Reddit Reddit reviews Winning Chess Tactics (Winning Chess - Everyman Chess)

We found 15 Reddit comments about Winning Chess Tactics (Winning Chess - Everyman Chess). Here are the top ones, ranked by their Reddit score.

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15 Reddit comments about Winning Chess Tactics (Winning Chess - Everyman Chess):

u/Gym-Kirk · 16 pointsr/boardgames

Don’t study openings. Study fundamentals. Chess.com is a great way to get free information. This series is excellent https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Chess-Tactics-Everyman/dp/1857443861

u/Kingshrink · 15 pointsr/chess

I don't know your level, but if you're a novice (as it sounds like you are) here's my advice:

  • Plan to play one long game per day. Find out the time controls you will be playing in, and create those challenges on Lichess or chess.com. I would suggest filtering the games to your rating +100. Don't waste time playing much weaker opponents or much stronger.

  • Find a coach/friend that is at least >500 rating points above you. Hell you can probably find one for free here that would find this challenge fun. Spend some time going over your games with them, or just playing while talking through games.

    As for the specific parts of the game, here are my suggestions. in order of importance:

    Endgames: Learn to your level, then practice them on Chesstempo/friend/computer.

  • I strongly suggest Silman's Complete Endgame Course and learn to where it get's complicated. You should be able to get through the first 3 parts.
  • Create an account on Chesstempo and do the endgame training. It's unlimited for the Gold plan which is cheap.
  • Keep in mind, when up in material, trade. I have been told countless times by computer analysis that trading pieces (especially queens) was not the best move, but when I was up a few pawns or the exchange, getting pieces off the board made the win so much clearer.

    Tactics: It's tactics all the way down!

  • I strongly suggest Seirawan's Winning Chess Tactics or Bain's Tactics for Students. You need to be familiar with the motifs
  • Get a ChessTempo membership, and do tactics. The price of membership gives you all the analysis lines of all the wrong moves.
  • Do both Blitz tactics and Standard tactics. You want the pattern recognition of lots of blitz tactics, but also the practice of calculating more difficult problems


    Openings: Play with the same openings. Don't spend too long on each, but maybe watch a few videos to get the ideas behind them.

  • White: 1.e4. These are more tactical in nature, and you should be playing them because you will be working on tactics. Your goal is to survive the opening without being down material, severely behind in development, compromising your king, or completely screwing up your pawn structure. Anyone at your level that memorizes deeper into black's responses to e4 is just memorizing lines and will soon be in a complex position (perhaps up half a pawn) but unable to hold that advantage when the tactics take over. Have something for 1...c5 (and I'd look at both the Najdorf and the Dragon, but again, don't memorize, just get a flavor), 1...e5 (I'd suggest the Ruy Lopez. And look at the Philidor, but it's pretty quiet), 1.e6 (the exchange is easy to play), and 1.c6 (again exchange is easy).
  • Black against 1.e4: Pick one of the above and play it exclusively. I suggest 1.e5 to start, but I also like 1...c5 and 1...c6.
  • Black against 1.d4: 1...d5. No need to get fancy. Both the QGA and QGD set up good play. 1...Nf3 is more useful, since you can play the QGD, Grunfeld, or KID, but since you aren't building a tournament repertoire, just survive the opening with a classical queenside response.
  • Black against anything else: Build a strong pawn center, get developed, get castled, and don't chase the enemy. And give an extra second to think about your opponents position. If they used a non-traditional opening, they are probably doing something wrong, but rushing will help them justify things like developing their queen to early or pushing all their pawns.

    Thought process:

  • Have fun
  • Utilize all your time. Hopefully you've been practicing at that time control as I said above)
  • Breathe. Sometimes just close your eyes, take a deep breath, assess where you think you are, and come up with a plan
  • Have a plan, always.

