Improve Your Chess Tactics: 700 Practical Lessons & Exercises

by Yakov Neishtadt

The best advice for chess players who want to improve quickly is: get better at tactics! Simply because the vast majority of amateur games is decided through tactics you will immediately start beating more opponents when you improve your tactical skills. Experienced Russian chess master Jakov Neishtadt has selected those examples that have the biggest instructional value for club players. In the first part of the book Neishstadt teaches a systematic course on the most important tactical themes. The second part consist of an exam with hundreds of tests from real-life chess, in random order so as not to give unwelcome hints on how to solve them. The solutions are not just lists of moves, but include instructive prose.

Genres: Chess

384 pages, Paperback

First published April 16, 2011

Reviews

[Jim · Rating 5 out of 5]

Of the tactic books I own this ranks up with the best. Currently working with it and not finished. My chess tactical journey is perhaps never ending and looping through books I read in the past.

What I like about this book is ...
attractive chess tactics
to the point and not overly lengthy discussion of the problem and answers.
On a kindle paperwhite ,each puzzle is a page and links to the solution and discussion which is handy !

Seems like there is an overlap in many of the problems which I believe many came from 64 magazine and the Blokhs Combinational Motifs (Ct-ART) pulls from 64 as well.
At the end of the book is a final exam with new positions without explanation of the motif

[Cody Oldham · Rating 5 out of 5]

For what it is a great tactics book.

[Ishamael Moridin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have had many tactics books. Reinfeld, Averbakh, 5000 Combinations by Polgar, Book of Combinations by Keene, even the incredibly difficult puzzle book by Nunn.

Some people on Amazon believe this book to be outdated, because the puzzles featured here are older. I disagree. If you study tactics the right way, you know how to get the most benefit even out of exercises you already solved.

For the sake of reference, I am an average B player. My chess.com tactics rating comes and goes between 2600-2700, my lichess rating keeps moving between 2200 and 2400 and the gameknot one stays around 2000-2020. I doubt they reflect my true tactics level which should be closer to 1800.

And for what it is worth, this book remains my favorite. The exercises are not just instructive. After a while, that would not be enough to motivate me. They do introduce typical patterns, but the patterns happen to be beautiful, which is always easier to remember.

The book is, of course much easier than Nunn's, but harder than Reinfeld's and many other advanced tactics books. Psakhis' is probably harder objectively too, but did not interest me with its presentation yet as much as Neishtadt.

I can and did solve everything in it, but it does not mean that I remember everything in it and can use it in my one minute games, which means I keep coming back to it again and again until I remember it all by heart.

The only one I found close to it in the level of enjoyment was the puzzles based on the games of my favorite champion, you might have guessed it, Mikhail Tal. It's the only tactics book I would personally consider user friendly. And the only tactics book I ended up keeping so far.

[Carl · Rating 4 out of 5]

A tough tactical work out, starting with some simpler positions but getting much harder. In fact, some of the later exercises felt like playable exercises. This is superb material for a chess coach

[Evan Seghers · Rating 5 out of 5]

An excellent book with some very difficult puzzles, especially the final exam section.

[TjeerdFokkens · Rating 3 out of 5]

Quite a good chess tactics book for the advanced player. Especially the first part has instructive material with insightful explanations helping you recognise patterns. Most of the book, though, consists of puzzles, which is not bad in itself, but the level of difficulty varies too widely. If, for example, one can just solve the 5 move combinations, one cannot be expected to also be able to solve 10-movers. Conversely, if the reader can solve 10 move combinations, the 5 move combinations become trivial. Either way, the instructive value is suboptimal and makes sometimes an annoying read. That said, the first part is great for reviewing a certain pattern/technique that one wants to have some extra practice with.