The things is probably regularity. I only began to train really at a regular basis after I began to train using spaced repetition. I just hate to learn something and forget it again. But with people with great memory (Magnus Carlsen is one of them) the things stick in the memory forever even after only glancing at a motive. Doesn't work with me though.
Tactics books recommendations?
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Abração, torrubirubi! Eu sou sueco, más vivo no Brasil desde 2012.
ivoryknight71: Very good choice! Yakov Neishtadt was generally considered an excellent coach and author. I have a number of his books, and I've never been disappointed in anything he wrote.
torrubirubi and breakingbad12: As regards repetition versus new material: I try to (unfortunately work prevents me from doing it properly) to combine the two in such a way that my repetition of a particular book isn't following on too soon. I still want to have to think a little bit (not remember by heart as soon as I see it). Also, it's worth remembering what Mikhail Tal used to do: he had a habit of regularly going over material which was way, way below his standard, on the premise that it's always good to repeat to reinforce, it simply makes you a quicker thinker.
Jan 10, 2018
0
#24
BonTheCat wrote:
Abração, torrubirubi! Eu sou sueco, más vivo no Brasil desde 2012.
ivoryknight71: Very good choice! Yakov Neishtadt was generally considered an excellent coach and author. I have a number of his books, and I've never been disappointed in anything he wrote.
torrubirubi and breakingbad12: As regards repetition versus new material: I try to (unfortunately work prevents me from doing it properly) to combine the two in such a way that my repetition of a particular book isn't following on too soon. I still want to have to think a little bit (not remember by heart as soon as I see it). Also, it's worth remembering what Mikhail Tal used to do: he had a habit of regularly going over material which was way, way below his standard, on the premise that it's always good to repeat to reinforce, it simply makes you a quicker thinker.
Sueco, tá bom.
I also like to work sometimes with things that I think is easier for me. This is the reason why I took the book 1001 Tactics for Beginners. Of course you see sometimes things that you saw already a lot of times in other books, but very often you will see things for the first time. In any case, work regularly is the key.
The system with setting up a position and solve it is cool, but I never really tried it for more than a couple of times, as in the time that I need to set up a position I can solve something like 10 or more exercises using positions in an app. It is only about the efficiency. Today I took a board and chess set to go through some positions of a book on strategy, but I didn't use them - I had enough to do with the tactics in Chessable. I learned already 676 tactics there from three different books, I am slowly making progress.
Yes, if the tactics are simple I do solve them straight from the diagram, too (such as Reinfeld's two '1001' books on combinations and mates). However, when I work with Maksim Blokh's books, I set the chess clock for anything between 30 minutes to 2.5 hours, depending on the level of difficulty (his hardest puzzles are more than 10 moves deep, sometimes more than 15), and then sit down at the board as if I was playing a tournament game, fully concentrated writing the down the moves without moving the pieces on the board, always trying to solve each puzzle before moving onto the next. Apart from fulfilling the primary purpose of working on tactics, this way of training has two secondary purposes: 1) Working with the board, when I set up the positions, I look at the diagram for about 30 seconds trying to memorize the entire position and set it up one go (or as few go's as possible), working on my intuition and piece cluster memory. I read some research about this, that completely random positions (with pawns on the last rank, kings next to each other and so on) were about just as easy for non-chess players as chess players to memorize and set up, but on proper chess position from real games, chess players perform much better. This I believe is because chess player have internalized 'normal' chess positions to a much higher degree, so that for instance the pawn formation f2, g3, h2 is extremely likely to go with K on g1 and R on f1 or e1. 2) Even more importantly, working this way, I've found helps me enormously to improve my thought discipline. When I don't have time to do this work, or if I haven't played any serious games for a while, I notice that during tournament play, I make simple calculation errors more easily, and also that my thoughts are much more unstructured and random, so that I find myself going around in circles, wasting a lot of precious thinking time on the clock.
BonTheCat,
I like the idea of setting up a position from short term memory. That's a new idea!
The reason books are better than websites with thousands of random puzzles is that good books will have a smaller group of puzzles specifically chosen for their educational value. You'll learn the most important patterns that way.
As for my recommendations (in increasing order of difficult):
1. Back to Basics: Tactics by Heisman
2. Chess Tactics for Students by Bain
3. How to Beat Your Dad at Chess by Chandler
4. Chess Training Pocket Book by Alburt
Those are the only tactics books I've ever finished, and they got me to around 1770 USCF rating, after starting playing as an adult. I've done portions of other books, and plenty of random puzzles on web sites, too. Any tactics practice is good, but focusing on going through a set of 300-500 puzzles from a good book over and over until you can spot the solutions instantly is the best. Yes, there's some memorization in the later passes, but it'll help you instinctively look for similar patterns in your own games.
I do wish some of these books had flash cards available to shuffle up the positions and get them out of context, though. I made my own by photocopying How to Beat Your Dad at Chess and cutting it up, and that helped immensely. Getting random Greek Gift positions where you have to remember which is which, and even know that some of them are situations where the sac doesn't work, makes you really work to figure out if there's an 8 move checkmate or not.
That's a great idea, Fromper! I'll try that with some of my books.
