Contents

005 Symbols
005 Acknowledgements
006 Introduction
006 Three Steps to Becoming a Deadly Chess Tactician

Part One: Motivation

009 1 The Old Romantics

017 2 The Birth of Dynamism

025 3 The New Romantics

033 4 The Dynamic Romantics

038 5 The Deadly Tactician's Make-Up
039 The Reflex Action

041 6 Material Matters
042 The Expendable Pawn
048 The Out-Gunned Rook
055 The All-Powerful Queen?

063 7 You and Me

Part Two: Imagination

069 8 Simple Silent Sacrifices
070 Inside the Silent Sacrifice
075 Square Clearance
076 Line Clearance
078 Deflection
083 Diversion
088 Decoy
091 Interference
095 Elimination and Secondary Line Clearance
095 Substitution
097 Line-Grabbing

100 9 Complex Silent Sacrifices
100 Sd5 and All That
108 Multiple Motifs

120 10 Brilliant Blunders
120 Passive Sacrifices
131 The Unpinning Sacrifice
136 The Shunning Sacrifice
141 Ambush!

147 11 Tail-Lights
147 The Quiet Follow-Up
152 The Sting in the Tail
156 Quiet Stings

163 12 Pawns Passed and Present
163 Passed Pawn Connections
170 The Mating Habits of the Passed Pawn
174 The Pawn-Dash

179 13 Multiplication
179 Multiple Methods
185 Shirov's Multiple Sacrifices

Part Three: Calculation

187 14 Preparing to Sacrifice
187 The Sacrifice in Order to Sacrifice
191 Birth of a Combination

196 15 How Not to Calculate Combinations
196 Calculation for Athletes
198 Calculation for Joggers
199 Intuition versus Calculation
200 Tactical Trackwork

201 16 Have You Been Paying Attention?
202 Level 1 Test
205 Level 2 Test
208 Level 3 Test

211 17 Solutions
211 Solutions to Text Exercises
228 Answers to Level 1 Test
230 Answers to Level 2 Test
232 Answers to Level 3 Test
237 Index of Games  

Catalogue text:

A guide for chess-players to help them spot unlikely-looking tactical tricks and launch cunning attacks. Readers are shown how to hunt the enemy king and how to create practical chances when their position is difficult. Le Moir shows that the key factors in becoming a deadly tactician are motivation (having the willingness to sacrifice and to consider tactical ideas during play), imagination (being aware of tactical concepts that lead to ideas which other players might miss) and calculation (being able to analyse and calculate effectively).