Customer Reviews

Chess Problems for Beginners

5 star:		(0)
4 star:		(2)
3 star:		(2)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

Hate to slam someone's work, but I find this book unreadable. I'm teaching my 7 year old to play, and we've had great success with Bobby Fisher's book, but this one is too hard for me to slug through. Not tough chess problems, but awkward to read. Also, the problems are too weird, with the king moved completely across the board and surrounded by opponents pieces. Situations you would never encounter in a beginner's world.

I just wanted some exercises. College and graduate school never prepared me for such convolutions.

Sorry, but a thumbs down for this one.

Although the title says "... for beginners" sometimes some problems can be real hard, even for the most experienced chess
players.
If you want to start in this particular area of chess, I recomend, studying first: How to Solve Chess Problems by Kenneth
Howard, in this book, Howard teaches step by step how to solve chess problems by theme.

This book is for people who know the rules very well and are looking to practice tactics.

It's more for beginning tournament players rather than beginning chess players.

The book, however, is easy compared with 1001 checkmates, and even harder than that book is 1001 sacrifices and combinations.

Those books are must haves for any serious chess players.

Get the 1001 books after you finish this one.

Not that it is a bad book. I am at a beginning level, so pretty much anything I read which has correct information is a help, however, this book just doesn't seem to be much of a help. Many other books I read are enjoyable and informative. This one is a bit of a pain to read. Unfortunately, this is also written in discriptive notation, which is now non-standard, and doesn't help when the author seems to be getting in to the problem a bit too much. While chess players need to be able to read both notations, along with at least 2 to 3 others, most books, especially those for beginners, have been "translated" into algebraic notation. While the walk-throughs on each problem are quite good at explaining the sequence of events that can happen after they key move, one thing I felt was lacking was an explaination of why some common NON-KEY moves would not be shown why they fail. If this is a beginner's book, it might follow that some common mistakes would want to be pointed out any why they are mistakes rather than showing how each and every possible move after a key event does work. When a move is forced or good moves are few, then it becomes self-evident after a few examples of why the key move is the key move.

The local Chess Club seems to enjoy trying to solve the problems, when they can't find an opponent. The ones who use the book more are higher rated players. I can't tell if the book is the reason, or if the students are just more interested, because of their level of play.