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Book Review of John Nunn's Chess Puzzle Book

John Nunn's Chess Puzzle Book
reviewed on + 12 more book reviews


All the Nunn books are well crafted.
This book is a nice tactics trainer too, has some
interesting and unfamiliar positions that are hard
to crack.
The main reason I had to part ways with this book was
when I realized it did not quite fit my self study program. When reaching my B level I came to the
conclusion that the main thing from my progress was consistency.
This book did not reinforce the patterns I was already familiar with but introduced instead too many new patterns that did not entirely in my imagination overlap with one another. The learning of new tactical patterns is naturally an awesome thing, but I will have to return to those at a later stage of my development, when the ones I did study I can convincingly apply.
So while the book provides a remarkable workout and the author is a respected authority, I don't think the majority of these puzzles is for my level. I feel confident in my ability to solve at least some A level tactical puzzles, I have in the past, but these appear to require more understanding of the position than I ever have to demonstrate before. Based on that imperfect estimate, I speculate that the more advanced puzzles might be better suited for a different audience, mid A to Expert levels.