Tim Brennan

Hi! I am Tim Brennan, the creator of Tactics Time, and I am dedicated to helping chess players improve their rating and win more games. I am not a "child prodigy" or "chess genius". In fact, I only started playing competitive chess as an adult. I know what it is like to feel stuck as a low rated player. I know what it is like to study hard and feel like you are not making progress. I know what it is like to feel humiliated by higher rated players. Feeling all of this frustration and pain as a low rated player, and knowing that I was capable of more, I went on a quest to find out the answers to several questions. These included: * What do I need to do to get better at chess? * Why do so many players fail to get better at chess? * What are the most important things I need to do to get better at chess? What I found was a confusing mess of conflicting and contradicting information on how to get better at chess. Most chess books on how to improve are written by Grandmasters with super genius level IQs who received the best training on earth from a very early age in the Soviet Schools of Chess. These books filled my brain with "chess knowledge", but when I would play I was still dropping pieces, blundering, and losing to simple 1-3 move tactics. The "Ah-ha!" came when I learned the secret of the "80-20 rule" and applied it to chess. This rule means that 80% of results come from 20% of your actions. In my case, I was spending about 20% of my study time on tactics, and losing about 80% of my games because of tactics! I decided to switch to spending 100% of my study time on tactics, and the results were dramatic! I gained hundreds of rating points in a very short amount of time. Since then I have developed a deep love of chess tactics, especially those from real games and amateur players. For the past 10 years I have been publishing my own chess problems in magazines, mainstream newspapers, e-mail newsletters, on websites, and now in a Kindle eBook! I have heard from chess players from all over the world that my tactics have helped them to improve their chess game, and I am sure they can help you too!