Mating the Castled King

good book but geared towards white side attacks. for example the chapter on pawn breakthroughs doesnt have one example from blacks perspective. if this book was more balanced it would be better.

An excellent book on attacking techniques.

A very nice book on attacking castled kings. A fair but not overwhelming number of practice exercises. Good clear examples. Just a very good book that I would recommend for anyone trying to work on their attacking play.

no comment

I found this book to be extremely instructive, especially the chapter on "160 mating finishes". The author organizes the book by mating patterns and common attacking themes. For the mating patterns, you can expect 3-10 puzzles per archetype, starting with a basic puzzle and showing many similar (but more advanced) puzzles. As someone over 2100 USCF, I already had most of the archetypes down cold, but not all of the other examples. Through association with the archetype (which the author kindly starts with), I found it easier to absorb the other patterns and I found that my correct evaluation of attacking position where there is a forced win was becoming easier as I went through the book. After the "160 mating finishes" chapter (which takes up roughly 50-60% of the book), the author shows many common themes when attacking. I was familiar with most or all of the themes already, and had intuitively figured out that many (most/all?) of these were archetypes when I was younger, but having it analytically spelled out for me helped me understand the importance and to know to consciously look for similar situations (helping me notice the right elements while it's fresh in my memory in similar situations). The additional examples were really useful for building on the archetypes.The target audience is probably players over 1800 USCF, because the author assumes that you have a reasonable grasp on basic tactics and focuses on more advanced patterns. The target age range is probably adults, as kids will learn a lot of this intuitively without needing everything spelled out for them. That said, kids can still learn a lot from this, especially since the author points out what is important, making it easier for them to know what to make intuitive. Adults need more analytic work to make patterns stick, and the author does a good job of this. However, he probably was one of the GMs who got really good mainly before the age of 18 (rather than 18-24), as his evaluations are often relatively intuitive and he doesn't always explain why the ideas/patterns work when they do. He does a reasonable job of this, perhaps even better than average, but his annotations are not on the level of top-notch analytic writers such as Dvoretsky and Aagaard. Regardless, it's still worth giving this book 5 stars, as the author did a great job even if it doesn't meet elite standards. Highly recommended.

Este es un gran libro para aprender patrones de ataque.

I am becoming a big fan of Quality Chess publications and this is another excellent volume. Beautifully laid out, as always, the examples are clear to follow with plenty of useful positional diagrams and this, coupled with 160 exercises makes for a very entertaining and profitable read for the average to strong club player who wishes to improve this area of their game.