"Combination Art" or "Combinational Motifs" by Maxim Blokh is the book version of the software "CT-Art". Most of the problems are of middling difficulty, a small percentage are long or really difficult.
I very vaguely recall the Livschitz book, "Grandmaster Challenge"(?) as being fairly difficult, but it was also quite short, with only about 150(?) problems.Tactic books
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Vladimir Kramnik completely overlooked allowing a mate-in-one in his match against a computer after his match victory over Veselin Topalov, in one game of which he stepped directly into a short mate (in three(?), if I recall correctly), which Topalov then failed to see or play. Kramnik was visibly utterly shocked when he was mated (in one move) by the computer's human assistant, while at the post-game press conference after their match game, both Kramnik and Topalov were both still completely oblivious to the missed short mate in their game, when they were asked about it.
Magnus Carlsen, just last month, overlooked a fairly short forced mate in his game against Fabiano Caruana, at Wijk aan Zee.
All of these blunders occurred at slow time controls with absolutely no shortage of time on the part of any of the players.
We have a Master on board 1 of the Sacramento Club Team Championships. He thought about a move for 15 minutes. Made the move, which promptly hung a piece. It happens to everyone. Mistakes liek that will never go way. Strive for improvement, not perfection.
OP-Beat The Grandmasters by Kongsted is the book you are looking for.
Almost everyone, but not quite.
Does anyone know of any games of Bobby Fischer or Emanuel Lasker with really gross blunders on their part?
I can casually recall only two games of Fischer's (after the age of 15) with grotesque errors. ...Bxh2 in his first game against Spassky in 1972, which he said, years later, was not a miscalculation, but an effort to make a barren position interesting, (I sure happen to think that he probably actually thought that he could escape with the B, failing to realize that it was trapped by Spassky's Bd2, and would be won by a K walk.), and his utterly bizarre ...h5 on the Black side of a 6.Bg5 Najdorf Sicilian, against Unzicker(?), which was explained in one version that I heard, by Fischer having picked up his h-pawn, intending to kick the White B with h6, and then realized that his intended move would lose to Bxh6, leaving him with h5 as the only other legal move that didn't lose in short order.
JackieMatra wrote:
Vladimir Kramnik completely overlooked allowing a mate-in-one in his match against a computer after his match victory over Veselin Topalov, in one game of which he stepped directly into a short mate (in three(?), if I recall correctly), which Topalov then failed to see or play. Kramnik was visibly utterly shocked when he was mated (in one move) by the computer's human assistant, while at the post-game press conference after their match game, both Kramnik and Topalov were both still completely oblivious to the missed short mate in their game, when they were asked about it.
Magnus Carlsen, just last month, overlooked a fairly short forced mate in his game against Fabiano Caruana, at Wijk aan Zee.
All of these blunders occurred at slow time controls with absolutely no shortage of time on the part of any of the players.
To be fair though to these GMs, playing for five hour staight can be stressfull. I think stress/tension could be a factor why they missed these moves.
All these errors occurred well before five hours of game time had elapsed, but then, it has been claimed that no one has ever won a game of chess from a well man, either.
Tigran Petrosian once (but only once) neglected to notice that a move of his opponent's threatened his Queen and lost it, while improving the position of his opponent's knight as well, to boot.
There was a game between two world-class Soviet GMs in the 1960s, (perhaps Leonid Stein and Lev Polugaevsky?), where one put his Queen "en prise" to the other's Queen, and the other player, possibly stunned at what he "hallucinated" was an offer of an exchange of Queens that he had utterly overlooked the possibility of, declined to capture his opponent's Queen and retreated his own Queen instead.
Robert Huebner, a two-time World Championship Candidate semi-finalist and once #3 rated player in the world, at near the peak of his strength in the 1980s, twice, in two consecutive tournaments, managed to give away his Queen in the opening of games by playing it nearly from one side of the board to the other to just about the only square where it could be captured by a minor piece.
Mark Taimanov once played the first move of a little combination that forced mate-in-three against Anatoly Karpov, and Karpov didn't resign because he didn't see it. (He got the idea and resigned after Taimanov's next move when it was mate-in-one. You may want to have a look and see if you'll notice it.)
Anatoly Karpov lost a Knight (and immediately resigned) to Larry Christiansen in 12 moves. (That one is actually worth a quick look as an amusing two-move problem.)
Not to be outdone, future world champion Viswanathan Anand lost a knight (and resigned) in only 6 moves.
Boris Spassky blundered an exchange early in the opening of a game of his match against Judit Polgar, and she didn't notice and let it pass. (Another easy two-move problem.)
white to move. Mate in 2.
Thanks everyone for the feedback so far.
What about the tactics trainer here on chess.com?
Feb 20, 2015
0
#32
The trouble is no repetition, so difficult to learn.
But nice to evaluate your improve you had done with repetition.
tranchant wrote:
The trouble is no repetition, so difficult to learn.
But nice to evaluate your improve you had done with repetition.
WRONG. There is repetition if you change the setting to untimed and set the threshhold for, say, 500-600 rating. That would be mate-in-ones. I see repetition. If that is too simple, set it to 2500-2600. GL to you if you do that. If anyone needs instructions, PM me. Coach Dan Heisman told me how to do this.
Feb 20, 2015
0
#36
JackieMatra wrote:
The most difficult and lengthy real game problems for solving, in books, have always been the "best" combinations in Chess Informants, and their Encyclopaedia of Chess Combinations. I recall one circa 2500 rated player commenting on how extraordinarily difficult many of them were.
Composed endgame studies usually have real-game-like positions (unlike composed problems) and often have long and difficult solutions with highly original, unusual, and unexpected ideas and tactics. Classic collections of composed endgame studies are "1234 Modern End-Game Studies" by M.A. Sutherland and Harold Lommer, "
1357 End-Game Studies" by Harold Lommer, and endgame study collections by Genrikh Kasparian, both of his own studies and his compilations of studies by other composers.
That said, the fact of the matter is that most chess games, even at "super-grandmaster" level are, in the end, decided by fairly gross errors. If you absolutely never missed a two or three mover that won material or mated, you would easily be at least a 2300 player even if your opening, strategic and endgame knowledge was that of the average class D to B club player. Just look at how "well" a good chess engine plays without an opening book or ending tablebase. No strategy at all, but no human can beat it, because it never misses a tactic, and almost always a fairly short one. Playing chess well requires extremely accurate and completely error-free short calculation of usually no more than 2-1/2 moves (5 ply). Really long calculations are rarely necessary, and then usually only in endgames with few pieces, allthough, in such cases, it is good to be actually capable of conducting a long and accurate calculation, rather than risk exchanging into an ending because it merely "looks winning" or sacrificing a piece because "there just has to be a mate there". Your subjective judgement may be right, but it just possibly might be wrong, and even if your'e right about the win, you're still going to have to find it.
Wordy, but accurate.
Try 'Imagination in chess' by Paata Gaprindashvili, I haven't read it but it is supposed to be very difficult. Not completely a tactics book but there are all kinds of puzzles.
alek: I found Aagaard's "Grandmaster Preparation: Calculation" pretty tough.
I'd be surprised if you could solve the 3-move mates in Polgar's 5334 Problems reliably within seconds.
It's been stated here before, but Averbach's Tactics for Advanced Players is outstanding, and may just be the book you're looking for. It not only helps with your middlegame, but the endgame, too.
Combinative motifs, Blokh
deja scacchi pdf (seek in google)