Chess tactics book for Woodpecker method when rated below 1500?

The Woodpecker Method is a book by Axel Smith and Hans Tikkanen that recommends doing the same set of tactics puzzles multiple times ("seven cycles") to improve your tactical pattern recognition. The book contains a large number of puzzles, in three separate chapters based on the level of difficulty: 222 easy ones,  762 intermediate ones and 144 advanced ones. 

According to IM Kostya Kavutskiy, the easy section is doable for players rated below 1700, but the intermediate and advanced sections are too difficult. I'm far below 1700 (and don't know what my real rating is since I started playing here less than two weeks ago), so I assume most of the book is too difficult for me. For this reason, I'm looking for a book with a larger set of "easy" puzzles to do the Wookpecker Method with. 

I'm not looking for books that introduce tactical motifs thematically (since I worked through such books 16 years ago: Chess Tactics for Champions by Polgar & Truong and Back to Basics: Tactics by Dan Heisman). I am not looking for online tactics or apps, either, since I spend already more than enough time looking at screens at work.

So do you have any suggestions for tactics books for players rated below 1700, possibly even below 1500? The books don't need to be in English; German and French are also fine.

You could use the first 100 puzzles in The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book by John Emms. Or Practical Chess Exercises by Ray Cheng though not all are tactics.

search 'tactic'...

Good Chess Books for Beginners and Beyond...

https://www.chess.com/blog/RussBell/good-chess-books-for-beginners-and-beyond

I know both of these books. I am looking for a bigger set than the 222 easy ones in The Woodpecker Method, but complementing them with the first 100 puzzles in The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book would also make sense.

I am not sure about Ray Cheng's Practical Chess Exercises. The blog post "Book review: Practical Chess Exercises (Cheng, 2008)" on the Lichess blogs says, "It's an excellent exercise book for club players (in Lichess terms, probably 1800 to 2300 rapid; people on the lower end might even use it as a set of instructive examples more than a puzzle book to be solved)" and "The difficulty was a bit high when I started with the book at somewhere around 1800 rapid on Lichess, but now at around 2150 it feels just right", so this book may be a bit too hard for me right now (except as calculation training rather than true pattern recognition improvement).

Much of that blog post is unreadable for people who have their OS and browser set up in dark mode.

To change background between light and dark, toggle-click the "Dark/Light UI" icon on the Settings menu (gear icon).

I have a book called Chess Training Exercises for Intermediate and Advanced Players in One Move by Andon Rangelov. The curation and analysis (none) are a big step down from a true chess publisher but for your specific use case this kind of self-published puzzle book (there are many online) may have merit. Contrary to the title, the one I mentioned is mostly quite easy. It's not a great value in my opinion for only 180 puzzles but you can be the judge. Amazing Chess Tactics by Tsvetkov appears to be similar but with more puzzles; I haven't tried that one.

Chess Tactics for Students by John Bain is a good one for this.

Also "Chess Tactics for Champions" by Susan Polgar. I haven't read this one though.

When I have my browser set to dark mode, you expect me to override that in the site's settings just to read you content? Good luck with that.

I am doing the Woodpecker book now. I've finished 180 easy puzzles, with a pass rate of 70%.

I am also working through the Silman-Seirwan book. I really hope my tactics start getting better before I begin the tournament circuit this summer!

Try the "Perfect Your Chess Tactics - 1000 Puzzles For zzzz Fide" series of books by Vincent Labbé. The zzzz range is from 800 to 2400. The Amazon description claims 1) Constant difficulty level, and 2) Ideal for the Woodpecker Method, among other things. The puzzles are merely taken from the 'Lee'chess database, though, except that they've been curated for specific Fide Elo ranges.

You can quickly switch between dark/light background as you like in seconds with a couple of clicks/taps.

Below is a quick review of the books that have been suggested so far. (Since I'm travelling, I can't currently check the books I have at home.)

