Chess Tactics for Champions: A step-by-step guide to using tactics and combinations the Polgar way Paperback – Illustrated, April 11, 2006

Chess Tactics for Champions is a great book for anyone who wants to improve their chess skills. Susan Polgar is a former world chess champion and she knows what she's talking about. The book is well-written and easy to understand for young and old alike, and it covers a wide range of tactics.The book is divided into 10 chapters, each of which focuses on a different tactic type. Polgar explains each type of tactic in detail, and she provides plenty of examples to help you understand the concepts. She also includes a number of exercises at the end of each chapter to help you practice what you've learned.I found the book to be very helpful. I've been playing chess for many years, but I still learned a lot from this book as well and making it easy to teach my grandson advanced tactics. Polgar's explanations are clear and concise, and the exercises are challenging but not too difficult. If you're serious about improving your chess skills, I highly recommend this book.Here are some of the things I liked about the book:The book is well-written and easy to understand.Polgar covers a wide range of tactics.The book includes plenty of examples to help you understand the concepts.The book includes exercises to help you practice what you've learned.If you're looking for a book to help you improve your chess skills, I highly recommend Chess Tactics for Champions by Susan Polgar.

It has many pussles as well as does a good job teaching on how to set up moves similar to the boby fisher book but slightly better for a beginner to advanced im 1720 elo and taught me some things

Features that make "Chess Tactics for Champions" superior to other tactics books:1. Only 3 puzzles per page; allowing ample space to take notes in the margins2. No hints (just text like "white to move"), making the puzzles more realistic and challenging (although they are grouped by theme)3. Large quantity of puzzles, with more puzzles on the more common tactics (forks/double attacks, pins and discovered attacks)4. Nice, but brief, explanations of each tactic with several good examples5. No errors that I've foundDownsides to this book:1. Too many combinations that involve a queen sacrifice. This is just not that common at the amateur level.2. For the absolute beginner, these puzzles might be too difficultThis book is a terrific second tactics book. If you are new to chess, tactics is the most important thing you can study. But you need the right learning materials to get started. I recommend GM Yassir Seirawan's "Winning Chess Tactics". After reading that you will be ready to take on the more challenging puzzles you will find in "Chess Tactics for Champions". Also good is NM Dan Heisman's book "Back to Basics: Tactics" which has a difficulty level somewhere in between these two books. Good luck!

Received this from the Goodwill at a great price and the book was in fantastic condition. As for the book itself, it's written by world famous GM Suzan Polgar and it's all about chess tactics. Such as forks, pins and sacrifices. That said, the back of the book is for intermediate to advanced players. I'd say it's for someone with at least a 1500 elo. The first few pages are easy, but increases with difficulty! If you're new (or less than 1000 elo), you will struggle. Best to wait a bit then to read this book. It's also a few hundred pages so it's packed with tons of material.

Whenever you want to get better at chess, there are so many guides out there, it's hard to know where to start. Does one start with the opening? Does one start with "positional play" or "strategy"? With studying classic games? I wish I had not fumbled around so long before I realized that the place to start is with tactics and with the end game. When you study tactics or small combinations, you learn to view each chess board like a snapshot, a world of its own, with its own particular problems (pins, skewers, forks, etc.). It is more like a puzzle to be solved and less like a "story". This is how the greatest players view the game. Anyone who wants to get serious about chess would do well to buy this fine book on tactics written by Grandmaster Susan Polgar. After buying it and studying the puzzles for a while, my rating has steadily increased, and I now find that I have a greater capacity to understand what's happening when I watch high level games. I have applied principles learned in this book to all elements of my game, from the opening to the end-game, and I haven't even gotten through the whole book yet. It is also important to study the end-game because no one wants to get to a winning position but be "unsure" of whether or not it is a winning position. I've found that my ability to deal with openings has come of its own accord.On a related note, if you're enjoy chess but you are at a crunch for time like I am, look into the Internet Chess Club (ICC). I joined one day when I got sick of Yahoo chess. They offer a free trial membership. You can play against real people 24/7, and I've found their ratings to be reliable as well. It opens up to a whole world of internet chess with great people, and Grandmasters regulary play there. One of the best perks is that they offer tutorials by Grandmasters annotating games, and these tutorials are included in the reasonably priced membership (7 bucks a month?). I am part of a "league" that operates in connection with the ICC. The league is totally free to members and a lot of fun.A last bit of advice: Don't play speed chess!