Would be interested to hear how The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book, and its sibling, The Giant Chess Puzzle Book (both with 1000 puzzles) compare to the Reifeld books if anyone knows. There are so many opportunities in chess missed or overlooked because of the blind valuation of the pieces, and this really helps you see past materialism to win in apparently even sutuations. Guess am just too visual a person to overlook this, even though I've heard many chess players say how good the puzzles themselves are.

The current "Chess Lovers Library" reprint is a photographic reproduction of the original, and the some of the black pieces merge into the black squares on some of the diagrams. A lot of them don't have one solution, but several, and a lot of them should definitely not have been in such a collecton at all. there's some gems in their for sure, very strong and unexpected combinations- and a few that are like ?

The book predates computer checking, and the solutions are often not the only way of winning, and are sometimes incorrect.

Any beginner who wants to improve their chess and take it to the next level should go through the book and solve the puzzles in this book thousands of times and defeating you at chess will not be easy for average chess players. This book should have been rewritten by a qualified chess trainer for youngsters removing a lot of ordinary stones from the diamonds -- and adding some instructive comments here and there. Learn the 2-mover tactics from Polgar's big book COLD (there are about 1000 of 'em and they're not all obvious, at least to me!

Whilst it is very useful to look at positions like this one of the problems of chess is that real games do not come with "white to win in 2" guidance so when you are told that this combination contains a pin it is not a realistic analytical situation. Most difficult are the examples that run seven moves and more; some of these may even stump an ordinary master. The only quibble I have with Master Reinfeld is that he did not identify the source players and game for each puzzle. Web icon An illustration of a computer application window Wayback Machine Texts icon An illustration of an open book.