Complete Book Of Chess Stratagems by Fred Reinfeld –

How many moves can you think in advance? One? Two? Three? Perhaps the more important question is: Are you thinking ahead to win? Noted chess authority and teacher Fred Reinfeld gives 526 situations from master play and from the normal course of many chess games. Here is a chance to not only test your skill at thinking ahead but to learn, by analysis of each carefully selected situation, exactly what to think about.

There are 74 situations with an attack on the vulnerable king, 159 successful attacks against vulnerable castled positions, 92 attacks on vulnerable units, 113 situations where threats are made and exploited, and 50 situations where traps are either brilliantly set or brilliantly discovered. At the end, Mr. Reinfeld provides a 38-situation self-quiz whereby you can test what you have learned in the course of the book. Each situation works with all the others to build up your skill. The most common and necessary combinations are repeated in several different games. The difficulty of the games builds up in each section so that your power to spot winning combinations is stretched in a very pleasurable way. There are even positions that will test the skill of the most accomplished players, but for their beauty alone they are worth including.

As Fred Reinfeld says in the introduction: “There are several ways to read this book.” If you read the book straight through, it can serve as an inexhaustible source of entertainment. If you play out the games, taking the whole book as a self-quiz, you can learn a great deal about the art of attacking play. If you are able to begin remembering similar patterns and observing the resemblances in winning techniques, your own arsenal of chess weapons will have become greatly increased.