1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations, 21st Century Edition (Fred Reinfeld Chess Classics)

This classic problem book by Master Reinfeld is an well-organized and excellent set of problems for beginner to advanced intermediate players. It is organized into 20 chapters of different problem categories. The explanations for each of the different chapters explain the general goal for the specified problem category thoroughly but briefly. The only quibble I have with Master Reinfeld is that he did not identify the source players and game for each puzzle.This is the classic puzzle book for strong American players of the Fischer-Spassky generation. I have spoken to many masters and experts of that generation that have happily used this book for problems. I have used this book on several occasions to prepare for USCF tournaments, usually after a playing layoff. In three separate tournaments I achieved 2200+ performance ratings using this book. I am using my real name to review this book, and it matches my USCF ID. Working through the puzzles in this book will add 100 points to your Elo rating if you are under 2000.Other similar books are the Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book by Grandmaster John Emms, and Chess, 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games, by Laszlo Polgar, the father of the famed Polgar sisters. All of these books are great books for tactics.There is another review of this book that does not do Master Reinfeld justice. He was a strong US master worthy of respect, not "dude". This book is not a waste of time, as this unidentified 1500+ player suggests. You certainly do not need 5-10,000 puzzles to improve your rating. And I finally suggest that you do not need the solution to a problem directly underneath the puzzle: I have not seen any puzzle book except for those written for complete beginners with such a format. Chess is not about instant gratification.Have fun with the book!Jerry Donahue

I'm rated about 1410 on chess.com blitz. I hold the class C status because of my checkmating/king attack skills, not because of my tactics, which are weaker.Some of the diagrams have the black squares so dark that it is hard to see the black pieces on them, but they are still readable. Most diagrams are good. For the price, I'm not complaining. I almost give it 4 stars though since the chapter name is printed at the bottom of each page. If a beginner needs that hint, they should look at the table of contents. But a stronger player has to open to a random page and cover the bottom of it in order to make the problems harder.Some people bad mouth this book because it is divided into sections that tell you the type of tactic, making the problem easier. Well, weak players have to start somewhere. This is a great book to follow Chess Tactics by Paul Littlewood, or Tactics of the Tournament Player by Lev Alburt or another beginner tactics book. This is not an instruction book, but is where you can practice the different types. Each chapter is introduced by about 2/3 page of explanation of what each tactic is, but not in the detail of a true primer. It even talks about a few of the problems, giving beginners hints if they read it. Stronger players can skip the introduction.There are 20 types of tactics, and the positions are beautifully instructive. The difficulty range actually is such that a less strong player can get better with this book. The chapter hint is not as useful as you'd think in some problems, and it is easy to forget what chapter you are in, so even some stronger players can still get something out of this. The difficulty level does vary from problem to problem, as seen by the number of moves in the answer section. 4 moves is most common, 8+ make up 10%, and 3 or less seem to be 30%. Despite the variability, the first page of so of each chapter seemed easy for me to solve, partially because I saw those problems in a primer book I'm currently working through.Once this book is mastered I'll go through the 1115 puzzles book (forgot the title, still in the mail), since it is a mix of themes that go from easy to hard. After I finish with that or get right to the last 100 which are super hard, I'll jump to The Complete Chess Workout with 1200 mixed problems of variable strength. I'll finish the 100 hardest problems after that.Tactics involves calculations, but humans don't consider every move like computers do. We know which moves are good candidates via pattern recognition. So memorize as many patterns as you can as fast as you can. Do some calculation drills too, but don't let slow calculation speed keep you from memorizing a thousand patterns in a timely manner. You are not a computer and you never will be able to analyze 200,000,000 positions per move like they do when they look 5 moves deep.

