Mate Threats and Defense: 1000 Tactical Examples

This tactics book by FIDE Senior Coach GM Jakov Geller teaches the reader how to create mating threats and execute them using a combination of techniques, as well as how to implement key defensive techniques to combat mating threats. Unlike most tactics books, the text provides readers with a detailed explanation of all elements of combinations, both individually and when combined with others. This knowledge allows the reader to identify tactical opportunities in their game and execute or defend against them with confidence.

The book contains 1,000 carefully selected examples, of which 924 are exercises for the reader to solve. They start with simple, single-move illustrations of the concepts and then move on to more complex tests, with many combinations of 5-6 moves and sometimes more. The book is divided into 28 chapters, most of which focus on defending against mate threats. Nine defensive techniques receive their own chapters. With each new defensive technique studied, the combinations in subsequent chapters become more and more diverse. The level of difficulty of the exercises in each chapter therefore increases gradually.