What's inside
- 1,008 chess puzzles, every one taken from a real game
- Eleven tactical motifs: forks, pins, skewers, discovered attacks, deflection, decoys, double attacks, removing the defender, hanging pieces, back-rank mates and checkmates
- Two graded sections — easy up to 1200, then medium from 1200 to 1500
- Nothing longer than two moves, so every solution is findable at the board
- 253 one-move puzzles for fast pattern drilling, including 144 mate-in-one
- Twelve diagrams to a page on 8.5 × 11 paper, with full solutions, 119 pages
The positions are drawn from the Lichess CC0 puzzle database, which means each one occurred in a game somebody actually played and lost. That matters: composed problems teach you to solve composed problems, while real positions teach you to recognise the shapes that turn up in your own games. Every puzzle is rated, and the book is ordered by that rating, so the difficulty climbs at a measured pace instead of jumping around.
Who this book is for
New players
You know how the pieces move and keep losing material anyway. The one-move puzzles fix that faster than any amount of reading.
Improvers under 1500
The 400-1500 rating band is where most club players lose games to a tactic they could have seen.
Coaches and chess parents
A thousand rated, graded puzzles is a term's worth of material that needs no preparation.
Good to know
- Trim size 8.5 × 11 inches, 119 pages, paperback
- Puzzle ratings run from 400 to 1497 — this is a beginner and improver book, not a book of studies
- Each diagram states which side is to move; solutions are given in algebraic notation
- Puzzle positions are CC0-licensed from the Lichess database
- Working with a younger player? Chess Tactics for Kids uses larger diagrams, six to a page
Stop missing the tactic. Get your copy on Amazon and start with the one-movers.