Chess Tactics For Kids by GM Murray Chandler. 128 pages, $14.95. www.gambitbooks.com. Click here to read a sample chapter. (Must have Adobe Acrobat Reader, free at www.adobe.com.)

Buy at www.cajunchess.com.

his month’s column is going to be a little different. Gambit Publications has just published Chess Tactics For Kids, and instead of our usual instructional column we’re going to take a look at this excellent book. Author Murray Chandler previously wrote How To Beat Your Dad At Chess which focused on the most common checkmating patterns. Chandler is the managing director of Gambit Publications, a former editor of British Chess Magazine, and he was a successful junior player before rising to the rank of grandmaster. In his new book, Chandler takes the successful formula from Beat Your Dad and applies it to tactical patterns.

Since games between junior players are, more often than not, simply tactical slugfests without strategic finesse, this tactics book makes a welcome companion to the checkmating book. Additionally, though there are many, many, tactics book available, I’ve not seen one that is so thoughtfully laid out and written so well for the junior player as is Chess Tactics For Kids.

Like it’s predecessor, this book is a hardcover for added durability. At $14.95 it is relatively inexpensive, especially so for a hardcover. The book opens flat easily and stays open. Small hands will find it easy to manipulate.

Chandler writes in a clear, intelligent style that does not talk down to kids but assumes a bright reader. His descriptive terms add interest; for example, he calls a knight “the octopus of the chessboard.”

Since Gambit is a British publisher, naturally British spelling is used (“manoeuvre” rather than “maneuver” for example). Despite this “across the pond” difference, the really important part—the tactics— are of course universal. Each of the fifty tactical patterns covered are laid out over two pages. The pattern is described on the first of the two pages with two illustrative

diagrams. Four diagrams follow on the second page. This pattern does not vary, and it makes the book that much more of an effective teaching tool. Because the student will not be distracted by varying layouts, he can focus squarely on the lesson being taught.

The examples have been carefully chosen to both strongly illustrate the desired concept and to make the student think carefully. Since I confine most of my chess study to tactics, I thought that surely in a book designed for kids the examples would be too simple for me to bother with. I was wrong. I had to think through the examples carefully. Rarely was there one where I “instantly” knew the answer. Yet, I did not think the examples would be too difficult for a child learning tactics. They might have to go over and over the problem, but that is of course a good thing.

Here is an example from the chapter “Knight Forks,” with Black to move and win:

Even though you know that the desired tactic is a knight fork, you must still visualize a few moves ahead to see the fork. After 1...Rd1+ 2. Bf1 Nf3+ 3.Kg2 Ne1+ wins the rook via the fork. Most beginner’s books would start with a diagram after 3.Kg2. Because this book makes you work harder, the student is more likely to both increase his learning and to continually refer back to this book.

The chapter layout makes this book highly portable; no actual chess set is needed to study alongside when this many diagrams are available. It is an ideal book to bring along to doctor’s appointments or to bring along to the pool to read during “adult swim” as well as to use for more formal study.