Improve your chess with these 300 carefully selected exercises "It was great fun to work through the book. Towards the end it took some time due to the elevated level of difficulty, but it was worth the effort - no pain no gain. Recommended!" - Lukas Wedrychowski, DailyChessTV Solving chess puzzles is one of the most effective ways to improve your game. This convenient book provides 300 exercises, with instructive points highlighted in the solutions. There is something here for everyone. The first 64 puzzles are based on a clear-cut tactic or checkmate, such as those explained in Gambit's best-sellers How to Beat Your Dad at Chess and Chess Tactics for Kids . In practice it is vital to defend resiliently and seek counterattacking chances - there is an innovative chapter on these rarely-covered themes, as well as endgame puzzles and ones where the reader must decide how to punch home an attack. Later chapters develop your ability to make tough chessboard decisions. Attack, sacrifice, grab material, defend or simplify - you decide! Principles and guidelines are emphasized, together with common sources of error. The final section of puzzles will prove a stern challenge even for the best players, with the reader exposed to the full complexity of modern chess - with a few helpful hints along the way. Gambit Publications has been publishing top-quality innovative chess books since 1998, winning numerous awards in several countries. FIDE Master Graham Burgess is Gambit's Editorial Director, and one of the founders of the company. He has written more than twenty books and holds the world record for marathon blitz chess playing. He lives in Minnesota. " The Gambit Book of Instructive Chess Puzzles is different! The work does not seek unexpected and striking solutions - rather, it requires the reader to make decisions, much as in a real game" - Uwe Bekemann, Fernschachpost "There are several things a successful book on tactical puzzles should have. They include examples that are not well-known, material arranged not by theme but by degree of difficulty and perhaps most importantly solutions that are detailed enough to explain to the student why they went wrong. Burgess passes all these tests with flying colors. He is particularly strong in his comprehensive answers that are often several paragraphs long. This thoroughness insures that anyone that puts time into solving them will benefit whether they find the right answer or not." - IM John Donaldson, Gold-Medal Winning USA Team Captain "I do like this book because it's not a load of positions with 'obvious' first moves like a queen or rook sacrifice. It's much more subtle than that. Indeed often the puzzle will be about rejecting such a move because it is often artificial. ... Burgess clearly states that he was looking for positions where the right path is hard to guess without seeing the main idea, and where there is only one solution. ... If you take your time going through this and work hard to retain the ideas behind what Graham Burgess is trying to get you to do I believe it will improve your game as well as provide hours of fun at the board." - Carl Portman, Carl's Planet