Rating: 
Summary: "I couldn't put the book down"
Review: I couldn't put the book down! I can't say that about any other chess book I have read. Tactics are fun! You can't just have one chess book and expect to learn everything you need too, however you definitely need this one in your collection. After I read this book my game has improved. I recommend re-taking the tests at the end over and over again at least 3 times with some time in-between. That way the tactics will really sink in. The best thing about this book you can understand the concepts without having a chessboard in front of you to work them out. They also use real games of masters, that way you can load them from Chessmaster 6000 database (a computer chess program) and just advance one move at a time while reading the book. Although some moves in a few games didn't match up exactly with chessmaster 6000 the final outcome of the games did end up the same. I don't know if chessmaster 6000 was wrong or Yasser/Silman. The only bad thing I can say is, I wish they would have marked the files and ranks and their diagrams, it would have made it a little easier. I found myself constantly counting and saying the alphabet. I talked with Yasser (on chess.net, he frequents there a lot, and the cool thing is, if you challenge him he will accept, even if your just a beginner chess player!) about this book and he said "out of all his books with Jeremy Silman, he (Yasser) did the least work on this one." So I guess my congratulations goes to Silman for an outstanding job.
Rating: 
Summary: Tactics taught using a step-by-step approach
Review: Summary:
After studying an overview of chess (e.g. Complete Idiot's Guide to Chess) a book on tactics is a logical next step. I have purchased several tactics books. I found this one to be the best for teaching the beginner how to effectively recognize tactical opportunities and execute winning tactical sequences.Learn by example?
Some tactics books show examples and hope for results. This would be like a golf pro showing me a video of Tiger Woods, and then asking for his fee. I am sorry, but examples of great tactics will often discourage beginners more than educate them. Examples of these types of books include:
1.Combinations, the Heart of Chess
2.Chess Tactics for the Tournament Player Learn through countless exercises?
Some tactics books are really puzzle books with about 1000 different diagrams that offer tactical gains. These are useful for the intermediate player, but can cause frustration for those who are not good at calculating a four move combination. Examples include:
1.1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices
2.Sharpen Your Tactics Learn through instruction - the best method
Winning Chess Tactics is written with very simple, step-by-step style. "In this section we will learn how each piece can create a fork" Therefore, it is useful for both children and adults. It is repetitive and slowly builds on previous themes, in other words, it teaches. Seirawan uses exercises at the end of each lesson to test your knowledge. One negative - Part 2 (examples of master level tactics) is not very useful in a beginner's book, this space could have been used to provide more instruction. Overall, it is an excellent book and well worth the money. For these reasons, I give it four stars.
Rating:
Summary: This is the book that made me fall in love with chess
Review: First, a disclaimer: I'm not a grandmaster. Far from it. I'd estimate my rating to be somewhere in the 1300's. Without this book, it would probably be about 600 -- scratch that, it would be zero, because I wouldn't be as hooked on chess as I am, and I probably would never get around to playing it. Simply put, Seirawan has THE GIFT. You know -- the very rare ability, among those of world-class skill in any discipline, to actually explain his knowledge clearly to a layman. And to convey not just the knowledge, but also the passion. That is his genius. And this fabulous series of book is the result. If you've got someone on your Christmas list who is getting interested in chess, but -- like most newcomers -- believes that she/he will never be any good at it, give her/him this book! Perhaps give this one and the overview "Play Winning Chess" together. But this the book that will truly change your friend/son/niece/spouse/whomever into a *competent* chess player. One strength of the book is its focus on problems. There are a lot of problems, which appear as the relevant concepts are introduced, and also in the back (so you have to discover for yourself which tactics are involved). The problems are very challenging -- or, they were for me anyway! -- yet completely solvable knowing only what's been taught. This makes them FUN. Yes, I said fun! You might eventually progress far past the level this book is at, but the book will never stop being useful to you. You can still use it as a means to drill yourself -- to see how fast you can spot the solutions, burn the lessons they illustrate into your head, and keep the fundamental patterns fresh in your mind for when you go into battle. Well, I'll stop, but really, this book is beyond excellent and I can't praise it highly enough to match the gratitude I feel toward GM Seirawan for showing me how incredibly awesome this game really is. Thanks, man.
Rating:
Summary: Great first tactics book?
