Customer Reviews

Winning Chess Tournaments for Juniors

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THE SERIES IN GENERAL:

There are currently three books published in what I consider to be the best series of chess books for ages 9 on up (this would include adults too!) that take an absolute beginner to an advanced level of play. I have noted that there will be a fourth, most advanced book in this series called "More Unbeatable Chess for Juniors" (expanding on "Unbeatable Chess Lessons for Juniors").

BACKGROUND:

"Winning Chess Tournaments for Juniors" was published in 2004 and is the third book in the series. The author, Robert Snyder's students won numerous National Championships. After doing research I found that the author is a strong master, rated USCF over 2300 and internationally over 2400. He also has produced 36 first place championship winners at national championships (a national record). His chess teams travel around the world and nation on a regular basis and compete. The author has extensive experience in introducing chess to beginners holding another record by having taught over 170,000 children at school programs over many years.

STRUCTURE OF "WINNING CHESS TOURNAMENTS FOR JUNIORS": This is the perfect book to continue from the author's "Chess for Juniors" book. It is designed as a training guide and also provides a lot of structured material for study to compliment the other books in the series.

There are eight chapters many of which cover a lot of material not seen in other books. This makes "Winning Chess Tournaments for Juniors" very unique! I consider this a good thing. I found that this book is just packed with information that will help you do much better in tournaments, and in many cases can make the difference between you becoming a great player or lapsing into a disorganized state. You are certain to be making many mistakes that this book will correct! Because of what "Winning Chess Tournaments for Juniors" covers it is difficult to explain its structure without looking at the material covered. I will say that this book contains some extreme humor that goes way beyond the basic "Chess for Juniors" book. Kids may fall out of their chair laughing.

MATERIAL COVERED:

a. Chapter One is all about what it takes to be a successful tournament competitor. It will help you know exactly what to look for when trying to find the right chess teacher for you. It suggests other books for reading and helps you to form a good, well rounded chess library. It covers how you should practice and gives good ideas and advice (i.e. it tells why playing irregular forms of chess like bughouse hurts your overall game). It explains how to condition your self for tournaments.

b. Chapter Two tells you all about how tournaments work (parents should read this and the first chapter!). You will learn the inner workings of the most important tournament rules (including some complicated ones) that is guaranteed to help you do better in tournaments. Getting the rule book alone is not good enough. It doesn't explain how to use these rules to your favor or what to watch out for. "Winning Chess Tournaments for Juniors" will make you a shark in the sea of rules!

c. Chapter Three is on Chess Psychology. I haven't seen any other books that cover the practical use of chess psychology that are directed at a scholastic player. I want to say this is the most useful chapter yet, but then realize just how important the other ones are - so I won't go there! Setting realistic goals in chess, building self confidence, what to actually do during play and the reasons why we make mistakes in analysis is the main focus of this absolutely fantastic chapter.

d. Chapter Four is all about preparing an opening system. I found it to provide not only very important ideas in what to look for in your own openings, but how to set up the main lines of your system in chart form for easy study. An actual complete opening system is provided - so you in effect also find this book to be an opening book! It doesn't provide the ideas behind the moves in the system it provides, but you will find that the ideas behind the moves to the exact opening system it provides are found in the other books in the series.

e. Chapter Five is a complete tactics workbook! It organizes the most important tactics for you to learn by type of pattern. It is rather comprehsensive and this is the largest chapter in the book.

f. Chapter Six is on the endgame. The author continues with the most important endgames from where his "Chess for Juniors" book left off. I you combine these two books you have comprehensive coverage of all the basic endgames.

g. Chapters Seven and Eight are on six of the author's national scholastic chess champions. Each player has at least one game with analysis along with pictures and information on the life of these superkids. You will find the games and players to be interesting.

WHO IS THIS BOOK IS FOR:

I would recommend this book for children ages 9 on up of average reading ability or better, or for adults (don't be fooled by the "Juniors" in the title in these books as they are just as much for adults). A knowledge of basic strategy (as covered in "Chess for Juniors") is necessary to get the full value of this book. If you are a player rated above 700 and under 1900 you will find you are at the right levels for this book. Consider getting the author's "Unbeatable Chess Lessons for Juniors" book as it perfectly compliments this one with additional and non-repetitious material (an advantage of reading the entire series by this author). I would recommend getting the author's most advanced book, "More Unbeatable Chess for Juniors" which I have been informed will be out in May, 2005 and will expand on "Unbeatable Chess Lessons for Juniors" with many current games and a heavy focus on opening theory but keeping the concept of analyzing very move in every game (I cannot wait until it comes out!).

