The Art of Chess Combination

Rating:
Summary: excellent book
Review: This book is superb. The only book you will ever need on combinations & attack on the castled postion. Very advanced, recommended for players 1800+ (USCF).

Rating:
Summary: excellent book
Review: This book is superb. The only book you will ever need on combinations & attack on the castled postion. Very advanced, recommended for players 1800+ (USCF).

Rating:
Summary: Useful book but buy Spielmann instead for a true classic
Review: This is a quite good minor classic. Znosko-Borovsky discusses several themes, such as the standard bishop sacrifice on h7 and combinations against the king in the center. A great number of examples are to the point and I was delighted by the examples from Alekhine and Capa. There is clearly something of value for most of us here.
But, in some cases the connection between examples and examples and text are not very clear. There are also a some instances of "... and white/black wins" where the continuation is not too obvious. With my modest rating (ICC Standard c.2000, handle: johanh) I also found a few examples where white/black does in fact not have a clear win at all and may even be lost if the opponent had defended properly. On the other hand it is always a good excercise trying to prove an author wrong. No-one is perfect and that's the beauty of chess!
Spielmann's The Art of Sacrifice in Chess is better though - simpler language, complete games and a more dynamic approach (structure vs. the initiative, sacrifices that win material/ lead to mate vs. sacrifices to obtain the initiative or an attack without being able to calculate to the end, etc.). I found Spielmann's book much more charming, revealing and also modern even though it was printed several years before Z-B's book.