|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||||||||
Frequently Bought Together
Product Details
|
Product Description
Book Description
Each mating motif is carefully and simply explained, and several illustrative examples are given. A final test enables the reader to grade his pattern recognition abilities, and the last chapter explains what to do if your Dad is Garry Kasparov.
Fun, instructive - and guaranteed to improve your game.
Suggested Tags from Similar Products(What's this?)Be the first one to add a relevant tag (keyword that's strongly related to this product)
|
What Other Items Do Customers Buy After Viewing This Item?
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most helpful customer reviews
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Fun Way to Improve at Chess,
By NYC DAD "jimbo" (New York USA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: How to Beat Your Dad at Chess (Hardcover)
When I read the reviews I decided to get this book for my two children, aged 6 and 9. Like other readers I was impressed by the simple explanations for the checkmate patterns, and ended up reading it just as much as the kids!The checkmate positions are presented in a very straightforward fashion, with diagrams and arrows to show the simple versions. Anyone, even a novice or a Dad, could learn from these. Then come the positions on the right-hand side of each page, which provide a real challenge. I would say that any intermediate level player - child or adult - will improve from reading this book. I don't as a rule write reviews on Amazon, but we had so much fun with this book I wanted to recommend it to others.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
Small book, but great value!,
By A Customer
This review is from: How to Beat Your Dad at Chess (Hardcover)
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.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
50 Deadly Checkmates!,
By A Customer
This review is from: How to Beat Your Dad at Chess (Hardcover)
I'm a USCF Class C player and great enjoyed this book -- even though I already have worked through similar mating combination exercises. The reason I picked this up was because the title made me laugh, but surprisingly I bought it once I looked inside. The key is the format: each of the 50 mating (or drawing) patterns is presented with a nice, clear diagram, often including arrows to show lines of attack. These pictures do help the mating pattern sink in for quick recall later, just as the author claims. I read through the first 5 or 10 or the 50 patterns, and then played a game of blitz chess on the internet. I had a winning position and avoided losing when I saw my opponent setting up one of the mates from the book in a last-ditch effort to save the game. I didn't even have to calculate to avoid the mate; I recognized the pattern almost instantly and won the game. I find that it's especially helpful for tactical ability when concepts are cataloged and named as they are in this book. Spotting the basic mates might be pretty easy, but when you're in a complex position it's a great advantage to have these burned into your memory so that you'll spot the possibilities when looking several moves ahead. Finally, to address other reviewers' concerns about the soundness of the example combinations: while many of these are not forced mates, they generally result in overwhelming advantages if the oppponent gives optimal defense. I found it useful to practice my calculation ability when solving the exercises. On problem 41, for instance, the author does make a misleading statement that Black is unable to prevent a killer check from White on move 3. In fact, black can give up a bunch of material to avoid immediate mate... the king is driven into the open, though, and I kept trying to find a mate. I gave up around 8 moves in, but using Crafty I found I missed a simple final move, giving a forced mate in 8 or 9. (Also, to address another review's comment about problem 11 in particular, if white avoids mate then he is simply down by one piece while black still has a strong attack. Other problems in the book use the mating threat to gain a single pawn, and it is certainly desirable to be able to use mating threats to gain material.) I find these subtleties of the problems to be an advantage, rather than a weakness (although I think the authors should have pointed this out in the introduction). Working out the variations improves tactical ability -- it's nice that the examples aren't completely trivial, and that they all come from real games (many of these are classic combinations from historic world-class games).
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
Want to see more reviews on this item?
|
Most recent customer reviews |
Listmania!
Look for similar items by category
Look for similar items by subject
Feedback
|
