Chess Tactics - Volume 3: Sharpen your tactical ability daily on your way to mastery

by Carsten Hansen, Jonathan Tisdall (Foreword)

The follow-up to the internationally bestselling volume 1.

Are you ready to seriously improve your game?It has been said that chess is 99% tactics but whether that is an accurate reflection is hard to tell. Nevertheless, it is important.

But if you are like most players, you only discover the tactics after you come home and run through your game with a chess engine. So what to do? In the present book, you will be challenged 404 times but unlike most tactics puzzle books you don't know what your objective do I need to find a mate, find an opportunity skewer or pin a piece, use a tactical turn to gain a positional advantage and how far do I need to calculate?These questions are you are faced with when you play your own games and therefore this book tries to replicate this position. Your one advantage over the players in the respective positions is that you know that there is supposed to be something in there for you to find.The puzzles vary a lot in difficulty, some are relatively easy, some are incredibly difficult, but most are somewhere in between. However, most of the puzzles are layered so that even when you think the answer is obvious, it is worth looking further because your idea may be the decoy left there for you to get distracted from the actual solution.Working through the puzzles and then carefully play through the thoroughly annotated solutions will help you to up your tactical radar as well as your calculation skills.So if you are up for the challenge, here is the opportunity to take the leap forward. Good luck!

360 pages, Kindle Edition

Published March 3, 2020

About the author

Carsten Hansen, a Danish FIDE Master at Chess, was born in 1971, a year where the winter came very early and heavy to the region of Denmark where his parents had settled. After his father had shoveled snow for five hours he realized that not even the main roads were being cleared anymore. The national guard came to pick up his pregnant wife and eight hours later Carsten was brought into the world.
At age 14, Carsten became the youngest master player in chess in Denmark at the time. he was, however, soon surpassed by a player that came to play an important role in his writing career several years later, Peter Heine Nielsen.
After a trip to the Soviet Union/Russia (the switch happened during the visit) at the end of 1991, Carsten put his full-time chess-playing days behind him to pursue a career in the shipping industry (where he is still employed).
In late 1995, Carsten was contacted by Peter Heine Nielsen to co-author a chess book on the "Sicilian Accelerated Dragon". Peter had been offered a contract but felt that he wouldn't be able to write the book on his own and since Carsten had played the opening his entire life, it was a natural fit. The book was released in 1998 to high acclaim and near universal positive reviews.
Carsten being eager to write more, contacted another publisher, the recently started Gambit Publications, to write more chess books, whereas Peter pursued his own chess career, reaching a rating peak of above 2700 (the highest for a Danish player) and later became the coach for World Champion Anand from India and is currently coaching the reigning World Champion, Magnus Carlsen.
Carsten then wrote: "The Gambit Guide to the English Opening: 1...e5", "Symmetrical English", "Nimzo-Indian: 4 e3", and "Improve Your Positional Chess", his best-reviewed work to date, it has subsequently been translated into Spanish "Mejore Su Ajedrez Posicional". Recently, the English version book has been released in e-format.
After that, Carsten and Gambit parted ways.
From 1999 to 2013, Carsten was a columnist for the very popular website, ChessCafe.com, run by Hanon Russell. For Russell Enterprises, Carsten co-authored a book with American International Master John Donaldson, "A Strategic Opening Repertoire" and then wrote "Back to Basics: Openings". Another book in the "Back to Basics..." series, on endings is in production. Carsten and Russell Enterprises has released two new titles in the "Winning Quickly at Chess Series", "Miniatures in the Sicilian Najdorf" and "Miniatures in the Queen's Indian: 4 g3", with several more to come in 2016 and 2017.
In October 2016, Carsten's most recent work "The Sicilian Dragon - move by move" was published by Everyman Chess. Two further titles in that series are in production and are due to be released in 2017.
Carsten Hansen lives and works just outside New York City, and still enjoys playing and writing about chess. Aside from his books, Carsten has been a contributor to Skakbladet, Chess Life, New In Chess Yearbook and most recently become a columnist for the new chess quarterly: American Chess Magazine.