This book is the first part of the series of books devoted to little-figure sketches with the number of figures no more than five ('littles') and contains problems with three and four figures. The author began to make a collection of etudes for the 'littles' as early as 1971, having barely become acquainted with chess composition at the age of 18. Since then, more than 4,400 positions have been collected and almost all of them would be published in subsequent books. Many famous chess players themselves were composing 'littles'. In this book one will find sketches of world champion M. Botvinnik, as well as J. Averbach, P. Benko, V. Chekhover, O. Duras, R. Reti, R. Fain.