• John Emms: The Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book* just the first 100 puzzles. (I own a copy of this book, so this may be a good suggestion, even though I was looking for a bigger set. But I may combine this one with some other sets of puzzles at a comparable level.)
• Ray Cheng: Practical Chess Exercises. (I own a copy of this book; the difficulty may be a bit too high for pattern recognition training at my current level.)
• A. J. Gillam: Simple Checkmates. (From RussBell's list. I might do just one cycle on this one; it's too basic to spend more than two cycles on.)
• Murray Chandler: How to Beat Your Dad at Chess. (From RussBell's list; also recommended as an early book on tactics by many others and not just for kids. This book covers 50 checkmating patterns, followed by set of test positions. If I bought this, I would have some overlap with other books I own (see Polgar & Truong, Dan Heisman).)
• Antonio Gude: Fundamental Chess Tactics. (From RussBell's list. Based on the preview on Amazon, this book looks very similar to Chandler's book. The last chapter is a "Tactical Examination" offering six tests; it is not clear how many puzzles each test contains.)
• Yasser Seirawan: Winning Chess Tactics. (The first part introduces tactics by theme, which causes overlap with other books I own. The set of mixed puzzles seems relatively small, so it's not an ideal fit.)
• Lev Alburt: Chess Training Pocket Book: 300 Most Important Positions and Ideas. (From RussBell's list. I own a copy of this book and put it in my luggage. It is too difficult for pure pattern recognition training at my current level. Dan Heisman has a list of 25 positions from this book that you can do first, but that's a very small subset.)
• Dan Heisman: Back to Basics: Tactics. (I own a copy of this book; I worked trough it a number of years ago before I abandoned chess for a few years. It has the right level; most of the book introduces tactics thematically.)
• Susan Polgar & Paul Truong: Chess Tactics for Champions. (I own a copy of this book; I worked trough it a number of years ago before I abandoned chess for a few years. It has the right level; the book introduces tactics thematically and has no set of mixed puzzles.)
• Fred Reinfeld: 1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations, 21st-century edition. (From RussBell's list. Tactics are covered thematically, without a set of mixed puzzles.)
• Martin Weteschnik: *Chess Tactics from Scratch: Understanding Chess Tactics. (From RussBell's list. Translated from German: Lehrbuch der Schachtaktik [mit Übungsbuch]. Tactics arranged by theme. According to one source, this assumes a rating of 1500–1600.)
• John Nunn: Learn Chess Tactics. (From RussBell's list. Tactics are introduced by theme; the book also contains chapters on defensive tactics and combinations and a chapter with miscellaneous exercises.)
• Andon Rangelov: Chess Training Exercises for Intermediate and Advanced Players in One Move. (Rangelov has published several books with similar titles, such as Chess Training Exercises for Intermediate and Advanced Players in Two Moves, parts 1 and 2. Announcing the number of moves gives a bit too much away, I my opinion, just like arranging tactics by theme in other books, but I'll check the books for two or three moves a bit more thoroughly later.)
• Lyudmil Tsvetkov: Amazing Chess Tactics. (According to the description on Amazon: "820 highly instructive chess puzzles, from beginner 1600 to whopping 3200+ elos". Puzzles arranged in five levels of difficulty: very easy, easy, medium, hard and very hard.)
• John Bain: Chess Tactics for Students. (I believe Dan Heisman also recommends this book and it's on my wish list. Sadly, it's out of print.)
• Vincent Labbé: Perfect Your Chess Tactics - 1000 Puzzles For 1300 Fide. (and similar titles for 800, 900, 1000, 1100, 1200, 1300, 1400, 1500, 1600, 1700, 1800, 1900, 2000, 2100, 2200, 2300 and 2400 FIDE. The selling point is the constant difficulty level throughout each book, assuming the difficulty level is roughly accurate. So it's a matter of finding the appropriate level.)
• Martin Bennedik: Intermediate Chess Puzzles: 500 Practice Exercises to Take Your Game to the Next Level. (Not suggested by anyone here but found while looking up some of the above books on Amazon. This book contains 12 lessons, each introducing a specific theme or set of related themes. It contains 500 puzzles in total. The level seems about right. Bennedik also published Beginner Chess Puzzles: 500 Practice Exercises to Take Your Game to the Next Level, which covers more basic tactical themes, beginning with hanging pieces and pawn forks.)

