, skewers, decoys, windmills, and such. However, as any chess player with some experience will say, tactics is all about practice. This is where this book falls short. It has 92 problems that serve to strengthen tactical concepts, and 45 end book puzzles, with no clues. Though good for starters, this is nowhere near what a player needs to really strengthen his skills. I suggest buying either or both "The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book" and "1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations." Both have 1001 tactical chess puzzles, and by the time I work through one of these I hope to have improved a great deal.
WCT has two main strengths. I find that Seirawan's explanations on the different tactical situations is extensive, the prose clear, though childish at times. However, few examples illustrate each point. Another point is the book's print quality, as another reviewer mentioned, very good binding, wide margins and quality paper.
Seirawan's very high ego is manifested throughout the book, with lots of examples from his own games, in which, OBVIOUSLY, he always has the winning combination. I might be intolerant with such prideful individuals, but I find this showing off very distracting. In his book, Emms has examples where he loses to a brilliant combination. Chess masters are not gods, and should not portray themselves as such.
The book has a final section on great tacticians and some of their most famous games. This makes for an interesting read, but the tactical combinations in these games are of such depth and cunning as to be completely useless to the reader. The space could have been better used with more examples and puzzles to work on.
The book is good, it served its purpose - introduce me to chess tactics.
Nevertheless, my final recommendation - use a chess software program or go online to learn the basic tactical ideas, then work out the hundreds of examples in any of several good puzzle books.

I would like to change the name of the author to "Yes Sir a win"! This is a good book on tactics that is for the non-beginner, but non-higher rated player (probably best for a player with an USCF rated between 1200 and 1600).

Most games are won or lost because of tactics by players rated under 1600 - often dumm mistakes. So studying the tactics in the book will be right on. If you are a beginner, then get "Simple Chess Tactics" by Gilam as this book would be to hard.

I found some typos in the book, but otherwise it is very good!

There are many problems with this book, and it's a shame because the book has many 4- and 5-star reviews that will most likely overshadow this one. Nonetheless, I feel compelled to write a review on this book.

1. The tests in this book have several major problems. Usually there are 4-6 tests for each tactic. The first two questions are usually on par with the examples, or slightly harder. Then the questions drastically get tougher. Like one reviewer pointed out... one question will require a simple 2-move combination, and the next requires you to figure out the 100% perfect move-list for a 10-move checkmate. Sorry, I'm not a grandmaster Yassir! The problem is that the tests don't progressively get tougher. There are usually more tougher tests than easy ones too, which I think only demoralizes the reader when they realize that they can't figure more than 30% of them out.

2. Sometimes the first question is actually one of the toughest! This is rare, and it happens! Great method of instruction! (sarcasm). Another problem is that none of the examples are challenging, but Yassir expects the reader to use the vague general principle taught and exercise it to master-level strength in the tests. It's like the questions were purposefully tougher than the examples, and I don't understand the reason.

3. There are not enough easy tests to cement the pattern of the tactic in the reader's mind. In fact, there is often only 1 test of each pattern for the tactic being demonstrated. As we know, pattern recognition only happens with constant repetition, so the book is more or less useless on this front. Maybe the problems in "Chess Tactics for Students" were simpler, but at least I can recognize those tactics rather quickly at a glance. This book hasn't helped me at all in my games.

4. Sometimes tests at the beginning also use tactics taught in later chapters. For example, there's a clearance sacrifice required to solve a problem in one of the first tests... but clearance sacrifice taught several chapters later.

5. Sometimes the answers to the tests are wrong. On test 23, you are put in check by the opponent's queen and you have to decide how to get out of check. You can block with your queen, block with a pawn or move the king (it's a pin problem... so the goal is to avoid a pin). After looking at the position however, I immediately saw that 'e5' (blocking with the pawn) was the best solution. It does pin the pawn to the King, but if you look at the position, it's not a negative at all.

However, Yassir says moving the King is the best answer... and doesn't even consider blocking with the pawn at all! He just ignored the possibility completely. After giving the position to Fritz and Rybka chess engines, both said 'e5' was the best solution. Moving the King was only second best.

There are several other tests (even those 8-10 move complex ones!) where the lines suggested by Yassir are incorrect, or where other solutions could easily fit the bill as the 'correct' answer. Test 50 is a good example of this. Honestly, myself, Fritz and Yassir only agreed on the first 2 moves. At that point, Yassir was dreaming of this 8-move checkmate that doesn't exist. When asking Fritz and Rybka the answer, it goes on for much longer with completely different moves.

