Help me choose best tactics book please

I got an email ad from Amazon today for "Practical Chess Exercises : 600 Lessons, Tactics to Strategy" by Ray Cheng. It sounds good.

I am also looking at "Chess Puzzles for the Casual Player" by Kevin Houston

Also "The Complete Chess Workout : Train your brain with 1200 puzzles" by Richard Palliser.

Which of the three would you get if you were I?

My rating is a bit below 1000 right now, but with training on the Tactics Trainer daily and  with a new tactics book, I hope I can begin to climb upwards.

Please give me your thoughts, and if you have any other suggestions for books on tactics (and perhaps strategy) please tell me.

stwils

I have both the Cheng and the Pallister book. Both are excellent and maybe at 1500+ level. 

Play Winning Chess  and Winning Chess Tactics by Yasser Seirawan and Jeremy Silman would be good for a player of your level. I've gone through both of these books with good results. Play winning Chess goes over Seirawan's Four Principles of winning chess, some basic tactics, and some other interesting subjects. It includes many examples and tests.

Winnig Chess Tactics is a very in-depth book that covers a number of tactical ideas with many examples and tests as well. It also includes a number of annotated games. I have gone through this book a number of times, and plan to again. Every time I read it, I pick up more ideas.

For your level, you should master the topics in Play Winning Chess before moving on to a book on tactics.

All of those books are good choices but I think a better choice for the beginning chess player is John Bain's Chess Tactics for Students. See chess instructor Dan Heisman's website for more about the book and how to best use it and how to study tactics in general.

"Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations, and Games" by Laszlo Polgar

No offense but "Chess for Dummies" is good .

best is Tactics Trainer of course :) but for a book, nothing beats "Sharpen Your Tactics"

eric, would "Sharpen your tactics" be appropriate for my rating?  I've often heard it mentioned here and thought about it.

stwils

eric, I just  looked it up on Amazon. $19.98 and takes 2 - 5 weeks to get it. And the used copies are near $60.

I'm puzzled...

stwils

At the 1000 level what would be best in conjunction with the tactics trainer would be a book that goes over tactical motifs. Palliser's book would be more suited to working more problems which you already get at this time through the tactics trainer. 

Good books that discuss tactical motifs and mating patterns:

Chess Tactics by John Littlewood

Winning Chess Tactics and Winning Chess Combinations by Yasser Seirawan

Chess Tactics for Students by John Bain

Back to Basics: Tactics by Dan Heisman

The Art of the Checkmate by Renaud and Kahn

Chess Tactics for Kids by Murray Chandler

How to Beat Your Dad at Chess by Murray Chandler

Starting Out: Chess Tactics and Checkmates by Chris Ward

Don't let the titles with kids or students in there fool you. They can be good books at drilling home the basics. There is an anecdote where Tal said he watched children's chess programs on television whenever he had the chance because you can never get enough of the basics.

Ray Cheng's book isn't so much a tactics problem book as it is a collection of positions where you have to find the right idea and move so the solution is not always a tactical one.

You could try your library. I got a copy of it through Interlibrary loan. I thoroughly recommend the book as well. 

www.uscfsales.com has it listed. So does www.chesshouse.com

Go for seirawan's books.Best ones for your level.Improvement would be quick,i can guarantee that.

Practical chess exercises is a good book, but wouldn't recommend for ~1000 level.  Would recommend Seriwan winning chess tactics or Reinfield 1001 puzzle books.

Didn't like sharpen your tactics despite going through much of it, but that's personal taste (too many clearance/decoy sac theme).  But objectively does have nice puzzles for 1000 rating although only 1 or 2 hundred worth, the difficulty of that book varies widely up to at least expert strength puzzles.

"Winning Chess Exercises for Kids" by Jeff Coakly. Don't be fooled by the name, this is not just for kids. This book consists of 100 sets of 9 exercises. Each set consists of 3 mating combo's, 3 that win material, 2 strategy/defense and 1 end game. I think Dan Heisman recommended it which is why I bought it.

For someone who is under-1200 I'd start out with Ward Farnsworth's "Predator At the Chess Board." It is available as 2 fairly large books, or freely on line at:

http://www.chesstactics.org/

These books not only have very good problems, arranged in themes, and scaling in difficulty from the most basic to fairly hard problems, but they also do a great job around explaining the tactics in easy to understand natural language.

I've got "Understanding Chess Tactics" by Martin Weteschnik and found it very useful. He explains combinations in terms of component parts - e.g. a discovered attack consists of the piece doing the attacking, the piece doing the discovering, and the piece (or square) being attacked.

2nding Erik's recommendation:

http://www.amazon.com/Sharpen-Your-Tactics-Sacrifices-Combinations/dp/1880673134

The font is gross, but the tactics are sweeeeet.  :)

"Chess tactics" is by Paul Littlewood, not John. John may have written one a long time ago but Paul's is more recent and easily available. Also, it is very good. I would recommend it. 

One book I would recommend to lower rated players is Bobby Fisher teaches chess, its a small book, but has some good ideas in it, also if you have a pc try C.T. Art, a great tactical trainer.