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Rating: 
Summary: Keeping things simple
Review: A superb book to streamline your thoughts about sacrificial play. This book gives you a broad framework without cluttering the general themes with a dense amount of similar examples or analyses. Although this is a relatively small book it contains more usable information for the average chessplayer than books double it's size. This gem could be used again and again to review your own games, just to make sure your sacs fit your framework to make them rational and succesful. As usual and especially with older chessbooks reading them in their original language (that's German in this case) is preferable whenever your language skills are up to it.
Rating: 
Summary: An exiciting attacker's combat handbook for chess warriors!!
Review: Rudolph Spielmann's book is a fascinating insight into the thinking that inspires successful attacking play. Spielmann, an Austrian master, was considered of the most ferocious attackers of his days in the 1920's. His style of play is strikingly similar to the celebrated Mikhail Tal. If Alexei Shirov is today considered the descendant of Tal, then Spielmann should be considered his forerunner. Spielmann's philosophy was total distain of material in pursuit of the greater goal of mating the king. His book gives numerous examples of his play and would recommend this book to anyone who loves Tal. The book contains complete games played by Spielmann against some of the leading players of his time and is grouped into thematic chapters. The only slight drawback is the book is in the descriptive notation but this a small price to pay for this frank and personal insight into the mind of an attacking genius.
Rating:
Summary: A must read
Review: Spielmann was a great combinative player from the first half of the 20th century. He played against Capablanca, Alekhine, Lasker, Tarrasch, Rubinstein etc. In this fabulous book he explains the foundation of combinative play: deep positional understanding, and not necessarily calculation power. In practical play it is most of the times not possible to calculate all the ramifications of a "real sacrifice" (this is Spielmann's therminology for those sacrifices which do not yield an immediate check mate or recovery of the material sacrificed). In such cases the sacrifice is based on positional understanding, not calculation power. Tal used to play like this; Shirov comes to mind as another example. A classic book. For this price do not think twice: buy it!
Rating:
Summary: A must read
Review: This is not a book bean counters will enjoy to say the very least :)... If you like to throw caution to the wind and go for broke... This is a pretty good book to consider picking up and reading :)... It uses old descriptive notation so that might not go over well with some. Still just reading the words I found to be pretty enjoyable. I like how he talks about the Sham sac and some other things. For the price it is really worth thinking about getting with another book or order. The contents of the book are setup sorta interesting...Part 1 deals with
The Various Types of Sacrifices Sham Sacrifices, Positional Sacrifices, Sacrifices for gain and Mating Sacrifice... Then he gets into what he calls Real Sacrifices... They include Sacs for development, Obstructive Sacs, Preventing (or anti-castling) Sacs... Other sacs he gets into are Line-Clearance Sacs, Vacating Sacs, Deflecting or Decoy Sacs, (Castled) King's Field Sac and King-Hunt Sac... Part II deals with Sacrificial Values :)... This mostly consists of the Exchange Sac and the Queen Sac... A few examples are given for each of the listed type of sacs... So its pretty interesting how they break it up in the Contents page... This book is also 197 pages, so its pretty good value for the price. If this book might fit your style, I would think about picking it up...
Rating:
Summary: Classic Book on Sacrifice...
Review: This is not a book bean counters will enjoy to say the very least :)... If you like to throw caution to the wind and go for broke... This is a pretty good book to consider picking up and reading :)... It uses old descriptive notation so that might not go over well with some. Still just reading the words I found to be pretty enjoyable. I like how he talks about the Sham sac and some other things. For the price it is really worth thinking about getting with another book or order. The contents of the book are setup sorta interesting... Part 1 deals with
The Various Types of Sacrifices Sham Sacrifices, Positional Sacrifices, Sacrifices for gain and Mating Sacrifice... Then he gets into what he calls Real Sacrifices... They include Sacs for development, Obstructive Sacs, Preventing (or anti-castling) Sacs... Other sacs he gets into are Line-Clearance Sacs, Vacating Sacs, Deflecting or Decoy Sacs, (Castled) King's Field Sac and King-Hunt Sac... Part II deals with Sacrificial Values :)... This mostly consists of the Exchange Sac and the Queen Sac... A few examples are given for each of the listed type of sacs... So its pretty interesting how they break it up in the Contents page... This book is also 197 pages, so its pretty good value for the price. If this book might fit your style, I would think about picking it up...
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