You might also check out...

Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations and Games by László Polgár (it's the mother of all chess puzzle books, 1104 pages)

Laszlo is the father of the famous chess playing sisters - Judit, Susan, Sofia. He was their coach and trainer when they were children...

Judit Polgar is known as the "Queen of Chess"....and considered by most to be the greatest female chess player ever...

https://chesswizards.com/buzz/Chess-biography-the-Polgar-sisters/

https://www.chess.com/news/view/judit-polgar-wins-vs-the-world

http://en.chessbase.com/post/judit-polgar-the-greatest-prodigy-ever

https://www.chess.com/news/view/netflix-documentary-queen-of-chess-judit-polgar-released

https://www.chess.com/news/view/queen-of-chess-enters-netflixs-worldwide-top-10-list

Most of the puzzles in that book focus on checkmates, whereas most tactics aren't checkmate tactics. The book has the following parts:

• “Mate in one (1–306)”,
• “Mate in two (307–3718)”,
• “Mate in three (3719–4462)”,
• “600 miniature games (4463–5062)”,
• “Simple endgames (5063–5206)”,
• “Polgár sisters tournament-game combinations (5207–5334)”.

There is an article where the author talks about doing this type of training using a variety of books, in which he talks about the suitability of each book in the list.

The books he looks at are:

Chess Tactics for Students - John Bain
The Chess Tactics Workbook - Al Woolum
Winning Chess Strategy for Kids - Jeff Coakley
Back to Basics: Tactics - Dan Heisman
The Winning Way - Bruce Pandolfini
Winning Chess Traps - Irving Chernev
Bobby Fischer Teaches Chess - Bobby Fischer

Starting Out: Chess Tactics and Checkmates - Chris Ward
Checkmate for Children - Kevin Stark
The Art of the Checkmate - Georges Reynaud & Victor Kahn

The article is here:

https://empiricalrabbit.blogspot.com/2011/08/dan-heasmans-7-10-basic-tactics-books.html

He seems to like the first two books best for this, i.e.: the ones by Bain and Woolum

IpswichMatt,

Thanks for the link to that interesting blog post. The blog has several other articles about tactics training with specific books, such as "The Susan Polgar Experiment" and "The Reinfeld Experiment" (using Reinfeld’s 1,001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations).

The blog post's main weakness is that all of those books are out of print, except for those by Dan Heisman, Bobby Fischer and Georges Renaud &Victor Kahn.

This morning, I read Avetik Grigoryan's blog post "Grandmaster Guide to learn and improve chess tactics", which recommends learning each tactical pattern thoroughly before moving on to the next pattern and only moving on to mixed puzzles after learning the basic patterns. Based on this, I'll do a few cycles of Chess Tactics for Champions by Susan Polgar and Back to Basics: Tactics by Dan Heisman, and only then move on to either just checkmates (Laszlo Polgar's book is mostly about that) or mixed puzzles.

Chess Tactics for Champions is a great book. I think you can learn a lot from repeating it before getting any other books. For an academic analogy: calculus teachers don't usually assign homework with mixed derivatives, integrals, and series problems. That is reserved for the last stages of study before a final exam. A typical problem set may include only exercises involving integration by parts, so the student can master this technique.

KitMarlow

That sounds like a good plan. Avetik speaks a lot of sense, and most of my chess work is using his ChessMood resources.

With regards to out of print books - these come up from time to time on ebay. But no need to bother right now since you've already got the Heisman and Polgar books.

By the way, another really good tactics book to consider for the future is Coakley "Winning Chess Exercises for Kids". Quite expensive but about 1000 exercises and includes defensive combinations.

My comment above notwithstanding, I learned today of a book series titled The Tactics Ladder. Each book contains 500 puzzles from the Lichess database, so the puzzles are nothing special. But the books appear to be set up exactly for use with this method and are relatively inexpensive. There are previews on Amazon if you'd like to read the author's introduction and gauge the difficulty level to select an appropriate book from the series to start with.