As far as I can tell, this only serves to demoralize the reader like they are doing something wrong. The tests should have been worked out so that very few lines would work. As it stands, your answer is almost always going to be different than Yassir's answer for these long 10-move problems.

6. There are spelling and grammar mistakes throughout the book, even in the revised edition.

7. Explanations are usually very thin. Sometimes the author will say "and with these 4 moves, Black is in real big trouble!"

The problem is that Yassir doesn't explain how he's in trouble (it's usually some kind of tactic that is unrelated to the concept that is being taught). Yassir should have explained everything so that it was understood by new and expert players alike, but he doesn't! This happens quite frequently in the book, where the reader is left to their own devices to see what the author means. It just interrupts with the flow and understanding.

8. The example games at the back of the book are irrelevant. The games with Anderssen are completely pointless. Yes, the games feature tactics, but it's only because the opponent accepted gambits (because it's "the manly thing to do!") and accepted double-rook sacrifices (because "he wants his opponent to prove a point") without considering the compensation that the other player gets or actually formulating plans of his own.

In effect, Anderssen's opponents were idiots... and by modern standards, nobody in their right mind would play the way either player would. In fact, they would get crushed. What is the point of analyzing inferior openings and inferior moves when today's games will never see them? We learn by osmosis. These are not the type of games we should be studying!

9. Also, the examples are master-level games where 90% of the stuff is not explained. Honestly, much of it went over my head. I don't understand the point to learning from master-level games. Why not show some 1200-1500 level games instead? Like show really common tactics we will see on a regular basis... and common errors and how they can be exploited? Why not make this book practical? This approach would have made the game analysis useful.

10. There needs to be more diagrams in the book. Many times Yassir will throw out move lists or entire games with one or two diagrams. Unless you have a chess set with you, you are sitting at a computer, or you can see all the moves in your head... these examples won't be of much benefit to you. They are just hard to follow, and makes it impossible to read on... say... a bus. This is a problem with many chess books, and I don't know why they couldn't add another 40 pages to the book to make it easier to read. I would have gladly paid the extra .50 cents.

11. The book is also plagued with the problem where you have a diagram on one page, and it's explanation on another... causing the reader to flip back and forth. Was it really hard to paginate the examples properly, even if it meant having some white space?

Make no mistake, I did learn things from this book. I think because so many examples did use clearance sacrifices or piece sacrifices that I can see them a little better... perhaps because the "I'm going to lose on the exchange" mentality has been changed. Still, the book is just poor instruction and there has to be better books on tactics out there than this one.

I must truely say if you are looking for a book on true tactics this book isn't so bad. It is rather good!

Not the way I would have written it as I have found some mistakes, typos and if you really not a beginner you need far more than tactics (See my review on UNBEATABLE CHESS LESSONS FOR JUNIORS - you wil learn more from it than this book, but also get this book on a secondary basis along with WINNING CHESS TOURNAMENTS FOR JUNIORS with great tactics and advice to make you great).

First best - CHESS FOR JUNIORS SERIE by Snyder, Second best - WINNING SERIES by Seirawan. Consider them both!

One thing not mentioned by the other reviewers is the quality of the book itself. The edition I have is the 1995 Microsoft Press paperback with brown cover, and it has the same lay-flat binding found in the O'Reilly computer books series. The pages are very white with ample margins. The typesetting and diagram placement is excellent. Any of these traits are rare for a chess book, and in my opinion all chess books should be bound this way.

The book itself consts of 137 tests with about 150 other positions spread across 13 tactical themes. The themes are mostly organized from essential/simple to more subtle, though there is some overlap. There is an interesting section on great tacticians with some games completely annotated, but mostly they're one-sided crushes or some of the "classic" games you might see elsewhere. If you like that sort of style, then Chernev's Logical Chess is probably the better book for you. Only a few of the puzzles are studies (contrived), and the ones which didn't come from actual tournament play sure have the feeling as if they might have.

