Checkmate Tactics is no kiddy's book.

Ok, it looks like a kiddy's book - I'll give you that.  Colored pages, funny-looking pieces used as page decorations (not in the diagrams though!), fat arrows pointing from one part of a page to another.  And that cover!

It feels like a kiddy's book too - at 8 inches by 8 inches it just doesn't fit in one hand.  Or a back pocket.

Clearly a kiddy's book, I said to myself.  Then I opened it up and started browsing the introduction.  Browsing quickly developed into reading.

Broadly speaking (and, admittedly, this is a rather brutal simplification) chess can be divided into tactics and strategy.  Tactics is the nitty-gritty hand-to-hand fighting.  It's the stuff that players are trying to work out when they say to themselves, "If I go there and he goes there...and then I take his pawn...now, what can he do next...etc."

Strategy, on the other hand, is the understanding of what you (and your opponent) are trying to achieve in the medium and longer term.  It involves such elements as planning, an understanding of pawn structure and an appreciation of weak and strong squares.

According to my copy of Word, those 100 words read at a 9.8 grade level on the Flesch-Kincaid scale, in other words easily understandable by 13- to 15-year-old students.  Ok, not a kiddy's book, but maybe not a real brain-buster either.

Oh, is that what you wanted, a real brain-buster of a book?  Something along the lines of Franklin K. Young's infamous gibberish.  E.g.:

White’s objective is to form the en potence at once and afterward to establish the grand left oblique, while the minor crochet covers the right wing against the adverse major front echelon.

(For the curious, that little snippet reads at a 14.9 grade level.)

No, what we want is something that is fairly easy to comprehend, while not talking down to us.  Something that imparts clear understanding without the necessity of consuming two aspirin per sitting.  That is what Kasparov delivers in this book.

This is more though than just a basic tactics book.  Ok, it may be basic for Garry, but for the rest of us, this is more of an advanced, basic, tactics primer.  Let's look at one of the first sections...

Basic Tactical Ideas starts by telling us that "there are actually only three individual tactical ideas: the fork, the pin and the skewer."  He goes on to examine each of these in turn - I'll focus for my review purposes on only one - the fork.

"The fork occurs when two pieces are attacked simultaneously."  Kasparov then goes over knight forks (the piece forks are "most often carried out by".  Garry diverts from the discussion long enough to suggest a drill for visualizing how a knight moves about the chessboard.  Back to knight forks, and there are a number of examples provided, but first come a number of illustrative positions, stripped bare of extraneous pieces and squares.  Get the picture?

These are poor imitations of the more professionally done graphics used in the book, but hopefully you get the idea.

Jump ahead to Further Tactical Ideas - double attack, discovered attack, and overloading, deflecting or removing the guard.  Of course we all know from our own training that a double attack is just another kind of a fork, right?  Or is it the other way around?

A double attack is - as you might have guessed - essentially a fork, but involving more complicated threats.  The basic fork simply threatens two opposing pieces, whereas a double attack creates two threats (which may be simply against opposing pieces but often involves more complex ideas."

(11.8 on the Flesch-Kincaid scale, for those keeping score.  Definitely not a kiddy's book.)

Let's look at Kasparov's first example:

This is a position which has caught out hundreds of players through the years.  Black has played ...b6 in order to develop the bishop on b7.  This would be a reasonable idea were it not for the fact that White has...

1.Qe4!

Threatening the rook on a8 and mate on h7.  White wins a whole rook.

Using a mate threat as one of the "prongs" of the fork is a very common idea.  Here is another example.

Grade level 3.4.  Did you feel like Kasparov was talking down to you?  Me neither, and I understood the point very easily.  Imparts knowledge - no aspirin.  Just the way we like it!

Some of the other concepts covered include the zwischenzug, "the eternal weakness - the f7-square", some basic opening mate traps, some more sophisticated opening traps, the back rank, skewers, deflection, mating themes, and of course - combining ideas.  In 'Danger in the Opening' Kasparov looks at the long diagonal, unprotected pieces, the sudden unpin, and the over-exuberant queen.

Each succeeding section does more than just introduce a new concept, it build on the previously covered material by showing how it all ties together.  Like building a brick wall, one layer at a time:

Why Are Tactics Important    Pattern Recognition    Rook & Knight    Basic Tactical Ideas (fork, pin, skewer)    Putting It All Together...

Put it all together he does, with an example from a World Championship game.  What better way to establish credibility is there than that!

I mentioned before that tactical ideas rarely occur in isolation and that the most effective ideas usually involve a combination of factors.  Here is a fine example which demonstrates all three elements we have been considering.

This position is from a crucial game in my 1986 World Championship match against Anatoly Karpov (who is playing Black).  At the cost of a piece I have launched a ferocious attack but in the position below it looks as though this attack might have burnt itself out.

White: Garry Kasparov
Black: Anatoly Karpov
London 1986

I am a piece down and must do something drastic or the material advantage will soon tell in Black's favor.

For a start my queen is pinned against the king.  Although this does not involve a threat to win material is is a problem because if the queens are exchanged then my initiative will evaporate and Black will win.  So, I played:

1.d6+!

This wonderful move (which I was very pleased to have spotted some time ago) leaves black with three possibilities, all of which succumb to a tactic along the lines of those we have considered in this chapter.

1. 1...Kxd6 2.Nxf7+
   forks king and queen

2. 1...Qxd6 2.Nf5
   again forks king and queen

3. 1...Ke6 2.Re8+
   with a winning skewer.

This is a beautiful idea but not that difficult to find when you arrive in the position.  However, without an instinctive understanding of how the basic tactical ideas operate it would be very hard to see this several moves back.

Therein lies the essential answer to why the study of tactics, the understanding of basic tactical ideas, is so important - "...it would be very hard to see this several moves back."

The finish to the book are the puzzles, 58 of them to be exact.  Not that I'm counting - they're numbered.  These puzzles are taken from GM games, like Quinteros-Tukmakov, Leningrad 1973, or Nunn-Portisch, Reykjavik 1988.  The ideas illustrated are not that hard to see, even though they occur in tournament games by such hightly-rated players.  This is especially if you've worked through the preceding material.

Checkmate Tactics is not a kiddy's book.  It is an excellent basic tactics primer that any young person or adult serious about learning the game should study.  If you already play chess, and have been stuck below Expert level for more than a couple of years, you might also consider returning to the basics and study this book.
 

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