Why I Use Tactics Books

I've gone through a few tactics books in my years of chess study. I've also put plenty of hours in various tactics trainers. If I had to choose between 1) A never-ending supply of tactics books or 2) Every online tactics trainer ever, I'd have to choose the first option. There's a wide range of online tactics resources: chess tempo, chess.com tactics trainer, lichess, CT-ART, blitztactics.com... I could go on and on. They're actually pretty friggin great and I'll discuss some very important PROS at the end, but first...

Here's why I think tactics books are better in general, in order of importance:

(Throughout the article, I'll refer to any online tactics trainers as 'apps.')

No "Click-And-Hope"

With apps, there often is a tendency to struggle with a puzzle and think, "It's been ten minutes, I'll just make a f***ing move." In other words, click-and-hope you've seen everything. Determining if your candidate move is right or wrong is always one touch or click away. I argue that for some, this can develop a sort of arcade-game experience with apps because you know if you make the right first move, the computer will play its best move and you can continue on to the next move, or the "next level." Consider a tactic that requires three moves to fully secure the advantage. If you're not diligent in finding all the lines the opponent might play, you might just play the first move and "figure out the rest after that if it's right" and tell yourself "oh I woulda seen that move in a real game." This is pretty clearly detrimental to your calculation and visualization skills. With books, I can much more easily sink my teeth into puzzles without feeling pressured to try out my first move and see if it's right. I'd write down all three moves of the solution and any variations in parentheses. Writing things down (let's be honest, 'typing it in a spreadsheet') sets it in stone before I check the back of the book. It also gives me opportunities to note any more important variations and jot those down as well. I feel like I get extra credit if one of my variations was noted in the back of the book. A good tactics book with comprehensive solutions will reward extra efforts like these, an app probably won't.

Good books don't have errors

Neither do good apps. Of course. What I mean is that the solutions section of a good tactics book will cover all important variations and other common moves you may have considered along with the refutation. So if you see a solution and you don't understand something, it is a learning moment. See this reddit thread 

• Using an App: "Oh okay, back-rank mate and my rooks are doubled, so I can take twice on d8 and it's mate." ~ ~ You play the first move and the app engine responds with ...Nxd8 ~ ~ "Oh shit, he has Nxd8... oh well, okay yeah so I can play Qe8 and that'll be mate, yeah I woulda seen that."
• Same tactic, but in a book (BUT using the book lazily): "Oh okay, back-rank mate and my rooks are doubled, so I can take twice on d8 and it's mate." ~ ~ Now, ideally you aren't lazy, you take more time, you check everything you can, and you write down all the variations you see including Nxd8 BUT in the event you quickly check the solution... ~ ~ "Ohhh, Nxd8...duh, shit I missed that move completely, and now I see that I still have Qe8# but I need to be more careful." 

You should view moments like this as a failure of visualization and I argue that this is easier to do when you're using a good book and writing down your solutions before checking. Comparatively, if you came across this puzzle in an app and messed it up, you might be inclined to gloss over the mistake as a "whoopsy-daisy" since you saw the mate right after the Nxd8 move anyway so who cares? IM Andras Toth discusses this in his Perpetual Chess podcast episode. Listen around the 49 minute mark of the episode. And then listen to the entire episode. Toth is a motherlode of improvement advice.

Themes

Books often group tactics by motif or theme. For instance a skewer chapter might have five different common skewer ideas, including several puzzles in a row that utilize a decoy sacrifice to line up pieces, then several puzzles that use a fork which, after re-captures, gets pieces into a skewering line, etc. They all rely on skewering patterns at the fundamental level and you get introduced to multiple variations on the theme. This is surely a blessing and a curse as the solver is essentially getting major hints for each position. So the positive is that it can be great to drill similar tactical patterns in a row, but you should understand how "100 Fork Tactics" is going to be a lot easier than solving "100 Randomized Tactics."

More than just tactical positions

There are amazing books such as Cheng's Practical Chess Exercises that combine both tactical AND positional puzzles with zero hints--thus, negating the 'con' of the previous bullet point :). This is tremendously helpful and you'll be hard-pressed to find an app that offers something similar that also gives clear explanations in the solutions.

Repeatable

They are easily repeatable if you'd like to try spaced repetition on a set of problems. I've spent a lot of my tactics training work reviewing problems from books I'd already done many times over. I also plan to re-visit books I've completed a year ago. All of these things are harder to do with any given app.

Morale

They are finite. You can complete books and that boosts morale. I feel that this is greatly under-appreciated. Books also often have an impressive-sounding number of puzzles. The numbers 1001 and 5334 will always be seared into my mind. Apps are usually endless. You'll always immediately be fed another puzzle and you'll never accomplish something in quite the same way you would with a book.

Chess Culture

You can start to absorb some chess history and culture because books often use real-game examples and famous puzzles. They will usually give the context: the player's names, the tournament and year. The Woodpecker Method sources all their puzzles from games of the world champions. It's how I began learning the names of the champions and their respective time periods, and it's how I first learned about the split titles in the 90s and 00s. You might also learn famous games or moves like the Opera game, Anderssen's Evergreen game, Nigel Shorts' King Walk, and Carlsen's tactic to beat Karjakin to retain the WCC title. That Carlsen tactic is among the last in the Easy section of Woodpecker. I recall seeing the names and year underneath the puzzle in the book, and so I googled that game and I was able to find video footage of the exact tactic being played in the World Championship! Very cool to see a piece of chess history, however recent, being played out on my screen and the same tactic is in the book I was holding.

Notation

Books help practice with notation. Writing down your solutions and reading the solutions back is a great way to get comfortable with chess notation for the beginner player.

Pros of tactics trainers

Clearly there is a lot of benefit to tactics trainers so it should be obvious that a combination of apps and very good tactics books is probably the best approach. I'll list a few important positive aspects of apps since I can't just bash on them the whole time. They are, after all, better than books in many ways. 

• If the app/online trainer allows you to filter tactics by difficulty or type/theme then that can be hugely beneficial for the beginner player for targeted practice. You'll probably never find a book titled 500 Removing the Defender Puzzles at the 1500-2000 Rating but a similar problem set can be made with a chess.com or chesstempo membership and a few clicks.
• Puzzle Rush Survival Mode is great. I'll never stop saying that. There's something to be said about the simplicity of climbing the tactics-rating ladder in a matter of twenty or thirty minutes, going from simple hanging pieces and mate-in-ones all the way to advanced tactics.
• The classic (obvious) reasons: apps are often free, they're always with you assuming you have your phone, they automatically track some of your progress as you solve.