Winning Chess Tactics

Rating:
Summary: Basic material, with advanced tests
Review: After reading through Part 1 of "Winning Chess Tactics", I felt I had a pretty good grasp of the material Seirawan was presenting-- double attacks, pins, skewers, deflection, decoys, clearance sacrifices, etc. After doing the "Basic Tactics" tests in Part 3, I thought "great, I *do* understand what's going on." Needless to say, I was feeling pretty good about myself and my perceived IQ.

Then I hit Chapter Twenty-Two: "Advanced Combinations" tests. After maybe getting half of one test correct, I started wondering, "Am I a total idiot?" I didn't even try the "Professional Combinations". To add insult to injury, based on my score Seirawan admonishes me: "I'll be honest with you, this is not good. You need to carefully read this book again."

Somehow I don't feel that reading the book again would help me with those tests. While Seirawan presents the basics very clearly, the tests seem to demand tactical skills and insights which I simply did not pick up along the way. Based on another recommendation, I picked up "Sharpen Your Tactics" by Lein. This book of chess problems seems to progress more gradually in difficulty, though only time will tell if it sharpens me up enough to be "respectable" in Seirawan's eyes.

Rating:
Summary: important part of a very good series
Review: Anyone who is serious about learning to play chess well should begin with Seirawan's Winning Chess series. I had heard good things about it, so I bought this series for my wife. I figured that it would all be too simple for me, but decided to skim through the books quickly anyway. I learned quit a bit from both the Tactics and Strategies books. Seirawan's system is very similar to the system that co-author Silman teaches in his more advanced How To Reassess Your Chess (which would be the perfect book to read after finishing the Seirawan series). I learned things from Strategies that I hadn't learned from Reassess; and Tactics goes into greater, very helpful detail about setting up and executing tactics and combinations. This is a great series, I recommend it strongly to any player rated under 1600.

Rating:
Summary: Middle of the Road Tactics Book
Review: I understand why many of the reviews made by lower rated players (under 1200 players) find some of the tactics in this book beyond them. The author, a fantastic player, caters to stronger players. To this end, this book does a good job. If you are not rated over 1200 consider getting a more simple tactics book like "Winning Chess Tactics for Juniors" or "Winning Chess Tournaments for Juniors" by different authors, but both well designed for players under 1400 with lots of tactics.


Rating:
Summary: a decent intro to tactics
Review: I usually write reviews for books with little customer feedback; in this case, however, I make an exception. This book is intended for beginners, and being one, I feel it appropriate to share some what I hope will be valuable feedback.
First, some personal chess background, which when reviewing a chess book is essential. I'm currently rated from 1300 to 1400 by the Chessmaster program, Yahoo, and Chess.net, which makes me an advanced beginner, I guess.
I've just read and studied through the entire book, and the answer is YES you will improve. My rating increased by ~ 200 points.
I did some research when I decided I wanted to start learning chess seriously, and found that after learning basic chess: piece value, movement, concepts on space, time, some basic openings, basic rook and queen endings, etc .. the next step was working on improving my tactics.
This is the only book on tactics I've studied so far, but I've looked over a couple more. Seirawan's compares nicely. It has thorough explanations on tactical concepts such as pins, forks, skewers, decoys, windmills, and such. However, as any chess player with some experience will say, tactics is all about practice. This is where this book falls short. It has 92 problems that serve to strengthen tactical concepts, and 45 end book puzzles, with no clues. Though good for starters, this is nowhere near what a player needs to really strengthen his skills. I suggest buying either or both "The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book" and "1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations." Both have 1001 tactical chess puzzles, and by the time I work through one of these I hope to have improved a great deal.
WCT has two main strengths. I find that Seirawan's explanations on the different tactical situations is extensive, the prose clear, though childish at times. However, few examples illustrate each point. Another point is the book's print quality, as another reviewer mentioned, very good binding, wide margins and quality paper.
Seirawan's very high ego is manifested throughout the book, with lots of examples from his own games, in which, OBVIOUSLY, he always has the winning combination. I might be intolerant with such prideful individuals, but I find this showing off very distracting. In his book, Emms has examples where he loses to a brilliant combination. Chess masters are not gods, and should not portray themselves as such.
The book has a final section on great tacticians and some of their most famous games. This makes for an interesting read, but the tactical combinations in these games are of such depth and cunning as to be completely useless to the reader. The space could have been better used with more examples and puzzles to work on.
The book is good, it served its purpose - introduce me to chess tactics.
Nevertheless, my final recommendation - use a chess software program or go online to learn the basic tactical ideas, then work out the hundreds of examples in any of several good puzzle books.

Rating:
Summary: best introduction to tactics for beginners
Review: I've never seen such a good introduction to tactics. Seirawan explains everything very clearly, with excellent illustrations.
Seirawan included several hundred problems in the book. I'd recommend following up this book with Reinfeld's 1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations. In fact, if you're a talented player, you might want to skip Seirawan's book and go straight to Reinfeld. But most of us could use Seirawan's book.

Rating:
Summary: Helpful
Review: This book teaches you basic chess tactics. I think it is a very helpful read for players that are just starting their chess development. I contains all the needed tactics and gives you a good overview of how they can be used and when to look around for them.