Customer Reviews

Test Your Chess IQ: First Challenge (Bk. 1)

5 star:		(6)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

This is an excellent book to test and refine your tactical ability. It is probably best suited to players rated between 1500 - 1900 USCF who have already studied a beginning primer on the subject.

Basically the book consists of 56 tests, each containing 8 practice problems. Each section focuses on a particular tactical theme and is timed. You are given a score based upon the total time used and the number of problems correctly solved.

The author recommends tackling one or two tests per week. (An average test of 8 problems requires approximately 35 - 55 minutes to complete).

After a large number of tests have been taken you can estimate your chess rating based upon your test scores. The author provides a reference table to equate scores to aproximate ratings. (I found the model fairly accurately reflects my current rating as oppossed to some other books I have tried).

I have been pleased to see my average score slowly, but steadily improve over the last few months of working on these tests.

Bottom line is this - for most chess players tactics are the most important element of the game to focus on. You would be hard pressed to find a book that is better organized than this!

I am looking forward to completing this book very soon so I can go on and tackle the next volume in the series - "Test your Chess IQ - Master Challenge".

This is the first book in the "Test your Chess IQ" series. That in no way means that this book is easy. If you aren't at least about 1500 or so, this book will be way too much for you. Make sure that you read Seiriwan's Winning Chess Tactics and work through both of Reinfeld's 1001 books before tackling this one.

The book consists of dozens of 8-problem tests, spanned across two pages each with the solutions on the next page(to discourage cheating, which I like). The book covers a wide number of themes, and in many cases progresses in difficulty as you work through a motif. For example the first test in Double Attack will be fairly easy, but the next test will take considerably more work.

The author provides a table in the back for you to record your progress. I immediately copied this(so as to have a 'clean copy' incase I want to go through this again, and I'm sure I will). In the beginning of the book the author provides instructions on how to score your answers, and approximately what rating they correspond to.

The best way to go through these puzzles is to do one a week, making sure to use all or most of the time given to solve the puzzles(remember, you have to find all the reasonable defenses for the losing side, not just the first move or one particular winning line).

Don't be discouraged if you struggle with it in the very beginning. You'll be amazed by how quickly you begin to see things and your percentage scores will rise. A nice thing about this book is that most of the problems were taken from real games, proof that these sort of combinations DO happen and you need to be able to see them when they do.

The book is thin but large enough that it folds open easily and is written in descriptive notation. Almost all of the analysis I've done on problems has been accurate(only his move is best), except for one problem where my move was a little better according to Fritz.

All in all this is an outstanding and challenging introduction to advanced tactics. Go through the books I mentioned above first, but make sure that this book is in your hands afterwards.

Wow. I'm impressed. You can learn a lot of chess with this book, and if you honestly grade and time yourself, you'll get a realistic picture of where you stand.

These puzzles are not easy. They take about 5 minutes each, and you'll have to put in that much time if you want your rating to be indicated accurately. This is NOT for tactics training, even though you will learn from it. You need to be VERY GOOD at tactics before you attempt these; otherwise, you'll get NOTHING correct. You'd be wise to go through Lev Alburt's Chess Training Pocket Book at least once before tackling these.

If you're 1500, you could start this book, but don't rush through it. Do one 8-problem test per week and monitor your progress through the year. (There are 56 tests.)

Each test is prefaced with the sort of tactics you will be looking for, and some of the puzzles are very similar within a test. This is intentional. The authors want you to LEARN, but without making things too obvious.

I have noticed minor typos in the answers, but no actual errors, which is quite rare for a puzzle book. The font, diagram size, printing, and layout are all excellent. The original games are named in the answers, rather than in the problems, to avoid distraction. Remember: These tests are timed!

Highly recommended. But if you're below 1500 USCF, caveat emptor! You don't want to ruin the future value of this book by cheating and looking at all the answers now!

