Rating: 
Summary: A Little Different
Review: I own both of Reinfeld's tactical books and enjoy them very much. This book is very different. This book uses grouping by difficulty. Grouping by difficulty is not any better but it is a nice change of pace. There are far too many of the easy one star * problems in the book. Most players are not going to get much from these so it would have been better to limit the number to about 50. The very hard four star **** problems make up for the hundreds of easy problems.
The first thing I noticed as I took this book out of the box was that it is slightly larger than most puzzle books. I don't mean thicker but rather the pages are larger. That means either 8 problems per page vs the normal 6 or the diagrams must be a little bigger. Wrong! The larger pages contain just 6 standard size puzzles and allot of blank white space. I see much room for improvement!
The biggest disappointment for me was the annotations in the back of the book. The puzzles mix up the "white to move" and "black to move" problems so you really have to pay attention to this as you go. It will slow you down a little. The answers are in algebraic format ....well kind of. When a piece captures another piece it is not fully annotated. For example Bishop takes Knight is normally annotated like BxNf6 or simply BxN. In this book it will just read Bf6. There is absolutely no indication of a capture. And if you think that is annoying wait until you get slowed down because you didn't notice a discovered check. This book does not use the standard + to indicate a check. Bf6+ tells me allot more than Bf6. It is important to do puzzles as quickly as possible but the incomplete annotation will slow even an experienced player.
One the plus side this book contains very few errors. Each of Reinfeld's books cost less than 10$ and are better written. This book is hard to read and at 20$ costs more than twice as much. Tackle Reinfeld's two books first. Buy this book only if you want some more (different) puzzles to solve. And only if you have too much money in your pocket.
Rating: 
Summary: Impressive all around Chess Study Guide
Review: As another reviewer noted, this book is a massive chess course masquerading as a tactics excercise. After doing the first 500 o so excercises 3 times, I find that I am playing very strong "positional" chess which naturally comes from understanding the tactical potential in the position.My advice is do all the 1-2 star probelms in the whole book 2 times, then go back on your third pass to do the 3 star problems while tryng to guess the best move on the 4 star puzzles(it would take way to long to try to do all of the 4 star ones in your head). Then on your 4th pass through the book you should be able to go cover to cover exceedingly fast and you will be amazed at your improved play! As a supplement i would say to use 1001 winning chess tactics to study types of tactics that you notice you are having a hard time seeing. After doing the two books 3x+ each, you will be a tactical AND __positional__ machine!
Rating:
Summary: A well thought out progression of tactical problems
Review: Before launching into it, I thought this book would be nothing special: it consists of a list of tactical problems, with solutions in the back. But the list of problems was obviously very carefully thought out. It contains a variety of different tactical themes. These are interspersed, so that in any position you're not sure what you're looking for. On the other hand, uses of a similar theme occur fairly close together, so that if you had to learn a theme by looking up a solution in the back, you're given a chance to use it before you forget it, solidifying its place in your bag of tricks. The problems also increase in difficulty on average as you go through the book, but there are easy problems interspersed throughout so that you don't get discouraged. This is a wonderful book. Although I'm not really a serious chess player, I find myself drawn in by it, and can go through the problems for hours at a time. I'm very happy I bought this book, and it's a bargain.
Rating: 
Summary: excellent book to develop your tactical muscle
Review: Beginners beware! There are no explanations in this book. "Sharpen Your Tactics" is simply a book of chess problems, six per page, and a one-line solution in the back. Spend a couple of days with Part 1 of Seirawan's "Winning Chess Tactics" before tackling this tome. I have not yet made it through the book, but I have reached a point (mid 400s) where the level of difficulty is slowing me down. The gradual progression in difficulty and the repetition of important ideas (i.e., the same move to checkmate over and over again, in different positions) makes me appreciate how much time and thought was put into this volume. For people who are as bad as I am (haven't played any tournies, but I am rated around 1250 on Yahoo's chess site), I would also recommend getting the Chessmaster 9000 software to help out. Sometimes I just couldn't figure out how a position wins even after looking at the solution, or I couldn't figure out why the solution I came up with wasn't just as good. Setting up the position in Chessmaster 9000 and stepping through the variations has been *very* helpful. Now I just wish that someone would create a CD with all of the chess positions in PGN format....
