Here's a review from chesscafe.com they have great reviews
http://www.chesscafe.com/text/review422.pdf
Question about Nunn's Learn Chess Tactics
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it's a very good book. the puzzles are quite tricky but certainly do-able. there isn't a huge amount of puzzles in each section - usually between 20 and 45, but the miscellaneous section, which is the best in the book for testing your tactical knowledge, has 66.
if you want to get more out of the book you could use the diagrams used for explaining the tactics as exercises too.
having said all of this, the book is pretty much just a harder version of the dan heisman book you already have. i would say going for something like chess tactics from scratch would give you a different look at tactics and how they work, which may be more beneficial.
Moyuba wrote:
having said all of this, the book is pretty much just a harder version of the dan heisman book you already have. i would say going for something like chess tactics from scratch would give you a different look at tactics and how they work, which may be more beneficial.
Hi Moyuba,
I'm assuming this is the book. Can you confirm?
I appreciate the concern about Nunn's book being a replication of Heisman's. That is a big concern for me. I want a fresh approach to spotting tactics. I know how to execute a pin or a fork, etc. but sometimes miss them in my own games (only to be discovered later when I review my mistakes). The description of Weteschnik's book sounds like what I may be looking for... What else can you tell me about this book? Did you see an improvement after reading it?
The Weteschnik book is themed chapters. Has examples of tactics from games, then a set of exercises. A lot of emphasis is on talking about how they work etc rather than just presenting a series of puzzles, I think it's good.
Bronco70 wrote:
Here's a review from chesscafe.com they have great reviews
Bronco, thanks for the link!
Scottrf wrote:
The Weteschnik book is themed chapters. Has examples of tactics from games, then a set of exercises. A lot of emphasis is on talking about how they work etc rather than just presenting a series of puzzles, I think it's good.
Scott, how would you compare Weteschnik's book to Nunn's?
I haven't read Nunn's. Infact I haven't read many, this is probably the only other http://www.chesstactics.org/ , unless you count Yusupov's as a tactics book, which it isn't only. But I've read exerpts or chapters of quite a few, and From Scratch seems one of the better ones for structure and explanation.
benkku52 wrote:
If your TT rating here is 1300, you'll find lots of work to do with the Nunn book, and it will certainly be difficult enough.
Basically, I think that there is not so much of an entirely different approach to tactics. You get a few examples about the most important patterns, then a bunch of exercises where you know what to look for (not that this makes it all easy) and finally some puzzles where you don't, but most of them more demanding than what I met on TT here up to my peak rating (slightly above 1700).
An even better tactics book than Nunn is Jakov Neistadt's "Schachpraktikum", but I doubt that this is available in English.
Vielleicht geht's. Ich war Student in Freiburg vor zehn Jahren. Mein Deutsch ist nicht so schlecht ...(auch nicht so gut 
). Danke Benkku52. Ich werde "Schachpraktikum" beachten.
Bruch wrote:
What do you think of John Nunn's Learn Chess Tactics? Will it be difficult enough? I'm about 1300 on tactics trainer. I'm looking for some explaination of each tactic, but mostly interested in some good excercises.
For a basic primer on tactics Nunn's book is great he explains all the tactical motif's and themes really well includes of lots of tests and miscelanous exercises in the back it's not a very large book so you can work through it in a month or two.
If you want to become sharp solve all kinds of tactical problems, mates in 1 2 3 4 5 6, puzzles, combinations anything you can find without setting them up on a chess set or a computer solve them all through your minds eye. Adopt the mind set of a chess tactician always be looking for ways to go on the attack and seize the iniative and sacrifice material, avoid mechanically pushing your pawns and pieces like some kind of drone or robot, don't be afraid of taking a few well calculated risks to win :)
Importantly listen to your inner voice your intuition in a game trust it!
I have John Nunns book. I have about 1350 tactics rating here on chess.com and I got 32 puzzles correct out of 46 in the first chapter, to give you an idea how hard it is. I picked it up for 5 pounds on amazon, pretty much a bargain imo
I'm looking for a tactics book (please don't suggest chess tempo, etc. I'm not interested in more screen time... I want a book for a road trip I'm about to go on).
I've read Seirawan's Winning Chess Tactics a couple years ago and thought it was very helpful, but started re-reading it last week and found that it's just too easy now. I also read Dan Heisman's Back to Basics: Tactics last autumn and enjoyed that, but not really interested in reading it again.
What do you think of John Nunn's Learn Chess Tactics? Will it be difficult enough? I'm about 1300 on tactics trainer. I'm looking for some explaination of each tactic, but mostly interested in some good excercises. I like that Nunn's book uses examples from recent and real GM games. I also thought the few pages I read online were pretty good. I'm mostly curious about the difficulty and quantity of the puzzles.
If you've read this book, please respond. Any insight is useful.