Chessboard Combat

The Give and Take of Chess Tactics

Joel Benjamin

• Publisher: New in Chess
• eBook ISBN:
  9789493257849
• Year: 2023

Chess students love a Puzzle Rush. And solving tactics puzzles certainly helps you improve your pattern recognition and will help you find good moves in tournament games. But there is a downside to most tactics puzzles — we always know who is supposed to win!

Chess in real life is different, not just because no one taps us on the shoulder and tells us to look for a tactic. Sometimes tactics work, and sometimes they don't. Sometimes your opponent has a few tricks up their sleeve, too.

This book shows the reality of chess tactics. It explores a chess player's challenges over the board: attack, defense, and counterattack! It exposes the actual give-and-take nature of chess tactics.

American grandmaster Joel Benjamin, a three-time U.S. Champion, was inspired by the 20th-century classic Chess Traps, Pitfalls, and Swindles by legendary chess authors Fred Reinfeld and Israel Albert Horowitz. With modern examples, Benjamin arouses the same spirit of fun and enjoyment. With a generous amount of puzzles in quiz form, this manual will help chess students sharpen their tactical skills and be ready to strike - or counterstrike.

Table of contents

• Copyright Page
• Contents
• Explanation of symbols
• Introduction
• Acknowledgements
• Chapter 1 Strike, Counterstrike
• Chapter 2 The King Is a Fighting Piece
• Chapter 3 Dodging Defenses
• Chapter 4 Staying Alive
• Chapter 5 Trying Too Hard to Win
• Chapter 6 Back Rank Tactics
• Chapter 7 In the Beginning... and in the End
• Chapter 8 Whoops!
• Chapter 9 Tactical Tips
• Index of names
• Sources