Winning Chess Tournaments for Juniors

Rating:
Summary: Many Important Ideas
Review: As a chess coach and teacher who takes his students to team events and tournaments I have found this book to be invaluable! Not only does it greatly expand from the "Chess for Juniors" by providing additional problems and materials for classroom use, it provides all the information I needed to make coaching the students easy. This book will help a coach or student in tournaments avoid many typical mistakes. After reading this book a coach or student will feel far more confident when they walk into a tournament!

Rating:
Summary: No other book to compare to
Review: I have played in rated tournaments and felt I knew what was most important to not only improve my game but to condition myself and prepare for tournaments.
However, after reading this book I realized just how little I knew! As I flipped through each page there was sometime new I learned on each page more often than not. Can you immagine? I gained so much knowledge from this book it was amazing.



Rating:
Summary: Unlike Other Chess Books
Review: I have read some of the other reviews and must fully agree that this is the only book like it!
Each Chapter (except the last two which cover the life and games of some of the author's champions) is like a small book in itself broken down to the themes of HOW TO IMPROVE YOUR GAME, UNDERSTANDING TOURNAMENTS AND WHAT DO DO TO IMPROVE YOUR PERFORMANCE, PSCYHOLOGY IN CHESS, OPENING PREPARATION AND A COMPLETE SAMPLE SYSTEM, A CHESS TACTICS WORKBOOK, ENDGAME PREPARATION WITH A WORKBOOK and THE LIFE AND GAMES OF SELECTED CHAMPIONS.
A very interesting and enjoyable book to read!

Rating:
Summary: Another Excellent book for Teachers & Students
Review: I just completed a review on CHESS FOR JUNIORS (the basic book leading to WINNING CHESS TOURNAMENTS FOR JUNIORS in this great series) and will do one on IDEAS BEHIND THE CHESS OPENINGS.
After finishing with CHESS FOR JUNIORS I obtained in this series WINNING CHESS TOURNAMENTS FOR JUNIORS and UNBEATABLE CHESS LESSONS FOR JUNIORS, and excellent but not in this series, IDEAS BEHIND THE CHESS OPENINGS.
WINNING CHESS TOURNAMENTS FOR JUNIORS continues with a wide variety of excellent material designed to further enhance what covered in CHESS FOR JUNIORS. It maintains consistency, not repeating the same material. Though not in a lesson building format (like CHESS FOR JUNIORS) it branches off into provide complete chapters on selected subjects. I feel this is good once the basics are introduced. I would recommend this book for ages 7+ to adult who are 700+ ability on the USCF rating scale. Therefore, this book is for an advanced beginner through intermediate.
Some of the material in this book, which makes it worthy of 5 stars is,
a. Pattern Recognition - The Key to Learning Tactics. The author gives approximately 130 of what are the most important patterns to be learned using tactical problems to solve. This is like a small tactics book in itself. I like the idea of packing this into a limited number of examples. Excellent for the classroom with limited time (I don't need a book with thousands of examples making it hard to select the most important - this book does the selection for you!).
b. Studying Endgames. Once again this is like a small book in itself. It covers the very most important basic endgames (the author leaves of out the things already covered in his previous book so not to repeat himself). I also found this useful for classroom use once the students have learned the very basic King and Pawn endgame and how to checkmate with a King and Queen and King and Rook.
c. Preparing an Opening System - Setting up opening charts. I don't spend a lot of time teaching openings in the classroom. However, this gives some excellent ideas on developing your own opening system. The actual charts give a nice and somewhat comprehensive outline an entire recommended opening system. It is like a mini opening book with lines.
d. How Tournaments Work and How to Use Rules to your favor. This is great for teachers, students and parents who want to know how tournament are run (covers reading wall charts, the Swiss system tournament, tie breaking systems, USCF rating system, Use of the Chess Clock, Tournament Directors, Illegal moves, drawn games, conduct during tournaments and much more). This takes the very thick rule book and condenses the most important parts that a player needs to know while making it easy to understand.
e. What it takes to be a successful tournament competitor. This tells you what to do to find the right chess teacher for you, about studying chess, distorting pattern recognition, why you should not play bughouse chess, and conditioning yourself for tournaments. Every student who plays in tournaments should read this chapter (it is the first one!).
f. Psychology in chess. Now this is a very unique chapter. It is so jam packed with practical information you must read it! It covers motivation, setting up reasonable goals, self confidence, playing the board instead of the person (and gives a few exceptions to this rule), Analysis and Evaluation (goes into why we make mistakes when analyzing because of negative images - it provides some excellent examples).
g. My National Champions. It is interesting to learn about some of the author's championship kids. What made these kids champions? How did they play? What kind of lives did they lead? What are they doing today? What kind of personalities did they have? These and other questions are answered and provide a wonderful insight into the makings of champions.
This is a very different type of chess book. It contains the perfect material for teachers to use in the classroom and students to study and learn from. I suggest getting this book if you are just beyond learning or covering basic materials.