To play chess with any sort of competency, you must be able to spot the tactics on the board. To get good at spotting tactics, you must practice with lots and lots of tactics puzzles. Hence this book.This book has three flaws, which are not anywhere near as serious as some of the reviewers would have you believe.First, the solutions assume that the defender plays the obvious responses, but in many of the more complex problems there are other, often very nonobvious, responses that are superior and that defeat the attack. However, for the intended reader of this book this flaw is actually not a flaw at all, because the reader with the intended level of skill will have a hard enough time finding the *obvious* responses; he or she will not care in the least that a nonobvious, deeply hidden, better response was available.Second, the book provides hints by grouping problems into categories, whereas real games don't provide hints. Readers who don't want the hints can simply ignore the chapter headings and choose a random problem from the book. The bigger overarching hint that cannot be ignored is the fact that the mere *presence* of a board in this book indicates that it contains a combination. In a real game determining whether a combination is available is hard.Third, the book is written in descriptive notation. For some reason, many chess reviewers love to whine about descriptive notation. The fact is that descriptive and algebraic notations are equally easy to read. The only real drawback of descriptive notation occurs when you are reading a game and want to back up to an earlier position; for that, only algebraic notation provides the necessary information about where pieces came from. For a book like this one, however, descriptive notation is perfectly fine. Learn to read it. It's fun.In short: If you want to get better at chess tactics, study this book.

This is an excellent book. It is obviously important to learn to find combinations or to develop skill so that tactics stare out at you where before you might have missed them. This book is a great opportunity to become very strong at spotting winning combinations, (ie, combinations that result in an advantage, and in this book this means material or the game, and not positional as far as I can tell). There are 1001 problems and they are in no particular order in terms of difficulty. They are grouped into chapters covering all the tactics; revealed attacks, pins, forks, the overworked piece, etc etc, (there are 20 such chapters), and for each chapter there are a lot of problems where white is to move first and then a similar number of problems where black is to move first. The reason that it is good that there are both white and black problems is that you practice finding combinations to use yourself, and also practice spotting your opponent's possible combinations. These problems are often very challenging, and there is no warning when a challenging one is coming up, (most are challenging in my opinion though, but some obviously very challenging), and this makes it more of a simulation of a real game. Also, one thing that massively impressed me is that every problem looks like it was taken from a real game. The pieces aren't in bizarre places; most of the problems are from games that look extremely familiar if you have played a lot. This means that the problems are highly applicable, and by practicing looking for combinations in these problems, ability at the board should automatically improve by a lot. The one downside in some peoples' opinions, as with any chess book, is that the notation is not algebraic, but I would argue that for this book that is a trivial point. All you have to interpret are a few different possible courses at most because a lot of the combinations are forced. I admit that reading a chess book such as one that annotates openings or entire games in depth would be a major annoyance with classical notation, but for this problems book I don't think it makes any difference. The difficulty of reading the notation is nothing to the difficulty of the problems, so in the time that you take trying to work them out it wouldn't be difficult to 'translate' the classical notation into algebraic if it makes things easier, for the particular problem that you are attempting. Most of the pages of the book just consist of six board diagrams.I have only positive things to say about this book. I think that it is an excellent aid to improvement of tactical ability in chess, and particularly because the problems are clearly taken from typical games. If classic notation really is a problem, don't worry because there is an explanation/key to it in the front pages of the book.

Analysing middle game positions is essential to becoming a better chess player. This book is basically a collection of 1000 boards categorised in various types of middlegame motif, e.g. pins, sacrifices etc.Whilst it is very useful to look at positions like this one of the problems of chess is that real games do not come with "white to win in 2" guidance so when you are told that this combination contains a pin it is not a realistic analytical situation. That said, practise is good and you get 1000 different positions to analyse in one book. It's a great feeling to get them right and the solutions are at the back of the book. You should note the solutions are in old style annotation i.e. PQ4 instead of d4.My three star rating loses one star from the full five for the above comments on situations in chess learning not being realistic, and also one star off for the fact my copy has begun to have the pages fall from the stitching in the spine without me really doing anything to warrant that! Still a great book if you want to set up a position and get thinking.

I think this chess puzzle book is really really good - it was exactly what I wanted and needed. However 1 thing I did hate though and truly bothered me... the old chess notation system. If you're familiar with it great if you aren't it will spoil the whole experience.

The puzzles themselves are great and well organized, however only 15 pages in and 2 out of 42 of the solutions are misprinted and don't match the puzzles noted.

Still reading this one but do not like the format. Basically, you have a load of pictures of boards and have to pick out the next 5-6 moves yourself- no help or tuition, just a solutions page at the back, written in that annoying chess notation style eg. b-r8, check and so on. Much more difficult to get into, and it would help if the opening intros were not so vague. Frustrating for the post-beginner chess player!