Customer Reviews

How to Beat Your Dad at Chess

5 star:		(15)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

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.

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.

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).

This book must assume your dad is really bad at chess. It has problems to work on with checkmates. But most games aren't won or lost because you overlook a neat checkmate problem. Most games are won or lost because you first lose material then when the checkmate is easy to set up you go ahead and win.
The checkmate problems are ok, but this is the end result of what you get when you use other strategy to win.

I found the title to be an unfortunate choice; it makes the book look like a kids book. Kids will benefit, but so will anyone with a USCF rating below ~1500. This is not a book about how to move the pieces. It doesn't outline basic strategy such as controlling the center, developing your pieces, or castling early. Instead, almost the entire book is devoted to "The 50 Deadly Checkmating Patterns." These range from the simple back-rank mate to four variations of the Greek gift sacrifice to methods of salvaging a "Petrosian draw" in the endgame. Chandler argues that these are common themes, and that by working through the well-diagramed, two-page-per-example sections, we will notice these possibilities in our play. He includes a test section at the end to how well the material has sunk in. The text is easy to read with clear, well-anotated diagrams (the key move is indicated by an arrow as well as the text), and the hardcover version withstands abuse in your gear bag. This is a superb book to glance at while you're waiting for the tournament to start.

I enjoyed the puzzels with checkmates - one of many decent books covering basic checkmate situations. My favorite, and a better book is "Art of the Checkmate" even though it is in English Descriptive notation.

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!

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!

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!

I got this book as a present for my two sons (ages 8 and 12) and they spend a remarkable amount of time reading it. A nice feature is that the checkmate traps shown often occur in their games, which keeps them interested. Great value!