    That's all I got for now. Good luck!

u/drkodos · 4 pointsr/chess

Agreement. This may be a better book for tactics at the OP level.

https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Chess-Tactics-Everyman/dp/1857443861

Seirawan books deserve more love. Much better than the oft lauded Silman tomes.

u/[deleted] · 3 pointsr/chess

2 books really helped me:

Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess

and

Winning Chess Tactics

Also my chess.com ID is: Masageef

start a free account, challenge me and I could talk you through some stuff. (I'm not great but I've played chess everyday for probably around 10 years).

u/gnuvince · 3 pointsr/chess

Reading a book on tactical patterns could help you; the free Chess Tactics Explained or Yasser Seirawan's Winning Chess Tactics aretwo good options.

Another thing that helped me recently was taking some time off, and when I came back, taking more time to solve each puzzles. Instead of playing the first move that looks good and reacting to the computer's move, figure out in advance what the computer can play and how you can keep on going. It makes problem solving longer, can make you pull out your hair, but is extremely rewarding when after 20 minutes you figure out the complete sequence of moves.

Good luck!

u/cobrakai11 · 3 pointsr/chess

Play Winning Chess Tactics by Yasser Seriawan (&Jeremy Silman)

A fantastic beginners book, and he's got a whole series out there that are very easy to read, filled with tests and practice and examples. Each chapter starts out with a different tactic, some personal story from Yasser, and then tests at the end of every chapter to reinforce what you learned.

The end of the books have biographies of famous tacticians and advanced tests where you put everything you have learned together. The answers and explanations are complete in the book. I found it a great book to begin learning with and have often recommended it to others. I have some of the Silman books recommended in this thread, and I don't think any of them are as good for beginners as Yasser's.

I also recommend in the same series Play Winning Chess Openings and Play Winnings Chess Strategies They are all on Amazon or ebay for purchase.

u/Atlas_Danced · 2 pointsr/chess

Chess is hard. To be honest I don't really remember how I got over that initial hump in the learning curve myself where things started to make sense to me, but I'll link you a video that will probably be somewhat helpful to you.


It's a deep game though, don't think that you can just watch some videos and get good. You need practice and study. Practice chess tactics and learn some basic opening principles. The first chess book I ever got was this one.

If I recall correctly it is pretty beginner friendly. Once you know the rules and how the game works knowing basic tactical patterns will help you.

When you play games, longer time controls will be better for a beginner. It gives you more time to think and plan. If you are playing blitz or bullet games, there is not much instructional value to be gleaned from them, especially for a beginner. I'd say 15 minutes +.

u/bjh13 · 2 pointsr/chess

Ok, here is what I recommend:

Start with a book like "Logical Chess: Move by Move". It is a very instructional book with every move annotated and will help you understand why certain moves are made. It is very basic and would be a great place to start, it's only assumption is that you already know how the pieces move. Go through at least one game a day, go through it slowly, and play it out on a board.

Second, study tactics. Make sure you start with a beginning tactics book, stuff you can solve. I recommend picking up Winning Chess Tactics and Chess Tactics for Students.

After that, just play games. Lots of slow games, not fast. When I say slow, I mean at least 60 minutes a game so you have time to think. Make sure you think about every single move, don't play any of them fast. A good rule of thumb is divide the time you play the game by 40 (so a game with 60 minutes per side would mean you should spend roughly a minute and a half on every move).

u/callmeerdnase · 2 pointsr/casualiama

Yeah, sure.


It depends on a few things. How seriously do you want to take it, and what are your goals. If you want to just casually learn about the game and kind of play it from time to time, that's greatly different from someone that wants to try and get really good etc.


I guess, what does get into chess mean to you? ;)


I'll give a more detailed writeup after that, haha.



edit: Some starter info I guess!


  1. Just start playing! Make an account on Chess.com or Lichess.org - both are free.
  2. Read a beginner oriented book - they typically cover a wide variety of basics. This is often considered very good
  3. Familiarize yourself with basic Tactics themes If you want a book on it, this is ok and there are websites for practicing them - I think Lichess has them.
  4. Play slow games - Speed Chess is very popular online but relies on a lot of pattern recognition and intuition which you won't have built up yet
  5. Study common endgame technique - this often feels more like homework and can be very dry. This is where I guess you have to decide how "seriously" you want to take Chess.
  6. Just keep playing and have fun!



