Book Recommendations: Tactics Books

Hey everyone, and welcome back to another post in the Book Recommendations series! Today we'll be talking about the best books to sharpen your pattern recognition and tactics. I'd like to recommend two very great books that helped me improve my tactics significantly:

1. Encyclopedia of Chess Combinations -Fifth Edition by Chess Informant

     Widely known as a very good tactics book, this book has different tactical motifs (For instance annihilation of defense, pin, and decoy) separated into different chapters, and each chapter is split into 3 difficulties. I would highly recommend reading this book, especially if your USCF rating is 1800+. 

2.  The Woodpecker Method by Axel Smith and Hans Tikkanen

     The Woodpecker Method is one of the best tactic books out there, because it focuses on helping your brain remember the motifs through repetition. By re-reading and re-solving all of the problems in small groups for a total of 7 times, your brain will naturally memorize the important motifs in the position. This is a great book for pattern recognition, and the "Woodpecker Method" can be used to solve many other tactic books as well.

There are many other tactics books out there, let me know down in the comments if you have a really good book that I've missed. I hope you'll try these two books out, and hopefully get better at tactics while doing it. Thanks for reading!