The Complete Chess Workout: Train your brain with 1200 puzzles!

As the other reviewers have noted this is a huge collection of tactical chess problems designed to help you strengthen your chess muscles. But just like joining a "24 Hour Fitness" center, that's just the BEGINNING! You have to use the book, work the problems, understand the ones you didn't get, go back and try them again, and then when you've done all that: DO IT SOME MORE! Find more tactical situations, analyze your games, your friend's games, get more books, buy a tactics disc and so on. Chess Fitness is just like physical fitness: It's not a mountain to scale and then you're done, it's a "health habit" you build into your life-style. The pay off comes when you play a game of chess you can be proud of. THAT is what all your hard work was aiming at. And this book is the ARNOLD SCHWARZENEGGER of tactical problem collections.

Two things make this book a bit unusual among books of this sort. 1) Most of the positions are from very recent tournaments and 2) Most of the players are not household names. Both of these features make it harder for me to just remember the games. I don't think there's anything more instructive or entertaining in chess than working through books like this one.

Yes, there are other books on chess tactics. But I like this one. The problems are not too difficult, and they feel like the sorts of positions that one might not only come across in a game, but ones in which one would actually be looking for the kinds of combinations that work here. I like the fact that the reader is not warned what the theme is of the various combinations. I recommend this book. Those who want to try other (and somewhat tougher) books as well might want to look at "Test Your Chess IQ" by Livshitz or "Perfect Your Chess" by Volokitin and Grabinsky.

Richard Pallisar has done a good job!! The good points and the book layout have been mentioned by another reviewer. I just want to make a few words that, to master tactics, one has to do them everyday so that those typical motifs are engraved in your memory, but the problem as mentioned in this book's editorial, is that is there enough puzzles for solving for a considerable period of time. I think this book, with Combinative motifs, Sharpen your tactics, Manual of combination 2 and 3, along with 1000 combination gems you should know, would keep you busy at least 2 - 3 years and one tactical vision as well as the rating would improve as well. I strongly recommend this book!!!