Rating: 
Summary: Opponents really do fall for these checkmate traps!
Review: The secret of this book is the fantastic selection of checkmate traps. I've never seen anything like it. The author really knows his stuff, and these deadly checkmating opportunities really do occur ALL THE TIME in your games! Once you learn to recognize them the rest is easy! It is amazing how often you get to play these sacrifices, like the Greek Gift or the Queen and Bishop mate, once you know what to look for. The examples are all from real tournament games. I used to struggle for a plan sometimes, but now I know exactly what to do - attack!
Rating:
Summary: A Fantastic Book To Improve Your Chess
Review: There are a lot of tactics books on the market now. This book was one of the first - and it still easily the best! This is thanks to an awesome array of checkmating patterns, based around thematic checkmating attacks.
The amazing thing is that lots of these checkmates were hardly classified before, but once you see them, they are simple to remember and play in your own games. Each of the 50 checkmates is covered over two pages, starting with a basic example, and moving on to traps even a master or grandmaster has fallen for.
Just buy it. You'll catch people in these traps for sure!
Rating:
Summary: The Most Awesome and Cool Chess Book
Review: This book doesn't look like it has much at a glance. However, it is well organized and the checkmates it contains a very good examples of important checkmate patterns that every chess player needs to know.
If you are in need of a good book on checkmates I recommend this book along with "1001 Brilliant CheckMates" and "Winning Chess Tournaments for Juniors". I do not recommend "Bobby Fischer Teach's Chess" (see my review on it).
Why 4 instead of 5 stars. I think "How to Beat Your Dad at Chess" is one of the best checkmate problem books, however, it left me wanting more problems to work on. If the author puts out "How to Beat your Dad at Chess Volumee Two (Dad gets older and wiser!)" then I will upgrade this to a 5!!!!
Rating: 
Summary: This books has some mistakes and teaches HOPE chess
Review: This book is our our school library. I have enjoyed going over the checkmated problems. This book has too many mistakes because for some of the problems to work the purson getting checkmated need to make very bad moves. I have been told by my chess teacher not to play HOPE chess, and that you need to look for the best moves on both sides. This book teaches that bad habit of playing HOPE chess because bad moves must be made for the answers to work in some of the positions. But it is still fun to look at the positions.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best chess books you can buy
Review: This book teaches mating tactics in so many ways!* 50 patterns, 2 pages each
* For each pattern, a brief description of the elements which must be present. (This is similar to more advanced checkmate books, but at a very simple level.)
* Then, a couple of diagrams with arrows, showing the motion of the key pieces, with the moves written below. Very good for improving visualization, so you might spot the pattern later.
* Then another similar pattern, with 2 diagrams.
* Then a couple of positions for you to work out yourself, with solutions directly underneath.
* And finally, near the back of the book, a set of a few dozen positions. They include theme numbers for you to use as hints if necessary. Solutions are separate. This reinforces the learning. These are all attacks on the castled king, not How To Take Advantage of Opening Blunders, or How To Solve Unlikely Chess Positions. These positions can actually occur in your games, even Fischerandom. The attacks are simple, but not obvious. Some are even by the Black pieces! Nice hardcover for a thin book. Large diagrams. Feels great in your hands. Very well-designed. Excellent book for someone rated between 1200 and 1500. I keep it in the bathroom. (I use different chess books in different ways. I take tactics puzzles to the gym. I always keep a chessboard handy for endgame books. I use a miniature set for studying openings. And I follow along with game anthologies by using a computer database and watching the computer analysis. And I am improving rapidly.) Do one theme (two pages) per day. In two months you'll have actually finished an entire chessbook, and you'll miss it! You will find yourself improving your own defenses because you'll know what to look out for. One of the few chess books you'll actually read cover to cover, and it's cheap for a hardcover.
Rating:
Summary: Small book, but great value!
Review: This book was excellent! I agree with the other reviewers who say that the outside cover looks really silly, but once you open it and start working through the problems, it can really improve your chess. I'm not a tournament player, nor have I ever been rated, but when I play on the net or at the local cafe, I notice that many of the patterns (especially the Greek gift and the missing h-pawn attacks) come pretty often. By practicing the patterns in this book, I'm beginning to win more and more. This book isn't for people who are learning how to move pieces, but it's good for intermediate players who want to learn how to sacrifice and how to attack. It'll help intermediate players get over their fear of sacrificing, and it'll reveal possibilities that one might not normally see. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A Simple and Effective Method
Review: This book works because the 50 checkmates (actually 47 checkmates and 3 drawing concepts) are so superbly well-chosen. Some typical examples of the patterns covered are: Single rook sacrifice on h8
The Bxh6 Sacrifice
The Double Bishop Sacrifice
The Greek Gift Sacrifice A nice touch is that for many of the themes a little bit of history is also given. For example, Deadly Checkmate 50 is called The Fischer Trap, as in involves the Bxf7+ and Ne6 motif of Fischer-Reshevsky in 1958. We also learn that the great German player Siegbert Tarrasch (1862-1934) once fell for this trap too.
This educational element helps explain why this book is almost a text book in many schools and clubs - the clarity of the explanations is another reason. The book is fun too. Very highly recommended, even for adults!
Rating:
Summary: A very nice book
Review: This is a very nice book. It's written in a very readable style. Absolutly not for advanced players, but these traps are worth knowing even if you are just a beginner - you can never know when you'll have the chance of using one of them.
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Summary: Covers appx. 50 Essential Checkmating Patterns
Review: This is an excellent book below 1500, even some B players may learn something new. It covers approximately 50 essential mating patterns (3 are drawing resources) in an easy to read and understand format. It is a very good introductory book on this subject. Repetition as the key to learning is a truism and pattern recognition is the way to success in chess. There are a few minor problems with a couple of examples but I still highly recommend this book for those under 1500.
Rating: 
Summary: Certainly not written for kids
Review: Very hard to understand and according to my dad has many mistakes. Certainly not written for beginners. Dad says you have to count on your opponent to make bad moves for these theorys to work. Dad showed me a number of mistakes in the book and a number of moves to make to avoid being in the situations described. I can't believe anyone would give this book more than two stars.
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