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Reviews

Paul Littlewood's Chess Tactics

Reviewed by Leopold Lacrimosa

6/23/02

Chess Tactics, by Paul Littlewood. (Crowood Chess Library, reprinted 1995). 138 pp.

As a chess coach who works primarily children in kindergarten through sixth grades, I find that my younger student don’t care about the latest advances in the Nimzo-Indian, Four Knights, Benko, or any other opening for that matter. They have no clue who Philidor was, nor do they want to know about his rook pawn endgame maneuver. They all know who Kasparov is, but don’t know that Kramnik has won the crown from him.

Sometimes these kids don’t even care to learn the fastest way to checkmate their opponent. But what they do want to learn is how to capture all of their opponent’s pieces. In order to do that, I spend most of my time teaching them pure, unadulterated tactics.

As a result, my students do know what the difference is between a pin and an absolute pin. They know how to take advantage of an overloaded queen. They know how to pull a decoy on their unsuspecting opponents, and about other chess tactics as well. And this is all thanks to Paul Littlewood’s little green book.

Now there are many tactical books available on today's chess market. Some are great while others aren't. But I like Littlewood’s book because of the amount and quality of the explanations of the tactics he gives. Each chapter is broken down into several sections. First is a definition of the tactic which is simple to understand, even for a kindergartener, and the definition is reinforced with several examples. Next comes an "exploitation," or how to use the tactic which you are studying, also with a few examples. Then there is a section on defense against the tactic with several more examples. Last, Littlewood presents us with ten problems to solve for the tactic, starting with an easy problem and building up to a fairly difficult ones.

There are fifteen chapters, each covering a single tactical motif: Pins, Skewers, Double Attack, Discovered Attack, Back Rank Combinations, Overloading, Deflection, Decoying, Removal of Defense, Interception, Space Clearance, Zwischenzug, Pawn Promotion, Draws and Miscellaneous Problems. The back of the book holds the solutions to the problems and short Bibliography.

Overall, I recommend this book to beginning players to help them understand the different tactical motifs and begin to develop their tactical abilities.

Leopold Lacrimosa
Chess Coach
Scottsdale, Arizona