Checkmate! This exclamation marks the most thrilling moment of tactical chess play. Now club and tournament players can master this ultimate attack with the guidance of a grandmaster. Progress from simple to more complex mating patterns, all illustrated with detailed chessboard drawings. You'll become adept at exploiting the individual power of the pieces, from the lowly pawn to the mighty queen. Try suggested strategies for a direct piece attack on a castled king, a pawn storm, or a king hunt. Self-tests, psychological pointers, and a myriad of moves provide the foundation for future success. Set your mind on this wide selection of scenarios and develop the discipline and imagination to spot the brilliant coup and check your mate!

Train Your Brain to Recognize Checkmates! This first book in the Mastering Mate series presents a challenge for players relatively new to chess and for readers seeking a novel and interesting set of puzzles. Books on chess tactics can overwhelm beginners and young learners. These relatively simple, carefully chosen exercises serve to illustrate the wide variety of examples of checkmate, as well as showing off the harmonious cooperation of chess pieces delivering the final blow. You will certainly learn what checkmate is and how to deliver it. And you will learn how chess pieces can coordinate their influence on the board. Every one of the 1,111 positions in this book is from an actual game. Each position has a single, unique solution. And all of the solutions have been carefully checked. Most of these problems are relatively easy, but not all of them! Indeed, many involve solutions are not completely obvious. In fact, some of the masters who played these games actually missed the mates! With Mastering Mates 1, you will fine tune your checkmate radar, with greater success and enjoyment of the royal game sure to follow!

Beginners of all ages will win more games after studying this easy-to-follow book. This isn?t another random collection of puzzles, but a systematic course that teaches you how to checkmate your opponent. Experienced chess coach Kevin Stark explains elementary mating patterns in all the important positions and provides many tests to see if you have really mastered the technique. A fun book and a great help in achieving the ultimate goal in chess.

THE POLGAR WAY TO BETTER CHESS! Learn Chess the Right Way is a five-volume chess puzzle book series aimed at the novice, beginner and intermediate level player, using the unique methods of the award-winning coach and former world champion Susan Polgar. It introduces the most important checkmate and material-winning tactics, as well as defensive techniques to the new chess player. Each of the five volumes will consist of 500 puzzles. In Book 1, the focus is on one-move checkmate exercises. In each of the first five chapters, a specific piece delivers checkmate (in Chapter 1 – the queen, Chapter 2 – the rook, and so on). In Chapters 6-8, checkmates which involve special tactics (such as pins, discovered attacks, etc.) are introduced. Chapter 9 has a mixed collection of puzzles, without any hint about which piece is to deliver checkmate. Chapter 10 builds on the previous 9 chapters, and introduces basic patterns of checkmate in two moves. With over 40 years of experience as a world-class player and coach, international grandmaster Susan Polgar has developed the most effective way to help young players and beginners – Learn Chess the Right Way. Let her show you the way to understanding the most common and critical patterns and let her show you the way to becoming a better player. SUSAN POLGAR is a winner of four Women’s World Championships and the top-ranked woman chess player in the United States. She became the #1 woman player in the world at 15 and remained in the top 3 for over 20 years. In 2013, she received the U.S. Coach of the Year Award and the following year, she was named the Chess Trainer of the Year by the International Chess Federation (FIDE). She thus became the first person in history to be accorded both honors. Under her guidance, SPICE chess teams at both Texas Tech University and Webster University have won a combined five consecutive National Division I Collegiate Chess Championships.

Improve Your Checkmate Power! This second volume in the Mastering Mate series provides readers with a serious challenge – 1,111 checkmates in two, three, four and more moves. By solving these problems, you will develop proficiency in all of the major checkmating patterns. There is much more here than the simple presentation of positions to solve. Mastering Mates 2 includes a full range of checkmates from real-life middlegames and endgames. By solving these here, you will be much more likely to solve them when you meet them over the board, and you will more likely to reach such positions with the confidence of knowing that you can finish off your opponents in style. With practice, readers will develop considerable tactical prowess by confronting and solving these problems. Build your mental muscles right here, by mastering mate!