This book tells you exactly how a professional chess trainer's national chess champions did it! Besides providing actual training material on all parts of the game, profiles of the lives and annotated games provide an interesting insight into what the trainer has done to create a national record of thirty-six first place individual winners in championship sections at the national scholastic championships. There are some great stories - some very humorous.

Along with the actual chess training methods provided is one of the highlights of this book, PSYCHOLOGY behind the training. Everyone who is either a chess coach, player, parent, teacher, whatever, this is a must read (Chapter three).

A most interesting and informative book!

"Winning Chess Tournaments for Juniors" will guide you through all of the most important aspects of knowing as a practical player how tournaments work.

A SMALL EXAMPLE OF WHAT YOU WILL FIND:

Tournament preparation, how and what to study, the inner workings of the thought processes which cause error in analysis, what to look for in an your personal opening system (the use of charts for study, neat sample system), endgame preparation, pattern recognition (over 100 important tactics set up as building problems to work on) and a look into the lives and games of top chess kids.

NO OTHER BOOK HAS EVER BEEN PUBLISHED THAT CONTAINS SO MUCH USEFUL INFORMATION FOR PRACTICAL TOURNAMENT USE - A TRUE GUIDE TO CHESS TRAINING!

As a gifted student with a 180 IQ I endorse the entire CHESS FOR JUNIORS series - Bravo!

As a USCF scholastic tournament player for over 3 years I thought I knew alot about studying and playing in tournaments. I got my rating up to about 1000 after about 2 years. Once year ago I got WINNING CHESS TOURNAMENTS FOR JUNIORS and started reading it and followed what was in it. Now a year later my rating has jumped to over 1450 and I gained way over 400 rating points!

Some of the things that this book helped me with is telling me about what to do to study and exactly how to study from material. I can see that most players do this wrong and will learn much more slowly. But this book will put you in the right direction.

It helped with teaching why I make mistakes in how I think. It helps teach you to use rules to your favor (there was a lot I didn't know that the regular rule book doesn't explan well). I liked learning about chess psychology.

There is a lot of study material on tatics, openings (it tells you how to prepare openings and gives you a complete system is very well thought out and useful), endgames and games from top kid champions that the author trained himself.

I had as my first book on chess CHESS FOR JUNIORS. WINNING CHESS TOURNAMENTS FOR JUNIORS continues with the tatics, openings and endgames from CHESS FOR JUNIORS.

Do you want to really improve quickly? WINNING CHESS TOURNAMENTS FOR JUNIORS did the trick for me and I would never have gained even half of the 450 rating points in one year without it! Every Chess Teacher and Parent of Chess Kids should read it and know it too (it tells how tournamnets work for parents and beginning coaches).

One thing. It has a lot of funny stories about chess kids. It is written very clearly so a kid can read it.

YOU WILL IMPROVE A LOT FROM THIS BOOK!!!

I was wondering for a long time while playing in chess tournaments what was the best way to train. This was to improve my game and to make me perform better in tournaments. I had a lot of books that just had materials to learn from. But I wanted to know what to study, how to study and then when I get to the tournament what to do to put me in the best shape.

WELL, WINNING CHESS TOURNAMENTS FOR JUNIORS, WAS THE BOOK I WAS LOOKING FOR. Not only did it cover all of those things, but it has some really cool material for actuall study. It was fun too because it used funny true stories like about the "Chess Genie" and what other kids try and do to disburb you while you play.

But I liked also the stuff about the rules that isn't told to you in the rule book. And the parts about how the thinking processes make typical mistakes. This book shows you using real positions from actual games where you typically make mistakes under chess psycology.

Though if you just want lots of great materials on endgames to study, a set out opening system (completely outlined), lots of tactical problems that are the most important to learn, then for this alone this book is great. I agree with the other reviews who say there is not another chess book like this one.

Want to improve? Want to know how and what to study? Want some great material for study? Golly, I love this book (I do think the picture of the two kids on the front cover is cheesy and staged, so I am glad I didn't judge this book by the cover as I am certain those kids did not know anything about chess but the girl is cute and the boy is dorky looking).

I attribute the 200 point increase in my rating to what I got out of this book. I purchased WINNING CHESS TOURNAMENTS FOR JUNIORS in November, 2004. By mid April, 2005 my rating had jumped 200 points. I have been playing chess for many years and never had seen my game improve so quickly.

