Downloads

Tactical Exercises

In order to use these files, you need a chess program which can read PGN files and analyze positions (in order to show the solutions to the exercises). We recommend ChessBase Light, which you can download from ChessBase for free (and which has an extremely useful feature called "Random Training"). These files are zipped, so you will also need to unzip them before you can use them in whichever PGN reader you decide to use.

By the way, if you are interested in improving your tactical abilities, you can find more advice in our article "Practicing Tactics."

1001 Tactics: These collections of tactics are from Fred Reinfeld's 1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations, which to the best of our knowledge is in the public domain. (Some later editions may contain new text or analysis from later editors which may still be protected by copyright, but our files do not contain any text or analysis -- only the bare positions and an indication of whether it is White or Black to move.) The files are sorted by theme, and there is also a master collection which contains all 1001 positions, if you'd rather download it that way.

Pinning
Knight Forks
Double Attack
Discovered Attack
Discovered Check
Double Check
Overworked Piece
Removing the Guard
Clearance
Interference
Queening Combinations
Weak Back Rank
Queen Sacrifice
Skewer
Surprise Move
Defensive Combinations
Trapped Piece
Zugzwang
Helpless King
Weakened Castled Position
1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices & Combinations (one file containing all of the above)