Best of chili chess and looong moves

by Stefan Liebig
8/7/2024 – IM Oliver Reeh continues to inspire with the third edition of his Master Class Tactics. Once again he has selected some real gems to put your brain to the test.
In almost every chess game there comes a moment when you just can’t go on without tactics. You must strike to not giving away the advantage you have worked for the whole game.

Tactical tasks are a dime a dozen? Certainly not. But if you plough through tactical books or click through online exercises, you'll miss a lot of what Oliver Reeh has up his sleeve. First of all, the long-time ChessBase contributor presents a selection of the best exercises from the "Tune Your Tactics" section of ChessBase magazines #209 to #218, each of which contained the most creative combinations of the last few months. In other words, this is a selection of game fragments worthy of a beauty prize.

The International Master, who played for several clubs in the Bundesliga until 2012, organises the small masterpieces into chapters such as "Out of the opening", "Dynamite positions", "Little material" or "Sudden checkmate" etc. Within these seven chapters, there are up to eleven individual tasks with creative and thematic titles such as "Chili chess" ("quite hot") or "Looong moves" (the queen uses the whole board). This is how breathtaking and fascinating

38 videos with 150 exercises

The 38 selected interactive video clips, available as a stream or in the relatively new and very handy ChessBooks format, are the best way to train your tactical acumen. After all, who hasn't experienced the annoyance of realising after the game that you've missed a good tactical opportunity? After all, in almost every game of chess there is one or more moments when you can't win without tactical calculation. You have to strike at the right moment with the right sequence of moves - otherwise you risk the frustration that comes with missing winning combinations. This frustration can only be avoided by constant tactical training.

Here's a sample video:

Fun plays a key role in learning. In Master Class Tactics, Oliver Reeh comments on the examples in a friendly and varied way. And here is the essential difference to conventional exercises: If you can't solve a tactical problem, you look at the solution. This is often not very motivating, especially for difficult tasks. Oliver Reeh provides helpful tips and has also compiled 150 consecutive questions for the 38 tasks. So if you get the first move wrong, you can keep trying to find the next one. Immediate feedback shows whether the solution is correct or not. In this way, everyone has their moments of success and learning progress is guaranteed. At the end of the game, Reeh summarises everything so that the patterns and motifs are memorised.

Five hours of video material with challenging combinations cover all the important areas: whether it is a mating attack, winning material, power play or killer move, the Fritztrainer will sharpen your combinatorial eye and significantly increase your calculation skills. As a result, you will miss far fewer good opportunities in the future.

In almost every chess game there comes a moment when you just can’t go on without tactics. You must strike to not giving away the advantage you have worked for the whole game.

Stefan Liebig, born in 1974, is a journalist and co-owner of a marketing agency. He now lives in Barterode near Göttingen. At the age of five, strange pieces on his neighbour’s shelf aroused his curiosity. Since then, the game of chess has cast a spell over him. Flying high in the NRW youth league with his home club SV Bad Laasphe and several appearances in the second division team of Tempo Göttingen were highlights for the former youth South Westphalia champion.