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Summary: Pattern Recognition
Review: Concise - nothing but pattern recognition explanations & exercises. Written for children, but a great work-thru for anyone! I've seen nothing like it. Written by Grandmaster Murray Chandler.
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Summary: Fun is the key
Review: Here's the scoop:
After reading this book you'll be thinking of ways to play the game differently. !... This is not a beginner's book!... Not in my opinion anyway, I've been playing chess forever and I found moments of this book difficult but I also picked up a few gems that I had ignored in my journey down the road of chess. One cool development after reading this was a friend and I created a sacrifice game where losing key pieces was unavoidable by design. Our version of sacrifice includes a clause where if a player has not captured a piece within his first 5 moves (regardless of the consequences) the other player gets to take one of his pawns (any pawn) it goes on from there but you get the idea. Let me tell you, you get your [self] out there and find a way to capture a piece ASAP, along the way you also learn how to recover from some seriously bad moves and there is a lot of laughing and whooping and hollering (which I think chess needs more of) also a byproduct is finding the "State of the board" after a few minutes in a very unique disarray. This book will expand your vision of the game and get you eager to go at it with a little more vigor and less fear. After all, the best game of chess I ever played I lost. Playing with a spirit of adventure is gained in this book, may chess never bore you again.
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Summary: Fun but limited book
Review: I enjoyed the puzzels with checkmates - one of many decent books covering basic checkmate situations. My favorite, and a better book is "Art of the Checkmate" even though it is in English Descriptive notation.
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Summary: Really nice format - don't judge book by the cover
Review: I first saw this book at a display by a chess book vendor at a large chess tournament that was being held in Denver last year. I am an adult active tournament player, currently with a 1570 USCF rating. A friend was walking out and said he had bought a book. As a joke I said "How to beat you dad at chess"? and everyone laughed, since my friend was also an experienced player.A few months later one of the people who was with me when I made that joke told me he had looked at the book at a store, and was really impressed, and bought it. He said that I would really like it. I had a gift certificate to amazon.com, so I decided to buy it also. It turns out that my joke was not really as funny as I thought it was! This book is not really for people who want to learn how the pieces move. It is a collection of mating patterns. While most of the material was not new to me, I really liked how the book was laid out. You can read it in little chunks, which is really nice. Each mating pattern is about 2 pages, so it is easily digestable. You can also read it without a board setup, which is really nice too, when you are on a plane, or just want to lay on the couch. I would recommend this to players from about 1000-1500 USCF strenght, or those that want to brush up on their mating patterns. Again, not for people just learning the game. It might look a little embarrassing if you are an adult, and leave it out on the coffee table, but just remember to "not judge the book by its cover". I am glad I didn't!
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Summary: Not for Kids only
Review: I found the title to be an unfortunate choice; it makes the book look like a kids book. Kids will benefit, but so will anyone with a USCF rating below ~1500. This is not a book about how to move the pieces. It doesn't outline basic strategy such as controlling the center, developing your pieces, or castling early. Instead, almost the entire book is devoted to "The 50 Deadly Checkmating Patterns." These range from the simple back-rank mate to four variations of the Greek gift sacrifice to methods of salvaging a "Petrosian draw" in the endgame. Chandler argues that these are common themes, and that by working through the well-diagramed, two-page-per-example sections, we will notice these possibilities in our play. He includes a test section at the end to how well the material has sunk in. The text is easy to read with clear, well-anotated diagrams (the key move is indicated by an arrow as well as the text), and the hardcover version withstands abuse in your gear bag. This is a superb book to glance at while you're waiting for the tournament to start.
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Summary: Makes chess fun!
Review: I got this book as a present for my two sons (ages 8 and 12) and they spend a remarkable amount of time reading it. A nice feature is that the checkmate traps shown often occur in their games, which keeps them interested. Great value!
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Summary: Very nice little book to sharpen your tactics
Review: I highly recommend getting this book as it logically arranges the checkmates by different patterns. It is extremely well organized and a fun book to learn from. You would never guess by the title what the book covers (I like the humor with the front cover!).
I wonder if Mr. Chandler is going to put out a book on tactics that win material? Would be a good idea if he is reading this. In the mean time I would suggest getting either "1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations" and "Winning Chess Tournaments for Juniors" (see my reviews on these books too).
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Summary: Love this book!
Review: I love this book along with my "Winning Chess Tournaments For Juniiors" books - the best two books written for players just beyond the basics!
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Summary: This is a great book!
Review: Its a great book for beginner and intermediate chess players of all ages. It helps you with recognizing patterns so you can see check mates several moves before you execute them. It says that most beginner players play chess using five percent of their time recognizing a pattern and 95% of the time analyzing the situation and their moves. A master player recognizes patterns 60% of the time he's playing and only analyzes the situation about 40% of the time. Now I play trying to look ahead to see if I have been in the position before. I also try to remember positions I'm in for later use when I've won. This book helps you beat anyone who continuously defeats you. Its easy to read. More visual players should put a chessboard in front of them with the positions shown in the book so they can move the peices according to what it says instead of imagining them in their mind. I recommend this book for kids and adults who want to improve their game.
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Summary: OK - but has problems (revised)
Review: The general principles (i.e. the basic checkmate patterns) seem to be sound but several of the examples have problems. As I work through this book I'm finding that many of the examples of "forced" checkmates are not forced at all. Instead many of them require poor moves - and even blunders - by "Dad" to get to checkmate. In Example 11 for instance, Chandler expects "Dad" to be so entranced by the fact that you just hung your queen to a pawn that Dad just grabs the queen without seeing that he'll be checkmated in two moves - when in fact, he could get out of trouble by leaving the queen alone and making a different move. I've only gotten through about a third of the book but I'm finding around 25% of the examples to be flawed in a similar way. I've set up many of the positions in Chessmaster and even at lower strengths the program often manages to avoid checkmate and quickly regain the advantage. (Although I have to admit that at my playing strength that's not hard to do.) I suppose this book makes an OK guide to the more common checkmate patterns and may make a useful supplement to your tactical training. By itself however I don't believe it will help amateurs improve their game. In fact, by encouraging middlegame kingside attacks, at the expense of tactics and material advantage, I'm concerned that it may do more harm than good to beginning and amateur players. = = = = = = = = = = = = = = = I wrote the above review a few months ago and I must admit that my opinion has changed since then. I'm increasing my grade to four stars. I've actually found the book to be very useful and it HAS helped this amateur not only improve his game but get much more enjoyment from the game as well! I've found that the problems I mentioned above with some of the examples has not hindered the book from doing what the author intended it to do: 1) fill a big void in chess literature by teaching kingside attacking themes to beginning and amateur players (who aren't yet ready for Vukovic's Art of Attack in Chess), and 2) helping make chess more fun - let's face it, attacking the king is FUN! That, plus the very reasonable price makes this a very good book for lower-level players.
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