Chess Tactics for Champions: A Step-by-Step Guide to Using Tactics and Combinations the Polgar Way Book

I bought this book a while ago, when I was quite new to chess, and was frustrated because I couldn't solve any of the problems in it. Since it bothers to explain how each tactical technique works, e.g. forking is attacking two pieces at once, I thought the exercises would start with simple applications of those techniques. Instead they are all at least "two-step" problems. e.g. a straightforward fork would be one step, but the problems are something like decoy sacrifice and then fork, or check to get to a square with tempo and then fork. Although two steps isn't a lot, it was beyond my ability to see a few years ago.

It was super gratifying, then, to pick up this book again and find that I can solve many of the problems in it quickly, and most within a few minutes. They are pretty much the perfect difficulty for me now, since I still get enough wrong to feel like I'm learning. For reference, my tactics rating on chess.com is about 1700. Only the chapter "Twenty-Five Famous Combinations" was too much for me. I couldn't follow most of those examples.

Like most tactics books, I wish the problems had been all mixed together rather than separated out by theme. It's more satisfying to try to find the best move rather than trying to find e.g. perpetual check in particular.

I liked the inclusion of more defensive problems than I've seen in other tactics sets. The last problem set I worked through had perpetual checks and stalemates, which are also present here. But this book had two chapters with more general defensive thinking - "Game-Saving Combinations" and "Traps and Counter-Traps."

There were a few problems marked "White to move" that should have been "Black to move": Problem 25 in "Double Check," Problem 17 in "Trapping Pieces," Problem 18 in "Mixed Checkmates in Three Moves," and Problem 14 in "Perpetual Check." Also the solution for Problem 3 in "Game-Saving Combinations" was wrong. It seemed to refer to some other problem.