Rating:
Summary: excellent book to develop your tactical muscle
Review: Beginners beware! There are no explanations in this book. "Sharpen Your Tactics" is simply a book of chess problems, six per page, and a one-line solution in the back. Spend a couple of days with Part 1 of Seirawan's "Winning Chess Tactics" before tackling this tome. I have not yet made it through the book, but I have reached a point (mid 400s) where the level of difficulty is slowing me down. The gradual progression in difficulty and the repetition of important ideas (i.e., the same move to checkmate over and over again, in different positions) makes me appreciate how much time and thought was put into this volume. For people who are as bad as I am (haven't played any tournies, but I am rated around 1250 on Yahoo's chess site), I would also recommend getting the Chessmaster 9000 software to help out. Sometimes I just couldn't figure out how a position wins even after looking at the solution, or I couldn't figure out why the solution I came up with wasn't just as good. Setting up the position in Chessmaster 9000 and stepping through the variations has been *very* helpful. Now I just wish that someone would create a CD with all of the chess positions in PGN format....
Rating:
Summary: excellent book to develop your tactical muscle
Review: Beginners beware! There are no explanations in this book. "Sharpen Your Tactics" is simply a book of chess problems, six per page, and a one-line solution in the back. Spend a couple of days with Part 1 of Seirawan's "Winning Chess Tactics" before tackling this tome. I have not yet made it through the book, but I have reached a point (mid 400s) where the level of difficulty is slowing me down. The gradual progression in difficulty and the repetition of important ideas (i.e., the same move to checkmate over and over again, in different positions) makes me appreciate how much time and thought was put into this volume. For people who are as bad as I am (haven't played any tournies, but I am rated around 1250 on Yahoo's chess site), I would also recommend getting the Chessmaster 9000 software to help out. Sometimes I just couldn't figure out how a position wins even after looking at the solution, or I couldn't figure out why the solution I came up with wasn't just as good. Setting up the position in Chessmaster 9000 and stepping through the variations has been *very* helpful. Now I just wish that someone would create a CD with all of the chess positions in PGN format....
Rating:
Summary: the tactics training book race . . .
Review: I have all these tactics books and the question is: which one? Well, it essentially comes down to this book or Fred Reinfeld's combo book. Hays' Combination Challenge is just Fred's book in algebraic notation (but useless if you already have Fred's book, unless you hate descriptive notation), and the other book in this genre, 303 Tactical Chess Problems, is for absolute beginner's (1100-1400). I'm personally 1650-1700 USCF (1750 ICC) and would like to tell the differences between these books in my opinion. Lein's book, above, has the following good points : 1) scrambled themes (like a real chess game, no hints as to what you're looking for), 2) the last 200 puzzles (the 4 stars) are harder than anything in Fred's book by a factor of 5!, 3) far more accurate, only found 1 error, so far, by my looking with Fritz/craty18, 4) algebraic notation, 5) many puzzles feature pins+skewers+double attacks+ . . . like REAL combos, not one ISOLATED amateurish tactic. Negatives: 1) overemphasis on mate and stalemate it feels like 75% of problems involve mating threat (in some ways, therefore, oriented to beginning players, and ruining the quality of better players by encouraging you to attack always, even if the position doesn't warrant it . . . so play becomes weak and trappy with overuse), 2) if you find a weakness in your play, like double attacks were weak for me with a Chessbase quiz, you can't get a 100 problems of that theme in one place with which to train (no thematic grouping), 3) the focus on combos of complexity versus single themes makes it hard to implement this stuff in your play -- e.g. you usually plan discovered checks, so having that motif in your head helps you plan. Lein's technique just sharpens tactical OBSERVATION not tactical PLANNING, and 4) some of the problems esp number 1000 and following (at least for me at 1700) are just too hard to do without a board (people who can do this whole book without a board are either not finished, lying, or over USCF expert class . . . Lein says in the introduction to use a board for 3 and 4 stars (although only the 4 stars require, the final position in my head on the 3 stars is occasionally fuzzy . . . ). In short, I prefer ol' Fred's book for actual training, and if I want to see a fancy combo I look at an Alekhine game or read the Informant combo museum piece (Anthology of Combos . . .). Also, my 6 year old son (600 rating) does the first 100 or so problems easily, and as the end problems are like 1900+, you can see the book tries to go from 400 to master, which is a little ridiculous, so that no matter who you are, only like 150 of the 1000+ problems are pitched right at your level. Fred's book is all about 1400-1900 I think, with some reservations at both ends of that range. So for me, my chess weight-lifting tool is still --- Reinfeld's book.
