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My Daily
Exercise:
365 Tactical Tests
to Improve Your Chess
Volume 1: From
Beginners to Club Players
by
Heinz Brunthaler
Reviewed by
S. Evan Kreider
New In Chess, 2007
ISBN: 978-90-5691-188-1
Long figurine algebraic notation |
Today I bring you a review of a tactics puzzle book.
“Book?! Why would I want to read a tactics book? Aren’t computer programs
way better?”
Okay, I hear you. There are several excellent programs out there that can
help you with tactics. But that doesn’t mean that books aren’t good too.
In fact, there are probably some pros and cons to each. If nothing else,
books are more portable – much easier to study on the bus or during your
lunch break! So let’s take a look, shall we?
Let’s start with the publisher’s blurb:
The fastest way to win more games of chess is to improve your tactics.
Most games of chess are decided through tactics. This is good news,
since virtually all players love tactics. The best advice for a
novice who wants to improve quickly is therefore: improve your tactical
abilities. This books helps in identifying weak points in the
position of your opponent, in recognizing patterns of combinations, and in
visualizing tricks.
My Daily Exercise is neither just a freewheeling puzzle book, nor a
systematic course in which the thematic grouping of the positions gives an
unwelcome hint to the solution. Here the tactical themes are clearly
explained, but the random order in which the exercises are presented,
makes studying the material much more similar to what a player experiences
in an actual tournament game.
Tactics are both the wonder and the terror of chess, and regular practice
is the key word in getting better at it. The book starts easy, but
don’t worry: the level of difficulty will steadily increase. Don’t
skip the explanation if you have found the solution, because only if you
read the solutions carefully you will maximize the improvement of your
skills.
The way in which Heinz Brunthaler, a successful coach and author from
Germany, has listed the solutions makes it impossible to take a peek at
the key moves of the next exercise. My Daily Exercise is
particularly useful during commercial breaks in your favorite television
program!
 An
accurate portrayal, with a couple of important points.
First, this is NOT an instructional book. In spite of the fact that the
subtitle says “Beginner,” the book assumes that you already have a basic
familiarity with fundamental tactical motifs (as always, I recommend
Seirawan’s Winning Chess
Tactics). Once you have this basic knowledge, then this would be a
good place for a beginner to start his or her tactical training.
Second, the book is not organized by tactical theme but by difficulty.
There are pros and cons to either method. One advantage of this approach is
that it is closer to what you might actually encounter in a real chess game:
no one is going to tell you “Hey, there’s a knight fork here!”
The book’s stated audience seems about right. Here are three puzzles from
the book – in fact, the first one, the last one, and one about halfway
through – to give you an idea of the range of difficulty.
Copyright 2008 S. Evan Kreider
***
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