    There can be more details etc but that's basically it.
u/hicetnunc1972 · 2 pointsr/chess

I think it's a good idea to start with a chess book because its structure and organization of puzzles from easy to hard will probably help the learning process.

Then you can test your new knowledge on tactics website.

Two suitable books :
https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Chess-Tactics-Everyman/dp/1857443861/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1467101274&sr=1-1&keywords=seirawan+winning+chess+tactics

https://www.amazon.com/Chess-Tactics-Champions-step-step/dp/081293671X

u/Carson_McComas · 2 pointsr/chess

Honestly, get a tactics book. Start with a beginner one and do the puzzles. All of them. Make sure you understand them, especially the ones you get wrong. This will easily put you above 1000. Then you can get a more advanced one.

Here is a good one that covers the basic tactical motifs and then some:

https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Chess-Tactics-Everyman/dp/1857443861

Seriously, don't ignore tactics.

u/blue_garlic · 1 pointr/chess

My first chess books and they laid a great foundation IMO.

Winning Chess Tactics (Winning Chess - Everyman Chess) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1857443861/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_6cxuyb72M9N01


Winning Chess Strategies (Winning Chess - Everyman Chess) https://www.amazon.com/dp/1857443853/ref=cm_sw_r_cp_apa_Kdxuyb38ZVT8B

u/bauski · 1 pointr/chess

I think I understand what you are trying to experiment. You are asking if 2 beginners start playing chess while reading different beginner books, how will their play styles and understanding of the game change? I think this is a very interesting idea, and although I hypothesize that "no matter how different the books are, the difference will be because of the players, not the books" I will gladly suggest some ideas for your experiment.

There are plenty of chess books that are written by classical GMs that many people still find amazingly helpful.

"Capablanca's Chess Fundamentals" is still a very good for learning strong end game and good idea of how pieces work together. His end games are still considered some of the cleanest. He was somebody who could take puzzling situations and make them simple. It's very satisfying to following his games.

"My System" by GM Nimzowitsch is a bit different. Where as Capablanca relied more on classical openings and simplified situations with strong piece control, Nizomwitisch was of the hypermodern school which focused more on challenging the old classical fundamental beliefs and positional superiority.

If both of you start with one of each book, it'd be interesting to see how both of you end up playing. But honestly as beginners, (I'm a low level asshole myself aka patzer) some of the higher level things we're talking about here may not even mean anything for a long time.

Honestly, everybody in life has a certain chess style. Some play for the tactics, some for positions, some for the calculations, while others for the pattern recognition, some play sharp while some play loose, some play meek while some play aggressively. It really depends on you as a player, and I think that in the end, no matter which book you start with, you will end up the player you are going to be anyway.

As for other books that may be of interest for both of you, as they always say in chess "tactics, tactics, tactics": it may be a good idea to supplement both of your books with a tactical book such as https://www.amazon.com/Winning-Chess-Tactics-Everyman/dp/1857443861 or https://www.amazon.com/Chess-Tactics-Champions-step-step/dp/081293671X or this https://www.amazon.com/Predator-At-Chessboard-Field-Tactics/dp/1430308001

and also supplement tactics with mating motifs like this: https://www.amazon.com/How-Beat-Your-Chess-Gambit/dp/1901983056

I hope you and your friend have a lot of fun playing and learning together. I have definitely enjoyed playing with my work mates. If you guys haven't chosen an online platform already, I suggest lichess.org or chess.com. Both are very great sites for playing chess for free. One is absolutely free and offers some very cool features for self analysis and community study material, while the other has paid premium memberships which offer a breadth of learning material in videos and articles.

u/GTChessplayer · 1 pointr/chess

study tactics man. get a book or 2 off of amazon and go through the whole thing.. problems and all.

http://www.amazon.com/Winning-Chess-Tactics-Everyman/dp/1857443861/ref=sr_1_1?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1407472357&sr=1-1&keywords=winning+chess+tactics

This book will help you understand common tactical themes and when to look for them.

then after this one, get a more advanced one. ask if you want more suggestions.