The Basis of Combination in Chess

This book was first published in 1938 and is surprisingly effective as a learning tool. Pay close attention to a sentence in the very front of the book, one easily skipped over, about how to best use the book: the advice is to mentally play through the examples, from the diagrams, while using the book, and then play them through again, setting them up on a board, this time without using the book. This technique is very effective in teaching and reinforcing the principles described. The book looks at combinations based on the unique abilities of individual pieces, first separately and then in various groupings. The examples are generally easy enough to follow and favor clarity over complexity (although of necessity the material in the latter parts of the book gets rather involved). A close study of the book is helping me with visualization as well as gaining understanding of the "inner workings" so to speak of each chess piece. Why bother with "yet another" tactics book, when there are so many out there? Why put up with old-style descriptive notation? (Come on, it's not so bad.) Because this is decidedly not "yet another" tactics book. While basic tactical motifs get covered, this is almost incidental, because the focus is on the chess pieces themselves. The tactics arise out of the unique ability of the pieces. This seems to be a very intuitive approach and quite different from "let's study skewers" or "let's study discovered attacks." In short, the focus of the book is quite unique and even at nearly 70 years old, new insights can be found. One star off, giving a rating of four, because at times the prose is less than completely lucid. Definitely worth the $10 or so the book commands on the used market. It has won a place on my study table, where only a small handful of books reside.

This book shows the unique abilities of each piece and the typical ways to combine the action of pieces to build combinations. The many examples are taken mostly from actual grandmaster games. This book will amply reward the time spent studying it. I found myself spotting combinations much more often and actually able to plan using pieces together after reading it.The author had a lot of help from Alekhine. It is a shame this classic is out of print. If you can find a copy, buy it.

This book shows how each individual piece can contribute to combinational play. It also shows how pieces work together in certain situations to deliver checkmate or win material.The only downfall I see is that most combination books, this one included, fail to appreciate the power of removing enough force from a piece or square to capture material cleanly. Yes, double attacks, pins, and forks are an integral part of tactical play, but interference, clearance, and removal of guard themes are the real keys to becoming tactically proficient.