Victor Henkin

You have heard it. You have said it. You have ignored it. Tactics-Tactics-Tactics is the bread and butter for improving chess players. Still, it is hard to follow this fine piece of practical advice. Too many chores and privileges compete for our attention and use up our Time Budget.

There are many different online tools available for tactics training. Is there really need for yet another book with tactics and combinations? Well, that is of course to some extent a question of personal taste. Personally, I enjoy carrying around a book in my backpack in order to be able to feed my brain a healthy dose of exercise whenever I get a break. For this very purpose I thing "1000 Checkmate Combinations" is an excellent alternative. The author himself stresses that the problems should be solved without a chess board and that it might be good practice to settle for just a few combinations per day.

The only thing I can hold against the book is that it is too old or, if you like half full glasses, too good! How is that? Well, almost all of the problems have been used in other books. A well read chess enthusiast might find it a bit annoying to see the same classic problems yet again but on the other hand to repeat what you have already learned is not necessarily a bad thing.

In all: A fine book.… (altro)