Young Daniel Naroditsky (1995) has picked the most instructive examples of endgames in which you have to use ideas and plans in order to outplay your opponent. This is not an encyclopaedia nor a manual on endings, which are usually helpful but boring, but a compendium of lively lessons and exercises. The positions that International Master Naroditsky uses should not be memorized, but understood, and his acclaimed didactic skills will take your endgame technique to the next level. Never before have the ideas that decide endings been explained so clearly. With exercise at the end of each chapter. ,

For all chess-players, from beginners to world champions, from kids to seniors, delivering checkmate is the greatest thrill the game has to offer. The ability to spot checkmates is a vital skill - and this easy-to-use book shows you how it is done. With the help of Grandmaster John Nunn, you will be ready to shock your next opponent with a deadly checkmate, whether in a school match, a club tournament - or even a championship game! By focusing exclusively on positions from real games, ranging from junior events to grandmaster encounters, Nunn ensures that the mates featured are those which arise most often in real life. He also highlights themes and ideas that are often missed in practice. While solving these puzzles, your all-important 'mental library' of patterns will grow, leading to an immediate increase in your playing strength. All 1001 puzzle positions have been carefully checked, and are graded by theme and difficulty. Points are awarded for finding the checkmate, so you can measure your skill. Most of the puzzles are suitable for novice and junior players. The last chapter challenges you with 'extreme checkmates', but don't worry: you'll be ready for them!

The Polgar Way to Better Chess! Learn Chess the Right Way is a five-volume chess puzzle book series aimed at the novice, beginner and intermediate level player, using the unique methods of the award-winning coach and former world champion Susan Polgar. It introduces the most important checkmate and material-winning tactics, as well as defensive techniques to the new chess player. Each of the five volumes will consist of over 500 puzzles. In Volume 3, you will be introduced to 500 must-know defensive techniques. Each chapter will start with a few introductory examples and explanation about to what to look for in the puzzles that follow. In chapter 1, the task is to move an attacked piece. In each puzzle, there is only one good solution by moving the attacked piece to a safe square. In chapter 2, one of the kings is in check. The goal is to find the correct response. In chapter 3, a piece is attacked, but has no good square to which to move. So, rather than moving the attacked piece(s), you will need to look for a way to protect it with another piece. In chapter 4, we focus on defensive ideas against a direct checkmate threat. In chapter 5, one side “defends” by counter-attacking. In chapters 6 and 7, you will be introduced to the game-saving techniques of drawing by stalemate or perpetual check. In chapter 8, the task is to catch a pawn that is about to promote. In chapter 9, a certain piece is about to get “trapped.” The task is to prepare for the attack and avoid material loss. Finally, in chapter 10, you can practice solving a variety of defensive ideas, with the goal to avoid or minimize material losses or being checkmated. With over 40 years of experience as a world-class player and coach, international grandmaster Susan Polgar has developed the most effective way to help young players and beginners – Learn Chess the Right Way. Let her show you the way to understanding the most common and critical patterns and let her show you the way to becoming a better player.

Presents information on the ideas and strategies for chess openings.

Giving mate is the ultimate goal of every chess player. Finding that all-decisive combination is immensely satisfying. But how are you supposed to spot a checkmate when you are sitting at the board with the clock ticking? In this guide International Master Vladimir Barsky teaches the method created by his mentor Viktor Khenkin (1923-2010). It’s based on an ingenious classification of the most frequently occurring mating schemes. A wide range of chess players will find it an extremely useful tool to recognize mating patterns and calculate the often narrow path to the kill. All the 1,000 examples (850 of them in exercise format) that Barsky presents are from games played in 21st century. He has carefully selected the most instructive combinations and lucidly explains the typical techniques to corner your opponent’s king. More often than you would expect, positions that look innocent at first sight, turn out to contain a mating pattern. This is not just another book full of chess puzzles. It’s a brilliantly organized course that has proven to be effective. Finding mate isn’t rocket science, but you need to know what to look for. Vladimir Barsky teaches you exactly that.