- Paperback: 235 pages
- Publisher: Quality Chess Europe AB (1 Dec 2005)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 9197524425
- ISBN-13: 978-9197524421
- Product Dimensions: 23.9 x 17 x 1.7 cm
- Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 417,425 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Description
Product Description
'Chess is 99 per cent tactics' is an old saying. This may be an exaggeration, but even the remaining 1 per cent still depends on tactics. When Martin Weteschnik started working as a trainer in his local chess club, he quickly realised that even the stronger club players had great weaknesses in their tactical play. He also discovered that simply asking them to solve a huge number of puzzles did not fix the problem. These players clearly needed a good book, but when Weteschnik looked for it he found nothing suitable, so he decided to write it himself. But Weteschnik was not completely satisfied with the book and decided to restructure and rewrite it completely.
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Customer Reviews
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
23 of 23 people found the following review helpful
There are many books on the market giving examples of chess tactics, but this is the first I have seen to give a structured course on how to find them and how to work out whether the tactic is sound in a particular position.
There are examples of course, but the meat of the book is devoted to identifying tactical motifs and showing how they can be used. This is a structured course in tactics from which chess players of almost any level will benefit.
It is worth saying that the production standards are great with good use of sidebars and diagrams just where my tactical vision is getting stretched.
Tnis is an English translation of the German original and is I'm sure destined to become a modern classic.
If you are serious about improving your tactical play, buy this book!
There are examples of course, but the meat of the book is devoted to identifying tactical motifs and showing how they can be used. This is a structured course in tactics from which chess players of almost any level will benefit.
It is worth saying that the production standards are great with good use of sidebars and diagrams just where my tactical vision is getting stretched.
Tnis is an English translation of the German original and is I'm sure destined to become a modern classic.
If you are serious about improving your tactical play, buy this book!
12 of 12 people found the following review helpful
An outstanding book which richly deserves five stars, despite some dreadful presentation, which you can fix yourself by annotating the diagrams.
The back cover says that the club players the author was coaching had great weaknesses in the tactical play, which were not fixed solving a huge number of puzzles. Inside the book, he says that with his coaching the players improved by an average of 100-200 rating points and promoted to higher leagues twice in three years, using the forerunner of the material in the book. Clearly, this was not a scientific test of his methods, and the improvement programme was not a short term endeavour. Nonetheless, the book has a good motivational story - and is a good read as well - so full points for motivation.
The main theme of the book is how to find clues for tactics by studying the characteristics of the position, before you start to analyse moves. The book makes a much better job of this than any other I have seen - and clearly this is very important - you will waste a lot of time if you start analysing before you have taken the trouble to understand the position properly! In addition, you will not learn very effectively, if you do not fully understand what made the tactics work.
So what is the presentational problem? None of the diagrams say who it is to move! You often have to read quite a long way through the text to find out, and by doing so be told the solution, before you have even had a chance to look at the position! Very annoying. In addition, a fair proportion of the diagrams are not really puzzle positions - in some cases a mistake has to be made before the puzzle position arises - or the example is a speculative Tal sacrifice, which does not actually win against the (very hard to find) best defence. Furthermore, it is very clear from the text that the author expects that you have been studying the positions, before being told the answers. All the diagrams need an indicator to say whose move it is, and a caption to tell us whether we can profitably study them before reading on. Fortunately, you can add this information yourself with a couple of hours work.
As others have said, there are only four exercises per chapter, but if you annotate the book as I suggest, the main text provides many more per chapter. You can apply what you have learned in this book to the positions in puzzle books. Nonetheless, like in a maths exam, it is important not only that you find the right answer, but that you find it in the right way, so the author's solutions are more helpful than you usually find in most puzzle books. Perhaps there is an opportunity for a follow up book here?
Despite the problems, this is still a five star book. What really matters is how effective the book is likely to be in improving your chess. A few hours annotating the book is a relatively small overhead, compared with the work necessary to fully digest the contents of this book, and fully incorporate the ideas into the habitual (and largely automatic) thought processes that you use when sitting at the board. This book really can improve you chess - if you work hard enough at it!
The back cover says that the club players the author was coaching had great weaknesses in the tactical play, which were not fixed solving a huge number of puzzles. Inside the book, he says that with his coaching the players improved by an average of 100-200 rating points and promoted to higher leagues twice in three years, using the forerunner of the material in the book. Clearly, this was not a scientific test of his methods, and the improvement programme was not a short term endeavour. Nonetheless, the book has a good motivational story - and is a good read as well - so full points for motivation.
The main theme of the book is how to find clues for tactics by studying the characteristics of the position, before you start to analyse moves. The book makes a much better job of this than any other I have seen - and clearly this is very important - you will waste a lot of time if you start analysing before you have taken the trouble to understand the position properly! In addition, you will not learn very effectively, if you do not fully understand what made the tactics work.
So what is the presentational problem? None of the diagrams say who it is to move! You often have to read quite a long way through the text to find out, and by doing so be told the solution, before you have even had a chance to look at the position! Very annoying. In addition, a fair proportion of the diagrams are not really puzzle positions - in some cases a mistake has to be made before the puzzle position arises - or the example is a speculative Tal sacrifice, which does not actually win against the (very hard to find) best defence. Furthermore, it is very clear from the text that the author expects that you have been studying the positions, before being told the answers. All the diagrams need an indicator to say whose move it is, and a caption to tell us whether we can profitably study them before reading on. Fortunately, you can add this information yourself with a couple of hours work.
