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Tactics for post-scratch players

Which is the best chess book ever? As a chess community, we repeatedly ask this kind of question, for various categories. And one of those categories is, of course, tactics. So which is the best tactics book ever? The answer to this question depends on the playing strength of the reader. But if we consider the fact that the majority of chess players are in the middle of the bell curve, the best books should logically be among the ones written for an intermediate audience. With that said, this might be the best tactics book ever written. A bold statement, perhaps. Read on to find out why I recommend this book.

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What can you expect from this book?

Chess tactics from scratch was originally published as Understanding Chess Tactics – as indicated by the book's subtitle. This book is actually what inspired the now famous "woodpecker method". In his book Pump up your Rating, Axel Smith tells the story about his friend Hans Tikkannen, who used the book to sharpen his tactics in pursuit of the GM title. Apparently it worked, as Tikkannen acquired the title and also won the Swedish championship not just once, but a whopping five times. So it is no coincidence that the two of them wrote The woodpecker method together.

Apart from Tikkannen's story, this book has little or nothing to do with the woodpecker method. Instead it is a sort of tactics manual. In this book, author Martin Weteschnik takes a quite theoretical approach to tactics. He defines the core element of each tactical pattern and explains how it works as well as when it works (and when it doesn't). He uses various examples from constructed positions as well as actual games, which makes it easy to follow his train of thought. This structure is repeated for all the 12 chapters in the book. 

As with all books from Quality Chess, you can find a free excerpt on their homepage. This excerpt includes a few sections from the first chapter, which demonstrates quite clearly how the chapters are structured. The chapters and themes are as follows: 
  • Chapter 1: Becoming Familiar with the Pieces! 
  • Chapter 2: The Pin 
  • Chapter 3: The Discovered Attack 
  • Chapter 4: The Reloader 
  • Chapter 5: The Double Attack 
  • Chapter 6: Overloading 
  • Chapter 7: Mate 
  • Chapter 8: Gain of Tempo/Intermediate Move 
  • Chapter 9: The X-ray Attack 
  • Chapter 10: Opening and Closing Lines of Communication 
  • Chapter 11: Status Examination 
  • Chapter 12: Candidate Moves
If you are not entirely new to tactics and tactical themes, you will recognize most of the themes listed above. But the concept of "status examination" may be new to you me – at least, it was to me. This is not a tactical theme per se, but should rather be seen as a method for identifying potential tactics in the position. Weteschnik explains (p. 178):
You have to see each piece as an element of a picture, which is related to other elements. Ask yourself how the status of one piece changes the status of other pieces.
This concept is difficult to summarize in a short post like this. Weteschnik gives an overal description of the principle (e.g. the quote above) and goes into detail about how one should examine the status of each individual piece. Here are some of the questions you should ask during a status examination: Is the piece attacked and/or defended? Does it have an important task? Is it restricted? 

So the "status examination" has a lot in common with Dan Heisman's "seeds of tactical destruction" (see e.g. A Guide to Chess Improvement). It should really be seen as a method to ensure that you're not missing anything important in the position. In this way, the method ties all the tactical themes together and helps to ensure you're not missing anything important.

The final part of the book contains 300 puzzles for you to test your skills. This part is like any traditional tactics book. There are six puzzles per page, and the solutions are on the next page. This makes it easy to work through the book without having to flip back and forth and eliminates the need for double book marks. The solutions have fairly lengthy annotations, which makes it easy to evaluate your performance and help you understand the tactics even better. Also, the puzzles are compiled by world famous trainer and writer Jacob Aagaard, which should be an indicator of well-selected puzzles.

The puzzles are structured by theme and are sorted and marked by level of difficulty (1 to 5 stars). As a firmly intermediate player myself, I found the puzzles quite challenging. Some of the 1-star puzzles required a fair bit of calculation before I could solve them, but some of them could be solved at a glance. I estimate that I could solve the lower level puzzles (1-3 stars) with about 90 % accuracy. However, the 5-star puzzles tend to test my skills to the max, and I think I could solve about 50 % correctly. 

The level of difficulty really made me think about the title of the book. The term "from scratch" is accurate in the sense that the book does explain each tactical theme from scratch. However, the title also indicates that this book is suitable for players starting from scratch, which is clearly not the case. A pure beginner will probably pick up many useful things from this book, but the majority of the content will be over their heads.

The book has received excellent reviews on Amazon and Chessable. For more information on this book, you can check out the book recap from the Perpetual Chess Podcast. 

Who should read this book?

This is a truly excellent tactics book; probably the best one I've seen. However, the title can be somewhat misleading. If you are a beginner, I recommend you simply make a note of this book and get back to it once you have mastered the basics and have a fair bit of experience. If your playing strength is above 1500, this book will be an excellent companion for you to strengthen your tactical skills.

About this book

Author:Martin Weteschnik
Title:Chess tactics from scratch
Type of book:Tactics
Level:Intermediate, Advanced
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