Reddit mentions of Practical Chess Exercises: 600 Lessons from Tactics to Strategy

Ray Cheng's book Practical Chess Exercises is exactly what you want. I'll just paste an excerpt from my copy (basically most of the introduction):

> Each exercise consists of a diagrammed chess position, and your task is to find the best move. For each position you are told only which side is to move; there is no further set-up. For example, you will not find a caption under the diagram such as “White to mate in 3,” or “How can Black exploit the undefended rook on a1?” The intention is to furnish only the information that you would have during a real game, when no such hints are expected or permitted. Indeed, any kind of training tends to be more effective to the extent that it simulates the conditions of actual competition. That is one of the core principles of this book. For similar reasons, the exercise positions are not grouped by theme or labeled by level of difficulty. Again, the idea is that in a real game, no one is going to whisper in your ear “Hey, you have a killer knight fork,” or “You’d better spend a little extra time on this move, because it rates four stars in difficulty.”
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> Most chess puzzle books consist entirely of tactical exercises, but there is a downside to this. Knowing at the outset that there is a tactic to be found dilutes the value of the exercise. Indeed, it encourages the reader to adopt an abridged thought process—jumping right into calculating outrageous sacrifices, for instance, without being led toward the solution by skillfully reading the clues in the position. Just as often, this reader might prematurely stop calculating once a plausible tactic has been found (and affirmed by the solution in the back of the book), without bothering to double-check whether it really works. For that reason I included a number of positions where there is a tempting tactical try that fails for some reason, and the best move is something else entirely. In real life, many (and perhaps most) tactical possibilities turn out to be flawed, and thus the habit of double-checking them is well worth cultivating. Likewise, I included positions in which it is your opponent who has the tactical threat; your job is then to identify the threat and take any appropriate defensive measures.
> Many of the exercises in this book cover tactical themes, while others need not have a tactical resolution at all. There are exercises built upon positional ideas, such as outposts, weak squares, pawn structure, superior minor piece, and positional sacrifices. Other exercises are concerned with basic theoretical endgames that every chess player should know, or they feature interesting endgame positions that have occurred in practice. Many of them will illustrate important endgame concepts, including the active king, opposition, rooks behind passed pawns, and the outside passed pawn. As far as openings go, you will not be tested for your specific knowledge of theoretical “book” moves. You will, however, need to handle opening positions based on fundamental principles, such as those concerning the center, development, and castling. Of course, there will also be opening tactics and blunders to contend with.
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> The exercises in this book appear in random order, not only by theme, but also by level of difficulty. After all, being able to judge how much time and energy to devote to a particular position is a valuable skill during actual competition. The exercises range from very simple to very difficult, with most falling into the middle categories. For the sake of reference I have labeled the solutions (but not the exercise positions themselves, of course) with up to four stars to indicate their approximate difficulty.
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> Because they are not accompanied by artificial hints, working through these exercises will instill a more complete and realistic move selection process. They present opportunities to utilize and strengthen your tactical vision, positional understanding, theoretical knowledge, and intuitive judgment in an integrated and holistic manner. In addition, they will enhance your ability to anticipate your opponent’s ideas, calculate variations, and evaluate the resulting positions accurately.

I personally have found the problems to be interesting and of high quality :)

Where do you presently stand in terms of an opening repertoire?
I have a Chess.com tactics rating ~1750 and I continue to find improvement in my play by only knowing some basic responses against against 1.d4 (KID and Nimzo) and 1. e4 (Caro Kann and Sicilian), then just trying to play logically when I'm out of book (which can be as little 5-7 moves).
I've kind of made it a policy of my own to stay away from opening theory as I recall spending several hours in CPT thinking I can crush afterward, only to be sobered by my lack of understanding toward the positions that arose in a real game.
Until I'm getting absolutely crushed in the opening, I think I'll do my best to avoid opening preparation altogether and focus on tactics, endings, and positional ideas (thinking Practical Chess Exercises).

I am currently going through this book by Ray Cheng-

https://www.amazon.com/Practical-Chess-Exercises-Lessons-Strategy/dp/1587368013

I agree with this review segment -

What is it? It's 600 problems, six to a page, with solutions sketched (not detailed) on the facing page (which you need to keep covered with a sheet of note paper sized to fit the book). The problems are not the usual themed and rated tactics collection; they are a completely randomized assortment of REAL LIFE positions, many drawn from amateur games. They range from easy to hard, tactical to positional, opening to endgame, and attack to defense. But what is so great about the collection is that you are given not a single hint as to type, theme, or difficulty (until you look at the solution, wherein all is revealed). This simulates tournament play conditions exactly.

This book, "Practical Chess Exercises", has a mixture of tactical and positional solutions, all mixed together: it's up to you to assess each position and determine what the best move is; it doesn't say "hey there are/aren't any tactics in this problem". So it is not 100% what you are looking for, but it may be helpful.

I gave you some advice for each book at each level. Of course all of these books can be switched around and if you want to read Dvoretsky (A very advanced author) at your level you're welcome to. Although a 1300 rating on lichess.org is still at a beginner level so I suggest you start from that section.

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Beginner:

Play Winning Chess By: Yasser Seirawan

Logical Chess Move by Move By: Irving Chernev

How to Reasses Your Chess By: Jeremy Silman

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Intermediate:

Practical Chess Exercises By: Ray cheng


The Art of Defense in Chess By: Andrew Soltis

Pawn Structure Chess By: Andrew Soltis

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Master:



Fundamental Chess Endings By: Karsten-Müller and Frank Lamprecht.

Art of Attack in Chess By: Vladimir Vukovic

Dvoretsky's Endgame Manual By: Mark Dvoretsky

It's such a canonical book that in chess circles, it gets its own abbreviation, HTRYC. I'd check your local library first, though, because it's so popular that they're bound to have a copy of it.

It's a good book for learning basic strategy, but I recommend you pair it up with this book so you can look for the themes without the crutch of context.

Question for you or anyone: What is the best chess puzzle app? I'm a huge fan of Ray Cheng's book. Any phone app equivalent?