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Summary: You NEED this book.
Review: It is quite simple: if you are new to the game of chess, you need to do only two things to improve: study tactics and study mating patterns. Why? Because tactics and mating threats are the reason that long term strategy works. The reason Grand Masters make such good moves is the fact that they are finding future tactical or mating threats in every move they make. (This is obviously a broad generalization, but it's true enough.) Start with tactics first. They are going to be your bread and butter throughout your chess playing career. After you have a decent tactical foundation, then it's time to learn the mating patterns. I mean really LEARN them.Once you have gained a thorough knowledge of this part, you can then move on to positional considerations, as you will know what it means to have a positional advantage in the first place. For example, what good is it to have the two Bishops and an open position, if you lack the basic knowledge of tactics and mating patterns to do anything with it? So why then do you need this book? Because it lays out in a very clear fashion a lot of different ways to mate the king. Now instead of wandering aimlessly through the middlegame, you can take a look at your position and see what sorts of mating threats you can create from move to move based on the mating patterns this book will teach you. Knowing these mates is absolutely fundamental to getting better at chess. Your results will improve. You will learn the mating patterns by using and studying this book. The first time you spot one of these mates against an actual opponent, you'll have more than gotten your money's worth from this book. It really is that simple. The book uses descriptive notation, so watch out if you don't know how to read that kind of notation.
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Summary: Best book covering Checkmate Patterns
Review: This book does a wonderful job of grouping Checkmate Patterns together to make it easy for you to learn them. I recommend this book to beginners and players just beyond having learned the basics. The one drawback is that it is not written in Algebraic Notation. I also recommend getting Winning Chess Tournaments for Juniors (Algebraic Notation) for expanded tactical patterns to study and 1001 Sacrifices and Combinations.
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Summary: The Art of the Checkmate
Review: This book is a model of clarity and logic, particularly suitable for beginners and intermediate players. Don't be put off by the old notation, the book is a real gem.
Each chapter starts off with the basic mechanics of a type of checkmate and then produces full games to show the ideas in action. After each lot of 4 - 8 chapters, there are tests to give the reader a chance to put the ideas into practice.
This is not a book that will be half read and then put away to gather dust, it is a real breeze to get through and to return to again and again.
The co-authors of this book were both past champions of France. What struck me whilst working through it was a certainty that their motivation for writing it was, above all, a love of the game and a desire to impart their knowledge to the reader.
If you want to give your play a cutting edge, buy this book.
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Summary: Great book of mating patterns.
Review: This book is an excellent way to increase awareness of mating combinations. Chess is mostly pattern recognition. By familiarizing yourself with recurring themes you will be able to recognize them in your own games. As the reviewer below stated, you don't need to know the names, just what they look like. Great book for beginning and intermediate players.
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Summary: One of the best chess books ever!!!
Review: This is a classic and quite frankly, its hard to find chess books being written today that are this useful (with a few minor exceptions). Yes, it is in descriptive notation which makes it somewhat difficult. Yes, some of the commentary about the games is dated (see, e.g., the commentary about Bc4 as being a poor move in the sicilian defense) and there are a few errors. Despite all of this, the book is absolutely brilliant. The book categorizes many of the common mating patterns and then gives several examples and quizzes which are usually taken from actual game (or variations from games and occasionally a study or two). In my opinion, next to learning the basic endgames (to which too many amateurs don't pay enough attention -- quick, do you know philidor's and lucena's position cold?), studuing mating patterns is the most important step to improvement. How often have you gotten a really good attacking position against the king and had no idea how to proceed? An attack against the king is more dangerous than an attack elsewhere only because of the possibility of checkmate. If you cannot finish your opponent off then the attack fails. Often a sacrifice is required to finish off an enemy king. The best way to see the possibilities for such sacrifices is to know the mating patterns. Knowing these patterns will allow you to start looking for combinations, or play moves that set them up. Even if your opponent defends, it's not always the ability to conduct the mate itself, often it's the mere threat of delivering checkmate that allows a player to force positional (or material) concessions from an opponent. Maybe all you get out of a mating threat is a pawn, but that pawn may be enough to win the game! Maybe you win the exchange, or maybe all you have is a positional advantage heading into the endgame. Regardless, the ability to conduct an attack on the enemy king is important to all aspects of the game. The fundamental skill required to successfully attack the king is knowledge of the basic mating patterns and their variations. And there is no better source to learn these patterns than "The Art of the Checkmate." I have very fond memories of this book. When I first started to learn how to play chess 12 years ago, my father suggested this book to me. After reading the first chapter concerning legal's mate (a queen sacrifice that occurs very early in the game and, if accepted, allows checkmate typically by 2 knights and a bishop), I went to my father and told him that the book was useless because there was no way that this checkmate would occur in a real game. My dad smiled at me and suggested I keep reading. I had been playing a friend and we were pretty evenly matched. We both knew the basics, but nothing more. The very next game I played (after telling my dad how useless the book was) I GOT LEGAL'S MATE!!! I couldn't believe it... my friend was in shock! Absolutely true story! Needless to say, I devoured the rest of the book (but still haven't learned to accept the fact that my dad is correct occasionally). While not everyone will have quite the experience, I am sure that studying this very easy-to-read book will improve your game, both when you are on the attack and when you are on the defense. A serious study of this book, along with Vukovic's "The Art of Attack in Chess" should make you a terror when attacking the king. On the positional side, I would suggest reading Pachman's "Modern Chess Strategy" and/or Silman's two middlegame books, "the Amateur's Mind" and "How to Reassess Your Chess." Reading these books and studying the games of Alekhine (primarily to study brilliant attack in action) and Capablanca (primarily to study brilliant positional and endgame play) should make you a very solid player!
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Summary: study tactics and mating patterns
Review: This is one of the books I use while teaching after school chess programs. It teaches you all of the most important patterns you need to know to finish off the opponent!
It is a classic!
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Summary: A classic that every aspiring player should memorize!
Review: This little book may well be the best 8 bucks one may ever spend on a chess book. The authors illustrate all the mates and their variations in well thought out examples and games. If you cannot picture Legal's, Anastasia's, Morphy's, smothered, Greco's (eyc., etc.) in your mind right now, you don't really know them. This is a great book for 1200-1800 strength players and stronger players will have a lot of fun with it, too. This is another great Dover chess book.
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Summary: It will improve your game!
Review: This was one of my first books. The author's organize the material by tipical mating patterns, such as Legal's mate, Arab mate, etc A lot of the mates are presented with complete games, so you
realize how to create the same patterns in your games. It is a dover book, so paper and print quality is excellent. The only drawback is that it's written in descriptive notation, which can be annoying for some people.
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