Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #260147 in Books
• Published on: 1996-11-01
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 256 pages

Ingram
Third in Grandmaster Lev Alburt's Comprehensive Chess Course series. The first two volumes used only materials that worked well in the former U.S.S.R. This book contains hundreds of strikingly beautiful positions arranged by difficulty and designed to sharpen the tactical recognition and vision of experienced players anywhere. Nothing is left to chance.

Customer Reviews

Please Read
This book is good.
It presents many tactical motifs and defines them clearly, so that you can instantly recognize them, and put them into practice in your very own games. Of course this is all excellent, however, i have to say, that there are many others books, which offer the same instruction at a lower price, and dont mislead you. There is no secret to this book, apart from teh very well organised method of chess study. This book is good for begginers, who want to improve fast, and those of you who are intermediate players or above, will surely benifit from reviewing the material presented in this book, however i beleive players above begginer strength should buy (Test you chess IQ: First challenge) - these are a set of tactics books, which present tests, which are to be carried out as if it were you playing in a tournament. Its much better for a stronger player.

Just the Best book on tactics a beginner can buy
As I am well on the way to master level starting out from scratch I think I can give a good overview.
Fisrtly most chess players have a tendency to jump from book to book, thats a lot of time wasted. What I like about this book is all the key info on tactics is in the book so you do not have to get tactics info from several books. Yes thats a lot of time saving and money saved. All the keys areas (Pins, Discovered check, Xray etc) are included with both classic and modern examples. There are exercises at the end of each chapter to test your and reinforoce your knowledge.
Two years ago I went all the way through this book and jumped about 200 elo points. You can do about 10 pages each day easily (Approx 1 to 1 1/2 hours). So you can finish the book in a month. Every 6 mths I revise the book and each time I understand the examples to a deeper level. When I first went through it was understanding that these ideas existed (pins for example). Now when I look at the diagram I see the motifs, how and why these tactics exist e.g. Bishop control of key diagonal, over worked piece, etc. Its amazing now on ICC I see the motifs and my opponents just seem to place the pieces where I want them to, and the combination results. So this book covers it all along with the next volume (King in Jeapody) they are all you need to reach to master level. Especially good in this book is the calculation chapter which is over 40 pages long and is the last chapter. You would need to buy Kotov's Think like a GM and Soltis's book to get this info. How do we calculate variations? Its laid out in a simple yet effective way. In a nutshell all the info is easy to understand, comprehensive, practical and can be reviewed again and again. This book should raise your Elo about 100 to 200 points. Yes there is a lot of off beat advertising in the book; However the secret Russian method is there, 1) The best most efficient examples so you maximise study time. 2) Ideas are reinforced with end of chapter questions that you can solve under time pressure. 3)There is chess culture, examples are from all chess eras, today's ideas do not originate in a vacuum they progress from the greats of old (Capablance, Alekhine, Morphy etc...). I will also be reviewing the Pirc & Just the facts books in separate reviews. Thanks, email me if you want other chess book reviews (I have over 60 books, that I use not 1000 on the shelf lol)

good
This is a good book on chess tactics. After reading this book i felt my tactical play improved by at least thirty percent and that i was as good at finding combinations as a master. Altough i can't promise you such an increase in your tactical ability (unless your a genius like me [hey, im only joking]), i do believe that reading this book would significantly improve your tactical play.

P.S I am not a lev alburt fan. In fact i greatly despise him and think that the rest of the books in his comprehensive chess course (ccc) series are nothing but hyped up nonsense.