The advice frequently given to chess-players eager to improve their results is straightforward: study tactics! But there is often little useful guidance as to how this is best done. By solving puzzle positions? Or endgame studies? By dissecting the games of great tacticians?
Few books present a structured approach to tactics, so this book fills a valuable niche in the ambitious player's library. The authors present each major tactical theme in turn, explaining how it works and providing inspiring examples. They then explain how you can spot the idea in your own games and use it to your advantage. You immediately get a chance to put your knowledge to the test, as there are challenging exercises throughout the whole book, with detailed solutions.
The second part of the book offers more advanced material, and takes us inside the professional's tactics laboratory. Here we see how tactical themes are combined, and employed to achieve strategic goals. We are also shown how grandmasters spot the targets for their breathtaking combinations, which we thus come to see not as sheer witchcraft, but as the product of disciplined thought and training.
Bulgarian grandmaster Dejan Bojkov is an extremely active player and writer on chess, whose reports appear on chessbase.com and in Chess Today , among many others.Vladimir Georgiev is also a grandmaster from Bulgaria, who now plays for the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia - he has won the national championship of both countries. He is the trainer of former Women's World Champion, grandmaster Antoaneta Stefanova.
Content
004 Symbols
005 Introduction
Part 1: The Basics
007 1 Pin
016 2 Deflection
023 3 Overload
028 4 Decoy
036 5 Double Attack
044 6 Knight Fork
050 7 Discovered Attack
056 8 Clearance
064 9 Obstruction
071 10 Removing the Defender
077 11 The Power of the Pawn
085 12 Back-Rank Mate
091 13 Stalemate
096 14 Perpetual Check and Fortresses
Part 2: Advanced Tactics
103 15 f7: Weak by Presumption
111 16 The Vulnerable Rook's Pawn
118 17 Attacking the Fianchetto
125 18 The Mystery of the Opposite-Coloured Bishops
131 19 Chess Highways: Open Files
141 20 Trapping a Piece
149 21 Practice Makes Perfect
158 Solutions
188 Index of Players
191 Index of Composers
Few books present a structured approach to tactics, so this book fills a valuable niche in the ambitious player's library. The authors present each major tactical theme in turn, explaining how it works and providing inspiring examples. They then explain how you can spot the idea in your own games and use it to your advantage. You immediately get a chance to put your knowledge to the test, as there are challenging exercises throughout the whole book, with detailed solutions.
The second part of the book offers more advanced material, and takes us inside the professional's tactics laboratory. Here we see how tactical themes are combined, and employed to achieve strategic goals. We are also shown how grandmasters spot the targets for their breathtaking combinations, which we thus come to see not as sheer witchcraft, but as the product of disciplined thought and training.
Bulgarian grandmaster Dejan Bojkov is an extremely active player and writer on chess, whose reports appear on chessbase.com and in Chess Today , among many others.Vladimir Georgiev is also a grandmaster from Bulgaria, who now plays for the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia - he has won the national championship of both countries. He is the trainer of former Women's World Champion, grandmaster Antoaneta Stefanova.
Content
004 Symbols
005 Introduction
Part 1: The Basics
007 1 Pin
016 2 Deflection
023 3 Overload
028 4 Decoy
036 5 Double Attack
044 6 Knight Fork
050 7 Discovered Attack
056 8 Clearance
064 9 Obstruction
071 10 Removing the Defender
077 11 The Power of the Pawn
085 12 Back-Rank Mate
091 13 Stalemate
096 14 Perpetual Check and Fortresses
Part 2: Advanced Tactics
103 15 f7: Weak by Presumption
111 16 The Vulnerable Rook's Pawn
118 17 Attacking the Fianchetto
125 18 The Mystery of the Opposite-Coloured Bishops
131 19 Chess Highways: Open Files
141 20 Trapping a Piece
149 21 Practice Makes Perfect
158 Solutions
188 Index of Players
191 Index of Composers