270 pages
List Price: $19.95
Buy new: $16.96
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Sharpen Your Tactics
by Anatoly Lein, Boris Archangelsky
Customer Reviews
Late beginner / early intermediates must have this book, November 17, 2004
Reviewer: A. D. Davis "Brad D." (Nashville, TN)
I've had this book for about 2 months and think that it's an absolutely fantastic book. It's odd in that it has no text, just puzzle after puzzle. The puzzles are arranged thematically to guide the player through different tactical subjects -- discovered attacks, drawing techniques, forks, mating attacks, etc. I find this to be very effective. One plus compared to my other tactics book is the large number of puzzles. This allows the author to include many puzzles for a specific theme, therefore helping pattern recognition. My other puzzle book includes about 4x fewer puzzles, excluding the easier ones. Sharpen Your Tactics includes easier puzzles also. I think that this really helps beat the pattern into the player's brain.
This book is especially fantastic for good kid players, although an absolute beginner probably wouldn't get much out of it. I'd say that a kid with 6 months of experience could really benefit. My son is 8 and is really good for an 8 year old. The book has really improved his tactics. There are enough easier puzzles up front to build his confidence and interest. My other tactics book just smashed his confidence when he could barely do the first 4-5 puzzles. Sharpen Your Tactics includes a very large number of puzzles, so I'm sure the later ones will be really tough.
I have only two gripes. First, the puzzles are too small, with 6 on each page. They are easily legible, but I think 4 per page would've been better. The book is small, so it would be only medium-sized if it had 4 per page. There's a lot of white space between puzzles, so they could've made them a lot bigger without adding pages at all. Secondly, the binding is mediocre, but typical of most of my chess books. One of the front pages is starting to come out already. All of my other chess books are similarly put together, except for Pirc Alert, which is of outstanding physical quality. My new Accelerated Dragons book appears to be pretty good too, but the jury is still out.
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