Nunns Chess Puzzle Book

JOHN NUNN’S CHESS PUZZLE BOOK
Author: John Nunn
Gambit (2009)
336 pages
$24.95

Reviewed by John Donaldson

Chess training is unlike that for other sports. Want to be a better runner? Not a problem. You will find detailed guides that explain exactly the sort of workouts you should do tailored to your current fitness. Such is not the case with chess. There has been a deluge of “improvement” books that have hit the market the past decade, but while many of them are quite worthwhile, none of them are as systematic as the guides to running a better 10 K – not even close. Fortunately there is one area of chess training that everyone agrees is both important and helpful for all.

The study of tactics is useful from many perspectives. Solving exercises improves one’s tactical ability, increases calculating skills and broadens one’s perspective on how pieces interact with each other. Players from club level to grandmaster unquestionably benefit from a daily regimen of 30 minutes to one hour of tactical training.

A new edition of JOHN NUNN’S CHESS PUZZLE BOOK meets all the criteria one is looking for in a good tactics book. It features 300 well-chosen examples, accurate and complete solutions and clear diagrams to solve from. One nice extra touch, which accounts for most of the additional size for the present edition, is including small diagrams by each solution which are given at the back of the book. This avoids two problems that many tactical exercise books suffer from – the tendency to look too quickly for the solution if it is on the following page or the need to flip back and forth between the front and back of the book to compare the exercise and solution. One other nice feature is the hints that offer a transition stage between trying to solve the exercise and giving up.

Tactics solvers who like their exercises arranged by theme (think Encyclopedia of Middlegame Combinations) will find JOHN NUNN’S CHESS PUZZLE BOOK a change of pace as the exercises are arranged by difficulty. Nunn also offers readers a chance to keep track of their scores and compare the results with others. I found the greatest difference between the present work and many others of its kind to be the author’s direct involvement. This is a book of tactical exercises and positions to solve. Accordingly, solutions make up the bulk of JOHN NUNN’S CHESS PUZZLE BOOK. That said there is still a great deal of prose by Dr. Nunn that both adds to the book’s educational value and also entertains the reader.

Highly Recommended

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