Review: One thing not mentioned by the other reviewers is the quality of the book itself. The edition I have is the 1995 Microsoft Press paperback with brown cover, and it has the same lay-flat binding found in the O'Reilly computer books series. The pages are very white with ample margins. The typesetting and diagram placement is excellent. Any of these traits are rare for a chess book, and in my opinion all chess books should be bound this way. The book itself consts of 137 tests with about 150 other positions spread across 13 tactical themes. The themes are mostly organized from essential/simple to more subtle, though there is some overlap. There is an interesting section on great tacticians with some games completely annotated, but mostly they're one-sided crushes or some of the "classic" games you might see elsewhere. If you like that sort of style, then Chernev's Logical Chess is probably the better book for you. Only a few of the puzzles are studies (contrived), and the ones which didn't come from actual tournament play sure have the feeling as if they might have. Most of non-test diagrams can be done as tests, except for two caveats, some of them are designed to hilight blunders or just positions so aren't testable, and others are mislabeled White to play when it is Black. It would have been helpful if they had included a small caption beneath each one so that you can skim the diagrams without the accompanying text (which has the moves in bold and draw the eye), to increase the number of puzzles. What I recommend is that you write a "mini-test" to yourself in the margins, you can even use a pencil, the paper quality is THAT good. I have found very few errors in the tactics (I think two so far), and only a few typesetting errors in the moves which are easy to figure out. This is rare for chess books, so I think that perhaps these positions are computer checked. There are some instances, not often in the tests, where the computer found a better shot or reply, but for the most part, even contrived positions seem to jive with what the computer found. Most of the tests and positions are in the "easy" side (one move to solve) but they cover the entire range from easy to very difficult. There is a lot of writing and description about each tactical theme. The tests and diagrams are overannotated, if anything, with the major problem I had being the campy language used--this book could have easily added a few icons and be called "Chess Tactics For Dummies." Final caveats: There is no explanation on how to achieve these tactical shots from typical openings or middlegames (or which shots appear in which games). There is no explanation of basic mating patterns (probably this sort of thing is found in their first book). There are only a few "trimmed down" (beginner lesson) positions designed to emphasize the principles behind the tactics. There are not enough puzzles for this to be "the only tactics book you need" that Silman (the coauthor) has said. Summary: An excellent book with amazing binding and typesetting with 200 puzzles: far from bad if you go over them many times. The coverage of combinations is comprehensive (mates, draws, material wins, defending. etc.). Read it and in a couple months do all the problems again, repeat until every puzzle becomes second nature.
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: 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: 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: Tricks of the Trade
Review: After finishing Seirawan's and Silman's "Play Winning Chess", I followed up with this book which is the second volume in the authors' "Winning Chess" series. I think this book has plusses and minuses and that the individual needs and expectations of the readers/students can result in very different levels of appreciation. To me, this was a very useful book to get reintroduced to the tricks of the trade that I was familiar with about a quarter of a century ago. The book is very systematic in it's overview of tactical concepts and contains a wealth of problems. At the end of the book the authors provide a kind of exam, that allows you to get an "absolute measure" of tactical skill. My own personal objection to this book is that increase in difficulty through the problem sets tends to be exponential and that the main text of the book provides the novice with very limited tools to tackle the advanced/professional tactics levels. In fact, only after progressing in the third book of this series, "Winning Chess Strategies", for which this volume is a necessary introduction, some of the more advanced problems became accessible to me. The flipside of this, of course, is that non-beginners will also find lots of use in this book. While this book is not perfect, I greatly appreciate the authors' systematic approach and the many structured problems. The chapter on master tacticians is interesting, but will again appeal more to the advanced players. Other reviewers have already commented on especially Seirawan's self congratulatory stance throughout this book. However, dear reader just hold your breath till volume III, where Yasser not only spends some very instructive pages on his crunching of Karpov, but actually has included a whole chapter with examples of games in which he chose faulty strategies.
Rating:
Summary: Great book
Review: The book starts by covering exactly the topics one would expect of a tactics books: pins, forks, etc. Seirawan then gives a number of annotated games by tactical masters of the past and present. The selections and annotations in the Mikhail Tal chapter are especially excellent. Most importantly, Seirawan concludes with a series of tests to allow you to gauge your tactical ability. What makes this book excellent are Seirawan's discussions of the tactics, typically more in-depth than in other tactics books. His annotated games are also well-chosen and well-annotated. But especially this book shines at the end, the tests range from simple to fiendishly complex, and I love working through them.
Rating:
Summary: I loved this book
Review: This was a great book for me, and I still review it from time to time. Yasser's writing style is humorous and makes for an enjoyable lesson. This was my first book on tactics. I would bet it is the best first book on tactics that any developing player should read. As of now, I own about 18 Chess books. This one will probably always be my favorite. It has helped me play better and win.
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