As others have said, there are only four exercises per chapter, but if you annotate the book as I suggest, the main text provides many more per chapter. You can apply what you have learned in this book to the positions in puzzle books. Nonetheless, like in a maths exam, it is important not only that you find the right answer, but that you find it in the right way, so the author's solutions are more helpful than you usually find in most puzzle books. Perhaps there is an opportunity for a follow up book here?
Despite the problems, this is still a five star book. What really matters is how effective the book is likely to be in improving your chess. A few hours annotating the book is a relatively small overhead, compared with the work necessary to fully digest the contents of this book, and fully incorporate the ideas into the habitual (and largely automatic) thought processes that you use when sitting at the board. This book really can improve you chess - if you work hard enough at it!
8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
The great advantage of this excellent book is that it has been written and printed with the idea that it should be picked up and read. Too many chess books come with reams of analysis that can barely be interpreted without one or even two chessboards in front of you. Understanding Chess Tactics, on the other hand, comes with usually 3-4 diagrams per page and short, clearly explained examples. It's one of the few chess books that can easily be read on the train or bus into work.
The content is well-structured and a lot of thought has been put into the layout to aid learning; the author is a firm proponent that chess is a visual game and will always turn to an example (and a diagram or three) when the text threatens to drift too far into theoretical realms. And some of the examples, for anyone who plays and appreciates the game, are dazzingly beautiful.
So why not 5 stars? Essentially, I think 5 stars should be reserved for the truly great books and although this book will undoubtedly improve your chess, I do have a few minor gripes. First, the fact that it's translated from German does occasionally show. It's nothing major, there are no sentences in verbs ending or anything like that, but some of the discussions on discoverers, principal attackers, target squares and so forth do get a bit teutonically obscure. One of the points picked up on the reviews on amazon.com is that the diagrams don't say whose turn it is to move, which makes it more difficult to try and calculate the moves for yourself before reading the text (my top tip is that if the example is fromone of Mikhail Tal's games, then it's usually going to be Tal to move!). Finally, I don't think the concluding chapter, which proposes a 'status examination' of pieces to check for tactics on each move, is well-rounded enough to qualify as a fully blown (or fully practical) thinking system - it's more an interesting idea.
But all of these are minor gripes; most chess players have a stack of books that they've never properly read and the great thing about this book is it won't be one of them. I'm rated about 1750 elo and I think anyone in a wide range from about 1200-2000 (ECF 75-175) will get an awful lot from this book. Highly recommended!
The content is well-structured and a lot of thought has been put into the layout to aid learning; the author is a firm proponent that chess is a visual game and will always turn to an example (and a diagram or three) when the text threatens to drift too far into theoretical realms. And some of the examples, for anyone who plays and appreciates the game, are dazzingly beautiful.
So why not 5 stars? Essentially, I think 5 stars should be reserved for the truly great books and although this book will undoubtedly improve your chess, I do have a few minor gripes. First, the fact that it's translated from German does occasionally show. It's nothing major, there are no sentences in verbs ending or anything like that, but some of the discussions on discoverers, principal attackers, target squares and so forth do get a bit teutonically obscure. One of the points picked up on the reviews on amazon.com is that the diagrams don't say whose turn it is to move, which makes it more difficult to try and calculate the moves for yourself before reading the text (my top tip is that if the example is fromone of Mikhail Tal's games, then it's usually going to be Tal to move!). Finally, I don't think the concluding chapter, which proposes a 'status examination' of pieces to check for tactics on each move, is well-rounded enough to qualify as a fully blown (or fully practical) thinking system - it's more an interesting idea.
But all of these are minor gripes; most chess players have a stack of books that they've never properly read and the great thing about this book is it won't be one of them. I'm rated about 1750 elo and I think anyone in a wide range from about 1200-2000 (ECF 75-175) will get an awful lot from this book. Highly recommended!
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
New edition coming soon
I got caught by the Book Depository who sent me old stock without the 'whose move' annotations. Of course you can mark them in but it was 2 hours I would rather have spent on... Read more
Published 4 months ago by lsur
This is a real gem
I'll keep it real short.
This book by Martin Weteschnik on tactics and how to understand the concept is the best on the market. Read more
This book by Martin Weteschnik on tactics and how to understand the concept is the best on the market. Read more
Published 14 months ago by Grønborg
Improved edition of an excellent book
I completely agree with the other reviewers that this is an excellent book to improve your chess skills. Read more
Published 21 months ago by Leo F
Good for the next level
This book's logical ordering and presentation leave something to be desired and there are not enough exercises. Read more
Published on 18 Mar 2008 by x iLeon
Outstanding explanations!
In the last few years there has been an abundance of chess books in the market, and even though a large portion of those are related to openings, there has been a fair share of... Read more
Published on 1 Aug 2007 by Sebastian Fernandez
THE REAL DEAL
After spending time on countless tactics and learning how to spot the tactic in a puzzle but not being able to create it over the board Martin Weteschnik has struck gold in... Read more
Published on 29 May 2007 by Mr. A. J. Fisher
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