Most of non-test diagrams can be done as tests, except for two caveats, some of them are designed to hilight blunders or just positions so aren't testable, and others are mislabeled White to play when it is Black. It would have been helpful if they had included a small caption beneath each one so that you can skim the diagrams without the accompanying text (which has the moves in bold and draw the eye), to increase the number of puzzles. What I recommend is that you write a "mini-test" to yourself in the margins, you can even use a pencil, the paper quality is THAT good.

I have found very few errors in the tactics (I think two so far), and only a few typesetting errors in the moves which are easy to figure out. This is rare for chess books, so I think that perhaps these positions are computer checked. There are some instances, not often in the tests, where the computer found a better shot or reply, but for the most part, even contrived positions seem to jive with what the computer found. Most of the tests and positions are in the "easy" side (one move to solve) but they cover the entire range from easy to very difficult.

There is a lot of writing and description about each tactical theme. The tests and diagrams are overannotated, if anything, with the major problem I had being the campy language used--this book could have easily added a few icons and be called "Chess Tactics For Dummies."

Final caveats: There is no explanation on how to achieve these tactical shots from typical openings or middlegames (or which shots appear in which games). There is no explanation of basic mating patterns (probably this sort of thing is found in their first book). There are only a few "trimmed down" (beginner lesson) positions designed to emphasize the principles behind the tactics. There are not enough puzzles for this to be "the only tactics book you need" that Silman (the coauthor) has said.

Summary: An excellent book with amazing binding and typesetting with 200 puzzles: far from bad if you go over them many times. The coverage of combinations is comprehensive (mates, draws, material wins, defending. etc.). Read it and in a couple months do all the problems again, repeat until every puzzle becomes second nature.

When compared to Yasser Seirawan first book, "Play Winning Chess", I almost couldn't believe it was written by the same guy. I was critical of his first book, but it seems all my complaints about it being too advanced for the target audience were corrected in by this book. While there are tons of books on tactics out there, Seirawan does a great job of explaining these concepts in depth. While these were touched on on Wolffs "Complete Idiots Guide to Chess", Seirawan goes into better detail explaining these concepts and demonstrating how a player can set up these tactics and combinations. I found that the puzzels in this book were instructive and helped test my knowledge very well, and adequetly built up in difficulty.

The only real complaint I had about this book was the inclusion of Grand Master games towards the end of the book. They really seemed out of place, and the commentary on the games did not lend well to the topic of the book. But despite that, I really enjoyed this book to the point that I carried it with my everywhere and read it at every chance I got.

I found Seirawan's tactics manual helpful to review basic tactical patterns, but annoying in its many mistakes and its sometimes adolescent tone. I'm not talking about mistakes in analysis--I did not check his lines with Fritz--but lots of typographical and word choice errors that a competent proof-reader would have caught. For a book that is otherwise aesthically well-designed, this is really hard to understand. As to the tone, perhaps the idea was to market this to adolescents. If you want a more mature tone and don't want to be distracted by a relentless onslaught of production errors, study John Nunn's Learn Chess Tactics. I'd love to give Seirawan 5 stars, but I take one off for the tone and another for the proliferation of mistakes.

Summary:
After studying an overview of chess (e.g. Complete Idiot's Guide to Chess) a book on tactics is a logical next step. I have purchased several tactics books. I found this one to be the best for teaching the beginner how to effectively recognize tactical opportunities and execute winning tactical sequences.

Learn by example?
Some tactics books show examples and hope for results. This would be like a golf pro showing me a video of Tiger Woods, and then asking for his fee. I am sorry, but examples of great tactics will often discourage beginners more than educate them. Examples of these types of books include:
1. Combinations, the Heart of Chess
2. Chess Tactics for the Tournament Player

Learn through countless exercises?
Some tactics books are really puzzle books with about 1000 different diagrams that offer tactical gains. These are useful for the intermediate player, but can cause frustration for those who are not good at calculating a four move combination. Examples include:
1. 1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices
2. Sharpen Your Tactics

Learn through instruction - the best method
Winning Chess Tactics is written with very simple, step-by-step style. "In this section we will learn how each piece can create a fork" Therefore, it is useful for both children and adults. It is repetitive and slowly builds on previous themes, in other words, it teaches. Seirawan uses exercises at the end of each lesson to test your knowledge. One negative - Part 2 (examples of master level tactics) is not very useful in a beginner's book, this space could have been used to provide more instruction. Overall, it is an excellent book and well worth the money. For these reasons, I give it four stars.