The Chess Cafe Puzzle Book: A review
Karsten Müller, The Chess Café Puzzle Book (Russell Enterprises 2008). 303 pp., $19.95. Reviewed by Dennis Monokroussos.
There is no shortage of tactics books and discs on the market, but Müller’s offering is a worthy addition to the pile. The book presents 565 puzzles*, the last 160 of which come in the form of ten tests. Before that, the training material is divided into six chapters.
The first and longest chapter, “Motifs”, is one to which I give my heartiest approval. Müller divides the material there into no less than 20 different themes and 234 puzzles. Most of the themes are standard: back rank mates, deflection, discovered, doubled, and x-ray attacks, pins, skewers and so on. But some are a bit less usual in books of this sort, like vacating lines and squares, zugzwang and zwischenzugs.
Some tactics books reject this form of presentation on the grounds that it’s unrealistic – no one is holding up a sign during the game letting you know that a back rank combination is available, so it’s silly to train that way. I disagree. It would be a mistake to always train that way, but as a way to learn, overlearn, master, and refresh one’s learning it’s an excellent technique.**
The next chapter, “Easy Exercises” consists of 100 problems that generally won’t be too easy to the average club player. (My guess is that the chapter will be a good workout for those in the 1700 range.) Here and throughout the rest of the book, the themes are unannounced. There follows a 38 problem chapter with endgame positions, a mini-chapter with 13 opening traps, a useful if brief (21 problems) chapter on defense, and then it’s on to the tests. (A nice feature: one can consult a hint section, though of course it costs one points to do so.)
I like the format and the material is fine, too, though as mentioned earlier it’s not really suitable for beginners or as a first tactics book. An interesting note about the material: most of the exercises date from 2000-2003, which means that almost all the old standards are absent. That’s a good thing for those of us – most of us who go back to the antediluvian age when books walked the earth – who have already seen the standards. (Of course if one hasn’t, then there’s nothing wrong with getting one of the oldies like the Reinfeld “1001” books.) So based on the material and the book’s structure, I warmly recommend the book for B- and A-players, and I think experts and up can benefit as well, though there are other works out more specifically aimed to that level.
I’ll offer one complaint, an aesthetic one. Not only sections but even chapters start in the middle of a page, immediately after the end of the previous section or chapter. Yuck. I’m sure this saved the publisher a few cents (or rather the customer, who’d have to pay for it), but it seems an unworthy sacrifice of production values to me. White space is not wasted space. It’s easier on the eyes, and helps readers to focus on what is more important in the material and to grasp its structure. (There’s a reason we use spaces between words, after sentences and between paragraphs! wecouldsavemoneybywritingallourbookslikethiswithoutcapitalizationpunctuationorspacesbutitwouldberevolting) This reservation aside, I’m happy to recommend the book, especially to players in the 1700-2000 range.*** The volume can be purchased here.
* It’s 567, actually, because number 18 has an A, B, and C puzzle, perhaps because they were added too late to conveniently renumber all the successors.
** Indeed, the objection is seriously misguided, and not followed in any other sport or intellectual discipline, or even by the objectors themselves. Are there any tennis players who don’t specially practice their forehands, even though it’s “unrealistic” to expect hitting dozens of forehands in a row during an actual match? Or imagine math instruction where concepts aren’t drilled in distinct units. Finally, just as no one in a real game tells us that there’s a double attack, there’s also no one telling us that there’s a tactic of any sort. So tactics practice is “unrealistic” by this standard, whether the practice occurs by theme or not.
*** I'm also a fan of the follow-up volume, the ingeniously entitled The Chess Cafe Puzzle Book 2. Despite the tactics connotation of the word "puzzle", that book presents and then tests the reader on various positional motifs. It's available here, and I'll have a longer review in a (the?) forthcoming issue of Chess Horizons.
There is no shortage of tactics books and discs on the market, but Müller’s offering is a worthy addition to the pile. The book presents 565 puzzles*, the last 160 of which come in the form of ten tests. Before that, the training material is divided into six chapters.
The first and longest chapter, “Motifs”, is one to which I give my heartiest approval. Müller divides the material there into no less than 20 different themes and 234 puzzles. Most of the themes are standard: back rank mates, deflection, discovered, doubled, and x-ray attacks, pins, skewers and so on. But some are a bit less usual in books of this sort, like vacating lines and squares, zugzwang and zwischenzugs.
Some tactics books reject this form of presentation on the grounds that it’s unrealistic – no one is holding up a sign during the game letting you know that a back rank combination is available, so it’s silly to train that way. I disagree. It would be a mistake to always train that way, but as a way to learn, overlearn, master, and refresh one’s learning it’s an excellent technique.**
The next chapter, “Easy Exercises” consists of 100 problems that generally won’t be too easy to the average club player. (My guess is that the chapter will be a good workout for those in the 1700 range.) Here and throughout the rest of the book, the themes are unannounced. There follows a 38 problem chapter with endgame positions, a mini-chapter with 13 opening traps, a useful if brief (21 problems) chapter on defense, and then it’s on to the tests. (A nice feature: one can consult a hint section, though of course it costs one points to do so.)
I like the format and the material is fine, too, though as mentioned earlier it’s not really suitable for beginners or as a first tactics book. An interesting note about the material: most of the exercises date from 2000-2003, which means that almost all the old standards are absent. That’s a good thing for those of us – most of us who go back to the antediluvian age when books walked the earth – who have already seen the standards. (Of course if one hasn’t, then there’s nothing wrong with getting one of the oldies like the Reinfeld “1001” books.) So based on the material and the book’s structure, I warmly recommend the book for B- and A-players, and I think experts and up can benefit as well, though there are other works out more specifically aimed to that level.
I’ll offer one complaint, an aesthetic one. Not only sections but even chapters start in the middle of a page, immediately after the end of the previous section or chapter. Yuck. I’m sure this saved the publisher a few cents (or rather the customer, who’d have to pay for it), but it seems an unworthy sacrifice of production values to me. White space is not wasted space. It’s easier on the eyes, and helps readers to focus on what is more important in the material and to grasp its structure. (There’s a reason we use spaces between words, after sentences and between paragraphs! wecouldsavemoneybywritingallourbookslikethiswithoutcapitalizationpunctuationorspacesbutitwouldberevolting) This reservation aside, I’m happy to recommend the book, especially to players in the 1700-2000 range.*** The volume can be purchased here.
* It’s 567, actually, because number 18 has an A, B, and C puzzle, perhaps because they were added too late to conveniently renumber all the successors.
** Indeed, the objection is seriously misguided, and not followed in any other sport or intellectual discipline, or even by the objectors themselves. Are there any tennis players who don’t specially practice their forehands, even though it’s “unrealistic” to expect hitting dozens of forehands in a row during an actual match? Or imagine math instruction where concepts aren’t drilled in distinct units. Finally, just as no one in a real game tells us that there’s a double attack, there’s also no one telling us that there’s a tactic of any sort. So tactics practice is “unrealistic” by this standard, whether the practice occurs by theme or not.
*** I'm also a fan of the follow-up volume, the ingeniously entitled The Chess Cafe Puzzle Book 2. Despite the tactics connotation of the word "puzzle", that book presents and then tests the reader on various positional motifs. It's available here, and I'll have a longer review in a (the?) forthcoming issue of Chess Horizons.