This book is a must for those who wish to improve their ability to calculate. These are just a collection of tests and will only help you if you follow the instructions carefully! Do not casually read through the examples like you would with "1001 Brilliant Chess Sac..." by Reinfeld, but do the tests as if you are playing a tournament. Here are some helpful hints from the book.

1. Set up the pieces on a board, this simulates actual play. 2. Do the tests regularly, but not too often. 3. Be honest in grading yourself. 4. Follow the directions on timing yourself.

In summary, a great book if used properly! You should be at least 1400 rated for this to help.

Since this book is in the form of 56 tests, to be taken seriously, as if one were playing a tournament game, I have one obvious complaint. Namely, why tell the reader what the theme is?

Why say it is "double attack," or "discovered attack," or "discovered check," or "pin," or "diversion," or "decoy," or "interference," or "defence-elimination," or "square vacation," or "line-opening," or "utilization of open files," or "diagonal-opening," or "utilization of open diagonals," or "smothered mate," or "blocking," or "x-ray" or "overloading," or "back rank weakness," or "weakness of the second rank," or "zwischenzug," or "passed pawns," or "simplifying combinations," or "stalemating combinations," or "geometrical motifs," or "attack on the king side castled position," or "attack on the king caught in the center," or "destructive combinations?"

These are great themes to test us on, but in a real game, we don't know that there is a theme, let alone which theme!

How good should one be at chess to profit from this book? I think you need to be at least a C-player (1400 USCF) to get the full benefit. And I've seen Masters go through it too! It's good practice for a big range of chess players. It definitely helped me.

I just finished this book. I have 3 little kids, so it took me about 2 years. This is a fun tactics book. As other reviews have said before, the problems are arranged by themes, and they are *hard*. Some problems go as deep as 6 moves. Others are just brilliancies that some of us will never think of.

To me, the biggest value of this book is that it makes you work under time pressure. Like in a tournament game, you don't have infinite time to find the winning combination. You must learn to manage your time. You can't just sit on a given position and keep going through it in your head endlessly. You must work out all variations and replies fairly quickly and make a move.

The positions in this book are all taken from real games. Sometimes the losing side doesn't choose the best reply, and hence that's why he/she loses. I have wasted a lot of time on some problems because I didn't see a forced win only to find out that the defending side didn't chose the optimal move.

One example is problem 398. 1...Rxe1 is not forced, the king can just move to f8 and give up the rook. A losing proposition, but it sure beats getting mated on the next move! Problem 402's solution is also not optimal play. 1.Nxd7 Qxd7 2.Bxe4 is better (Fritz8) than the given line. There are a few of these.

I would advise you to only purchase this book if you are going to devote the time to go through it right. Use a board, a chess clock and be honest with yourself. Once you think you have the winning combination, write all the moves down, make your first move, and hit the clock. If you followed the main line, and went wrong on a 3rd or 4th move inside the combination don't give yourself full credit.

Will this book make you a better player? I guess as much as any other tactics book that you really work on. There is nothing special on this book that will suddenly transform you.

This book is instructive and fun. I really enjoyed it. I will go through it again in a few months.

I just finished the final test in this book this week after going thru it off and on for nearly ten years (??). When I began the book I was a rank beginner rated under 1000 USCF and when I finished I'm now a mid-1500 player. This book has some fantastic problems...I mean some of them are just art incarnate. That was probably the thing I enjoyed most about this book ; the fact that some of these moves were possible and actually won! My final score was woefully pathetic partly due to the fact that this was one of my first tactics books. And also because I used up enormous amounts of time trying to figure out every line I could with every problem. The time factor in this book will really help tournament players since it adds a pressure element that one would have in an actual game. But it also forces you to either abandon a problem you stubbornly want to solve or burn points using extra time and then possibly not solve it anyway. I would recommend this book to anyone who really wants to elevate his or her tactical ability but be sure to have a solid grounding in basic tactics first. A good workup to this book would be when you were very easily solving problems from a book like Chess Tactics for Students which I found very helpful recently.