Rating:
Summary: So Much Awsome Stuff!
Review: This is yet the third great work in CHESS FOR JUNIORS series (soon the final, 4th book will be out) which will take a player of actually any age from absolute beginner to expert level.
WINNING CHESS TOURNAMENTS FOR JUNIORS doesn't fully tell what this book is all about. This is the second Intermediate book in the series. It has chapters on the most important rules, explaining them in a way that no other book comes across. The book pin points what rules a player (of any age for that matter) needs to know on a practical level. So if you are getting the OFFICIAL RULES OF CHESS (I will review that next!) then this book will help you understand what is important in it.
The book is also a "chess training" guide. It tells you think ranging on how to organize yourself to get the best sleep when traveling, to how to eat and drink, to what clothing to wear! Fine details designed to give you the best psychological advantages are pointed out.
How to study and go about improving your game is an extremely useful chapter - under the title of What it takes to be a successful tournament competitor.
Errors and how to correct them in the thinking process are provided with fine examples taken from real games. The book shows why you make silly mistakes and gives you the ammo to correct it.
Students often go in circles never being completely happy with their openings. The Chapter on Openings doesn't just give you the moves (it does that too!) but shows you what to look for in constructing an opening system, how and what to do. Some of the lines this book provides will give you excellent ideas.
The importance of the endgame is pointed out. Now this book actually gives you the most important basic positions to know that the author's first book didn't already cover (a nice aspect to getting the series is that you don't get repeated material). Between CHESS FOR JUNIORS and this book you have a comprehensive endgame book!
I have seen in many of the other reviews here that a lot of people like the Tactics/Pattern Recognition Improvement Chapter. I agree! I would suggest reading this first and then getting Polgar's massive book on Tactics. What is different about this and so nice is that the author takes the most important patterns and sets many up where there is a simplified version of a pattern and then follows it up with a more complicated version of the same pattern. If you know and understand the patters in this book and then can use combinations of them, then you have grasped about 90% of what you need to know. Getting the Polgar Tactics book afterward will provide more samples, except well spread out (I need to review this book too!).
Probably more for entertainment and inspiration are the two last chapters of the book. They have six national scholastic chess champions with photos, games and the story of their lives. The games do provide some intructive value too. It is interesting to know what other top students did to get good and learn about them.

Rating:
Summary: A MUST for every tournament player & coach
Review: You must own a copy of this book if you play in tournaments or are a coach training students. There is so much information in this book that you will not find elsewhere.
It takes what a student needs to know about critical rules and gives great advice. This chapter is not a simply dry covering of the rules but even uses humor covering some funny situations that have occurred in actual play.
It tells you how to go about improving your game. How to find a chess teacher (what to look for), how and what to study, what to do before and during tournaments and , much, much more. I like the section on draws with neat examples on how masters have saved themselves in problem format.
Chess Psychology is very important. Do you know what the "retained", "inert" and "forward" images are? These are the most common problems in the thinking process that cause mistakes to be made. This book will show you what they are and help you to correct them by making you aware of them and giving you patters to improve your play.
A major part of this book is a tactics workbook and the most important checkmates and methods to win material. This is the section on Pattern recognition. I also recommend getting "How to Beat your Dad at chess" and "1001 Winning Chess Sacrifices and Combinations" in this area even though this book is fairly comprehensive itself.
It also has a section on the most important basic endgames (the author covered the most basic endgames in his first book "Chess for Juniors" so doesn't repeat those, or the exact same tactics already found there. I like "Chess for Juniors" best for the beginner.
The chapter on opening preparation and charts is excellent. It tells you how to go about putting together a well rounded opening system and gives you a nice example. Some very good suggestions for openings are found here.
The section with games taken from Robert Snyder's scholastic chess champions is enjoyable to read. It tells you about these kids lives and accomplishments. All of the games in the last chapter have a combination of analysis from the students themselves as well as Robert Snyder.
This book is meant to compliment Robert Snyder's "Unbeatable Chess Lessons for Juniors" the other Intermediatel level book in the series. I recommend this book too (see my review on it).