This the best book written for a chess player rated over 800 who wants to see an immediate improvement in their results. I am going to break down how this book helped me improve:

a. It gave me some nice ideas on how to condition myself. This helped me focus on the actual games and I was in good shape.

b. Most players think they know the rules well. However, there is some great information pointing out some important things that are tricky. I won a game alone simply because I understood a rule better. It isn't the official rule book, but it tells you about the most important rules that players have problems with.

c. I enjoyed learning about Psychology in chess. The three main immages that cause you to make mistakes ("retained", "intert" & "forward image") well help you understand what is wrong with your thinking! If you don't know these immages you need to get WINNING CHESS TOURNAMENTS FOR JUNIORS for this alone! Motivation, Self Confidence and Playing the Board Instead of The Person are fantastic parts of the section on Chess Psychology that everyone should know. I attribute the confidence I gained and knowing the most common problems I was having to part of my improvement.

d. Preparing an Opening system was extremely useful. It tells you what to do and what to look for in your own personal opening system. It provides has about 8 full pages of charts of a suggested system that is very well thought out. Certainly not a complete opening book, but when you combine these charts with the author's other two excellent books, UNBEATABLE CHESS LESSONS FOR JUNIORS and MORE UNBEATABLE CHESS FOR JUNIORS you learn the ideas behind the openings and individual moves. I learned some new opening lines and was able to organize them for study. I attribute my improved openings to wins in at least two games!

e. A Mini-Tactics Workbook is provided in the segment on "Pattern Recognition". This segment tells you how to study tactics and gives you about 130 of the most important positions to know for practical use. There are also some mini-games containing important tactics that build upon each other. This is a very well organized part of the book. Ah! Well, I directly used several of the tactics I learned here to pull off some nice wins!

f. Endgames! The segment on endgames avoids covering the very most basic endgames that the author covered in his excellent beginner's book, CHESS FOR JUNIORS. The author continues with the most important endgames that a player should know in a nicely condenced form. In one game I reached a position with King, Knight and Bishop against a lone King. I did the checkmate I learned from this book (I would never have stood a chance if I didn't read it in this book).

g. The author's national champions gives their games and the stories behind their ability. Though, the least instructive part of the book (don't get me wrong the games are still instructive!), it was one of the most enjoyable parts of the book.

h. Humor and Style. You would think that a book covering these subject is dry and boring. NO WAY! The author's use of humor that ties into the material is wonderful. Take a look at the "chess genie" story on page 180 and the last paragraph on page 32 (some funny things kids do that distract an opponent).

If you don't own a copy of WINNING CHESS TOURNAMENTS FOR JUNIORS and want to improve then this book is a MUST!

"Winning Chess Tournaments for Juniors" was the most useful single chess book I have read. One thing that hasn't been said in the other reviews, though implied is that this book helps you with ORGANIZATION and STRUCTURE in,

Helping you prepare for tournaments.

Telling you how to use many books, computers, methods of practice in ways that I never knew about.

Making it so I understand the rules and how to use them to your advantage. I will not likely be taken advantage of again!

Helping me prepare an opening system properly.

Telling me what is important to know about endgames with the endgames to study.

The importance of pattern recognition with many tactical puzzles to work on.

What to look for in a good qualified coach and chess teacher.

How psycology plays a part in chess and how you make mistakes when you analyze.

My list can go one, but I think I have said enough for now. I thing this book is simply the best book to help you do improve.

This book is so different than other chess books.

It has eight chapters, covering "How to Improve", "All about Tournaments, rules, how to use them to your favor", "Chess Psychology - OUTSTANDING chapter", "Setting up an Opening System with a excellent sample system - good ideas here", "Tactics - lots of nice material in problem format, wish an entire book on tactics used this format, but still plenty of good stuff here", "Endgames - just beyond the very basics, the most important basics are covered in detail - a good focus", and "National Champions, profile of their lives and games - interesting, instructive games and inspiring!".

The bottom line here is that there is so much material you will find in this book that will not be found in others. Everyone, from players, to coaches to the parents of chess kids should have a copy!

Besides giving you a lot of study material (tactic patterns, opening chart system, advanced rules that are important for tournament players, analyzed games of kid champions, psychologic thinking problem examples, endgames for study) this book really tells you how and what to study, what to do before, during and after you compete and tells you why.

I have not seen another book like this one. If you want to improve you will learn a lot of important things from this book.

This really helped me improve how I did in tournaments. I had read some other chess books, that helped. But this book was the most helpful because it helped condition me for tournaments.

I especialy liked the chapter on psycology that teaches you about thinking mistakes during your play. Also what to be like eating, drinking, proper sleep during tournamnets and then about preparing.

How to study and what to study is neat. It also gives a lot of study stuff, problems, games, openings and endgames.

It also has some very funny true stories about players and things that happen. Very good book.