Chess grandmaster Susan Polgar seeks to partake the lessons she learned from her father Laszlo Polgar and the ones she learned on her way to be the first female grandmaster in history in this book of chess tactics designed for intermediate chess players.
Co-authored with her husband, Paul Truong, who is also an experienced chess coach, Chess Tactics for Champions is filled with plenty of chess puzzles paired with discussions of various tactics such as forks, trapping pieces pins and discovered attacks.
The book has a foreword by Anatoly Karpov, another chess grandmaster and World Champion during the late 70’s to early 80’s, who described the book as ‘an important work’ which would benefit any chess player.
While it has the same basic contents as any other chess tactic book, Truong and Polgar’s features two unique chapters called Tactics to Save the Game which discusses stalemates, perpetual checks and combinations, and Other Traps which discusses traps and counter traps. It’s considered by some to be an accompanying book to be read with Polgar’s other chess book, A World Champion’s Guide to Chess: Step-by-Step Instructions for Winning Chess the Polgar Way!.
Most of the people who read the book have plenty of positive things to say about it. They especially liked how the book doesn’t overwhelm the learner with pages upon pages of just puzzles as it has a good balance of discussions and exercises. The puzzles also prove to be challenging enough to learn from especially if you’re an intermediate chess player.
The book is not as in-depth as other tactics books but it offers discussions on some oft forgotten aspects of it making Polgar and Truong’s Chess Tactics for Champions a great book to use to supplement your tactics training.
About the Authors
Paul Truong is a Vietnamese-born American chess player and chess coach. He is also the husband of Susan Polgar, one of the famous Polgar sisters of chess prodigies. Truong served as the captain and manager of the US Women’s Team which competed and won silver during the 36h Chess Olympiad beating his hoe country of Vietnam.
Susan Polgar is a Hungarian-born American chess grandmaster and former Women’s World Chess Champion. She is the daughter of renowned chess theorist and child psychologist Laszlo Polgar who trained her and her two sisters in chess ever since they were young. She became the first female chess grandmaster at the young age of 15. She is also a decorated Olympic medalist with five golds, four silvers and one bronze.