Rating:
Summary: Very good puzzle book
Review: I haven't read the whole book yet. In fact, I haven't even made it halfway, but I know enough about it to write a review. First of all, this is a puzzle book with lots of tactics, such as forks and different kinds of mates. It rates the difficulty of each diagram with littles stars: *=easy position, **=average to difficult position, ***=difficult position, and ****=very difficult position. Another good thing about it is that there's a large amount of puzzles: 1125 The reason I give this book four stars is because most of the problems are too difficult for me. I can get a ton of the one and two-star problems, but the three and four-star ones are very, very difficult to get. I also found a mistake in the book. Anyway, this is a still very good tactics book. If you know a lot about tactics, then you should buy it. One last thing...
This is not a good boook for introducing beginners to tactics. Why? Because it doesn't explain the tactics. It just gives you the diagram to work on, and when you want to, you can look at the answer.
Rating:
Summary: Good intro to tactics for Beginners
Review: I own both this book and Lou Hays' "Combination Challenge". Of the two, I prefer the latter. However, I find that both are good collections of puzzles, from easy to extremely difficult, study of which has most assuredly improved my playing. I found two main problems with this book: First, for my taste the puzzles in this book seem to be a bit too repititous. While two or three puzzles of the same "ilk" in quick succsssion is a nice way to reinforce a concept, many pages in this book have several puzzles that are different in only the most trivial way. In "Combination Challenge" the "themes" of each puzzle require a bit more work to spot. Second, the solutions pages at the back of the book are presented in a rather prefunctory manner and are difficult to read. It is a rather akward arrangement that the author chose to put the citation of the game from which the puzzle came BEFORE the solution itself . This makes finding the start of the solution a visual challenge and I've found myself frustrated at the effort I waste finding my place as I flip back and forth between the puzzles and the solutions. Also, the notation used is as "telegraphic" as I've ever seen. The authors, for example, negect to note captures with an "x" (as in "Bxe6). This is a small complaint about a defect that is akin to a speaker of English leaving out the word "the." On the positive side, I enjoy the star rating system the Lein and Archangelsky have given to the puzzles. This makes the book suitable for many levels of player. This book will prove especially useful for those who are relatively new to chess, as many of the one and two-star puzzles are quite easy (unlike "Combination Challenge", in which there are only a few "easy" puzzles per chapter.) That the puzzles are presented without comment or thematic organization (eg,. back row mate, knight fork etc,.) is, in a way, a strength. This makes it useful to the more advanced player who must decipher for him or her self what the main idea of the puzzle is. (This is akin to the "smorgasbord" chapter in "Combination Challenge") If you really want to get serious about tactics, I'd get both books.
Rating:
Summary: Great tactics - improvements of 1001 tactics format
Review: I really liked the format of this book. I love tactics books. The kind with no text in them, and page after page of nothing but chess diagrams. The kind that people on an airplane look at you funny when you are "reading" them. This book is very similar to the other tactics books out there, but with some improvements that I think are nice. One improvement is that the tactics are labeled with a * symbol to show how difficult the problem is. The more stars the harder it is. This is a nice break from the Reinfeld books which will have a mate in one followed by a mate in ten, and you have no idea beforehand how hard the problem is going to be. I personally like to have some idea of what I am getting into. Another nice feature is that the answers show where the game came from. I think that this is a nice touch, and gives credit to the people that actually played the game. A lot of books don't do this, and you see puzzles where you know where the game came from - "Oh yeah this is the opera box game", etc, but the author gives no credit where it is due. I also like that the answers are in algebraic notation, as opposed to descriptive ("e4" versus "pawn to king 4"). Reinfeld's books still have the old school style. One note is that the notation is not really standard. Bxe3 would be Be3, which is a little odd. I got confused at least once when looking up an answer and did not see the "x". I assumed I had the wrong answer when I didn't. But once you know this is the format they use, you can adjust. But it would be nice to see the standard used in the first place. Overall great tactics book. If you like doing tactics til your eyes bleed, and want something that could be used as part of a "400 points in 400 days" type of study program, this is a good one to add to your collection.
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