100 Tactical Patterns You Must Know Workbook + PGN Apr 20, 2026

Sharpen Your Pattern Recognition & Calculation
with 500+ Real-Game Drills

If you want to consistently find tactical opportunities in your own games, it’s not enough to just know tactical patterns. You need to have seen and executed them so often that they become impossible to miss.

That’s exactly what this workbook delivers: not just the 100 Tactical Patterns You Must Know, but 517 real-game exercises to drill them until they become second nature.

It’s the perfect companion to New In Chess’s and FM Frank Erwich’s popular course 100 Tactical Patterns You Must Know, where the same patterns are explored in greater depth.

This workbook is all about practice of those tactical patterns you must know, but it also works as a standalone course. Each pattern is introduced with a concise summary from the main course, along with simplified positions that help you understand the motifs in isolation:

A cross pin of the “Saint Andrew’s Cross” type.

Once your brain has locked in these patterns in a clear, distraction-free form, you’ll spot them much more easily in new positions:

White can’t capture due to multiple pins,
and Black is threatening mate!

Attacking motifs are the dominant theme throughout. But of course, you’ll also study defensive and drawing motifs, such as Nimzowitsch’s Perpetuum Mobile:

A pattern worth remembering
when you need to save a game.

100 may sound like a lot, but in reality, the patterns are built around a small number of underlying themes, grouped into clear chapters. The main themes are:

🧩 Double attacks
🧩 Discovered attacks
🧩 Skewers & pins
🧩 Elimination of the defense
🧩 Trapping pieces
🧩 Drawing techniques & defensive weapons
🧩 Common sacrifices

Studying and practicing these themes will train you to recognize what matters in the position in front of you. Over time, you’ll not only spot patterns faster, but also build the kind of understanding that lets you make good decisions almost at a glance:

Knowing that two pawns on the 6th rank can be stronger
than a rook gives you a new perspective
on when a sacrifice is in order.

Real-Game Exercises for Real-Game Success

The challenge is to spot the familiar patterns even in positions where you wouldn’t expect them. That’s why the course is built around real-game examples.

You’ll also get two mixed chapters with over 200 exercises, testing all 100 motifs without any prompts.

And not every tactic works. In some exercises, you’ll be asked to refute an idea:

Why was Black’s desperado …Nxe4 a bad idea?

This example shows how the course builds not just pattern recognition, but calculation. The theme here is trapping pieces, but you’ll need to calculate 17.Bxe7 Nxd2 18.Bxd8 Raxd8 19.Re2 to get there. A piece of cake after working through the course!

A Proven System to Help You Study Efficiently

For this course, New In Chess editor and FIDE Master Frank Erwich has identified the 100 most important tactical patterns and hand-picked hundreds of exercises to help you master them.

Like his other bestsellers, 1001 Chess Exercises for Club Players and 1001 Chess Exercises for Advanced Club Players, this workbook has already proven its value in print.

In this digital version, you can take your training further: practice the exercises with Spaced Repetition and learn from 11+ hours of video lessons by International Master Kostya Kavutskiy, who guides you through each exercise step by step.

IM Kavutskiy is a renowned coach and co-founder of the ChessDojo, one of the most dedicated online communities for adult improvers. Because he understands how players of all levels think and what they struggle with, he’s able to explain ideas in a way many masters can’t.