Jan 10, 2018
0
#29
BonTheCat wrote:
Yes, if the tactics are simple I do solve them straight from the diagram, too (such as Reinfeld's two '1001' books on combinations and mates). However, when I work with Maksim Blokh's books, I set the chess clock for anything between 30 minutes to 2.5 hours, depending on the level of difficulty (his hardest puzzles are more than 10 moves deep, sometimes more than 15), and then sit down at the board as if I was playing a tournament game, fully concentrated writing the down the moves without moving the pieces on the board, always trying to solve each puzzle before moving onto the next. Apart from fulfilling the primary purpose of working on tactics, this way of training has two secondary purposes: 1) Working with the board, when I set up the positions, I look at the diagram for about 30 seconds trying to memorize the entire position and set it up one go (or as few go's as possible), working on my intuition and piece cluster memory. I read some research about this, that completely random positions (with pawns on the last rank, kings next to each other and so on) were about just as easy for non-chess players as chess players to memorize and set up, but on proper chess position from real games, chess players perform much better. This I believe is because chess player have internalized 'normal' chess positions to a much higher degree, so that for instance the pawn formation f2, g3, h2 is extremely likely to go with K on g1 and R on f1 or e1. 2) Even more importantly, working this way, I've found helps me enormously to improve my thought discipline. When I don't have time to do this work, or if I haven't played any serious games for a while, I notice that during tournament play, I make simple calculation errors more easily, and also that my thoughts are much more unstructured and random, so that I find myself going around in circles, wasting a lot of precious thinking time on the clock.
You are doing well. This with trying to set up a position after looking at the diagram for a short time is a great exercise. I tried for a while, but my problem is my lack of spacial orientation. This is really bad. But I will try again to see what happen. I can certainly improve until a certain degree.
Yes, I have books by Jacob Aagaard on tactics and strategy, and there I really need a lot of time just to understand a little what is going on. It is already difficult to find the key move, and the whole variation is often absolutely impossible to me to calculate. I gave up with these books and began to work with more simple stuff. But I can imagine I will return to them soon.
Jan 10, 2018
0
#30
Fromper wrote:
The reason books are better than websites with thousands of random puzzles is that good books will have a smaller group of puzzles specifically chosen for their educational value. You'll learn the most important patterns that way.
As for my recommendations (in increasing order of difficult):
1. Back to Basics: Tactics by Heisman
2. Chess Tactics for Students by Bain
3. How to Beat Your Dad at Chess by Chandler
4. Chess Training Pocket Book by Alburt
Those are the only tactics books I've ever finished, and they got me to around 1770 USCF rating, after starting playing as an adult. I've done portions of other books, and plenty of random puzzles on web sites, too. Any tactics practice is good, but focusing on going through a set of 300-500 puzzles from a good book over and over until you can spot the solutions instantly is the best. Yes, there's some memorization in the later passes, but it'll help you instinctively look for similar patterns in your own games.
I do wish some of these books had flash cards available to shuffle up the positions and get them out of context, though. I made my own by photocopying How to Beat Your Dad at Chess and cutting it up, and that helped immensely. Getting random Greek Gift positions where you have to remember which is which, and even know that some of them are situations where the sac doesn't work, makes you really work to figure out if there's an 8 move checkmate or not.
I was thinking to make flash cards from the Polgar book on tactics, but then I found Chessable, where everything is based on "flash cards" - digital. I began to train there 219 days ago and didn't miss one day. You get experience points to every exercise, I have at the moment 3,141,140 (I a classified there as a "Hero"). This seems a lot, but some people of the leaderboards have something like 15,000,000. I am only in the top 40 there.
Torrirubi, you are my "hero" minus the scary face avatar you have.
Jan 10, 2018
0
#32
SeniorPatzer wrote:
Torrirubi, you are my "hero" minus the scary face avatar you have.
It is the head of a puppet. The coolest avatar from whole chess.com. Easy to identify. But your avatar is not bad at all :-)
There are many great tactics books for various level. Here are some of them.
700 to 1200 Rating Range
World Champion's Guide to Chess
The Chess Kids Book of Tactics
Chess Tactics for Kids by Murray
1300 to 1600 Rating Range
Chess Tactics for Champion
1001 Chess Exercises by Masetti
Winning Chess Exercises for Kids by Coackley
Tactics Time by Carson
The Complete Chess Workout
Advance
Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book by Emms
The Giant Chess Puzzle book by Franco
Beat The Grandmaster by Kongsten
Forcing Chess Move The Key to Better Calculation
Perfect Your Chess by Volokotin
Martin Weteschnik - Chess Tactics from Scratch 2nd Edition
Jan 25, 2022
0
#35
I like the book Sharpen your tactics by Anatoli Lein. before buying I hear good things about it
Jan 25, 2022
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#36
Predator at the chess board by ward farnsworth vol 1 and 2
they ask the reader how could you engineer a tactic from the given position rather than just solve it. I found both very enlightening.
Good Chess Books for Beginners and Beyond...
https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/good-chess-books-for-beginners-and-beyond
search 'tactics'
I'm slowly working through John Nunn's 'Learn Chess Tactics' and, at my humble beginner level, it is really helping me spot opportunities on the board that I would never have thought of. I'm finding that reading a book with commentary, explanations, variations, etc, and then maybe setting up the positions on a real board, Is a much richer learning experience than simply doing online puzzles (although they are great for practice).
Feb 5, 2022
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#40
If you like a more advanced chess book on Tactics and like Mikhail Tal, The Magic Tactics of Mikhail Tal by Muller and Stolze is a good one. Lots of exercises from his games and comments about Tal’s chess and life from other GMs make it enjoyable to read. While we will not able to play like Tal, solving the exercises without using computer assistance and comparing your moves with the solutions on the book will help improve your tactical sense. You can check your notes and solutions with your analysis engine after to see if you have missed something.
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