A while ago, as penance for (yet another) dreadful tournament in Philadelphia, I took my copy of Bain and destroyed it.
Dan Heisman, my chess coach at the time, said that Chess Tactics for Students by John Bain was a good book to drill basic tactics, but he made two additional points:
Don't look at any of the supporting material for each diagram (other than White to Move). Otherwise the problems are just too easy.
The tactics in Bain are laid out by chapter headings like Knight Fork, Pin and Back Rank Mate - which also makes it too easy.
The solution? Destroy the book!
Or more accurately, I took the book to Kinkos and asked the guy to chop the book up so that all I had by the end was 421 little diagrams with nothing more than "White to Move" and the problem number written on them.
I shuffled up all the diagrams, and then photocopied them so they fit nine to a page.
Slap them in a binder, stick the answers in the back and presto!
Now I have a neat, random, easy problem set which is actually thinner and more useful than the original book.
And that's what I used to do my first ever successful "seven circles" exercise!
Dan Heisman, my chess coach at the time, said that Chess Tactics for Students by John Bain was a good book to drill basic tactics, but he made two additional points:
The solution? Destroy the book!
Or more accurately, I took the book to Kinkos and asked the guy to chop the book up so that all I had by the end was 421 little diagrams with nothing more than "White to Move" and the problem number written on them.
I shuffled up all the diagrams, and then photocopied them so they fit nine to a page.
Slap them in a binder, stick the answers in the back and presto!
Now I have a neat, random, easy problem set which is actually thinner and more useful than the original book.
And that's what I used to do my first ever successful "seven circles" exercise!
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