Winning Chess Traps by Robert M Snyder

Best way to learn tactics is to see them from the start!by Anonymous

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January 03, 2009: If you are either someone who has just completed a beginner's book or a decent amateur level player and want to greatly improve your tactics and learn about the openings then a book on chess traps is a great way to go! Learn how to punish typical mistakes in the opening. Learn the most important tactical patterns. Learn the openings themselves. All this rolled into one!
This book is part of an excellent series. But, it does well as a "stand-alone" book (as all the books in "Chess for Everyone" Series are. "Winning Chess Traps" contains all of the most important openings and strongly focuses on the most typical traps found in them. It is designed to be at a level for a direct "follow-up" to the top selling "Chess For Everyone" book (which introduces the basics and the most basic opening traps - it adds on many more traps, where the books such as "Unbeatable Chess Lessons" adds on more games, "Winning Chess Tournaments" adds on more endgames, openings and goes into psychology and detailed rules and techniques for the aspiring tournament player).
I agree that "Winning Chess Traps" is the best books on traps in that it provides solid analysis within the text of the sixty-four mini lesson traps (which have many more traps added within - hundreds of traps overall). It will tell you where the player went wrong, what should have been done in it's place and make suggestions for further study of a specific opening line (it refers you to specific locations in other books within the series for more detail when needed - nice!).
If you have a book on "chess problems" or "tactics" that starts off with a position where you must find a tactic, you will then see why this book is different. It shows you how the position was reached before the tactic is executed! That is awesome! Enjoy!

An extensive book on taking advantage of blunders - improve your tactics and knowledge of openingsby Anonymous

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December 27, 2008: Books on chess traps are based on the opponent making a blunder that can be taken advantage of quickly. Anyone who does not want to know this information would be missing oout on a great way to improve their game and should not buy books on traps, instead they should buy books on sound opening play (see for instance the three volumes by IM John Watson).
That said, most players want to know how to take advantage of blunders. Why play a long, slow, grueling game when you can win quickly? A masochist might prefer to do that, but most people want to end games as precisely and quickly as possible. Winning Chess Traps helps players to do just that.
The book has traps arranged by opening with the emphasis being on those openings used as a system in his other books. However, all important openings are covered giving well-rounded coverage. He explains the moves being made and the moves that are mistakes. He also tells the student what the correct line of play should be. You will not only understand how to exploit the mistake but you will also understand how to avoid it. This is what seperates Winning Chess Traps from the other books I have seen on opening traps. Although there are only 64 chapters, there are actually many more traps included. When more than one trap occurs in an opening or opening variation, Mr. Snyder covers the other pitfalls that can snare the unwary. I doubt that there is a better book on traps available (at least, I am not aware of any}.
Nice advantages of learning tactics from a book on opening trpas are that you can see how they directly apply to a specific opening and you see the moves leading up to what is reality is a tactical problem.
I highly recommend this book for study as a great way to learn tactics and the pitfalls that exist in openings.

I Also Recommend: Unbeatable Chess Lessons (Chess for Everyone Series), Winning Chess Tournaments, Chess For Everyone, Mastering the Chess Openings, Volume 1.