This volume deals with chess tactics - a field which may be said to cover the individual operations by which plans are executed. Pachman divides tactics into its elements : moves, manoeuvres, combinations. He then examines the characteristics of the various pieces, showing the situations in which each it at its best. The main part of the book describes the tactical action of the pieces both in a positive sense, as they increase their effectiveness, and in a negative sense, as they restrict the opponent's pieces. Pachman demonstrates how these methods lead to advantageous material and positional changes, and concludes with a chapter on pawns and their uses. The text is illustrated by over two hundred extracts from practical play and twenty-one annotated games.

In this book, Ludek Pachman analyses the most complicated tactical elements : the tactical problems of attack and defence, the fight for time and space during a game, the psychological elements of chess and the problems arising from creative fantasy in a game. As in the previous book, the text is illustrated by extracts from practical play, and taken together the two volumes present a complex analysis of a middle-game theory.