Product Description

This is the biggest book of chess challenges ever published, with over 1,000 pages packed with over 5,000 fully diagrammed chess problems, games and endgames to challenge everyone from the novice to the grand master. The book includes every known checkmate position, and it covers a complete range of levels to build chess skills. Easy-to-follow solutions to all the puzzles are printed at the back of the book. The features include: 306 Mate in One challenges; 3411 Mate in Two challenges; 743 Mate in Three challenges; 600 Miniature Games; 143 Simple Endgames; and 127 Tournament Game Combinations.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #77985 in Books
• Published on: 2006-04-24
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1104 pages

Customer Reviews

Chess teaching made easier
Rather than simply telling you what to do, or demanding a vast amount of moves to be committed to memory, this collection of chess problems and minitures provides a tremendously practical way to entice a child that has recently learnt the moves to work on improving their game. Starting with one move problems and building up, this title helps to give both a challenge and a sense of achievement without the need to spend vast chunks of time, but rather allows the odd 10 to 30 minutes to be spent learning concrete techniques. For anybody teaching children how to improve their game this book could be the only source you need for devising homework.

Still not halfway through this collossal book, but I feel it has done me some good.
Having started off in chess as a very weak tactical player I decided to investigate ways of improving my tactical awareneness.

I have invested in this book because I was advised by stronger players that, if I struggled with the problems in tough tactics books, then I should start by solving mate in 2 problems first.

There are certainly a plethora of mate in 2 problems for black and white in this book, literally thousands. I have to say that I thought I could solve mate in 2's quickly (upto problem no. 1470) then is started getting difficult! Fewer pieces on the board means a more careful analysis is required because there are more squares for the king to escape to. Certainly there are some real brain teasers in here - even with the mate in 2's.

I am struggling to reach problem no. 1500 at the moment but looking forward to mate in 3's and combinations sections of the book which will come much later. I feel overall that I am spotting the mating patterns more efficiently than I was when I first started off with tactics training.

To conclude, I feel that this training book could be used as an accompaniment to any tactics training regime / course because of it's diversity and the shear multitude of puzzles. I think for beginners, strong intermediates and master blitz players this book is well worth spending money on.

Excellent value for money
An enormous collection of chess problems for a very modest cost. Polgar is famous for teaching his 3 daughters to be top chess players, so the learning method has good provenance. The early problems are easy enough for the weakest player to find them unintimidating.

Just work through a few problems yourself to get some insight into checkmate & thinking ahead. Ideal for working through with your children - set a mate in 1 up on the chess board, & even a new chess player can get the satisfaction of solving a problem.

The advice given to chess improvers is to practice problems. A page a day will give learners a chess workout. I have noticed myself finding the problems easier, and visualising moves more straightforward.

The only better value chess learning tool is the amazing VFM Chessmaster Grandmaster Edition (PC DVD).