Amazon.com
If you love chess puzzles, this massive tome is for you. It's simply one chess challenge after another. With problems fit for beginner and grand master alike, Polgar's collection will feed your craving for years. Better yet, it's a major bargain. When I first pulled it off the shelf I was expecting a price tag three times higher.
A reader from CT, USA , July 18, 1999
Right on the money.
This is the best chess book I have ever read. No bull, just page after page of diagrams to solve. Everyone knows that tactics are the soul of chess, and this and it's companion 1001 Brilliant Ways to Checkmate are the best ways to sharpen tactical eye. After a while you will intuitively know what the right first move is and on top of it all it's extremely fun. I wouldn't recommend this to total beginners however, I would recommend getting Seirawan's Winning Chess Tactics first.
A reader from Washington D.C, USA , May 11, 1999
The best chess book I ever read
This book showed 1001 checkmates which helped me win 101 consecutive chess games. This book is one of the best tools for beginners and intermediate players. If you want to win chess games then this is the book you should read.
Amazon.com
The dazzlingly clever and always entertaining Raymond Smullyan takes
an unorthodox approach to chess puzzles by treating them as
mysteries--with Sherlock Holmes as guide and mentor. The key concept is
retrograde analysis. Rather than figuring out how to achieve some end from
a given arrangement of chess pieces, the game is to examine the board and
deduce what has happened in the past: Which side is white? What were the
previous moves? Prove that a promotion did or did not occur. Which piece
has been replaced by a coin? These are just a few of the challenges
Smullyan presents through the eyes of Holmes and Watson. He even manages
about as passable an imitation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's style as can be
expected from a tongue-in-cheek presentation. To enjoy these problems you
need only know how chess pieces move. The first puzzles in the book teach
all the concepts you need to know to decipher the later ones; the process
prepares you to join Holmes in solving a baffling double murder--they keys
to which reside in a series of devilishly clever puzzles. The chess game
is afoot, and it's almost too much fun!
Book Description
Fifty original puzzles are set within a dialogue between Holmes and
Watson as they use deduction and analysis to discover what moves were made
before they arrived on the scene. The progressively more difficult puzzles
include a double murder.
Synopsis
Fifty original puzzles are set within a dialogue between Holmes and
Watson as they use deduction and analysis to discover what moves were made
before they arrived on the scene. The progressively more difficult puzzles
include a double murder.
About the Author
Raymond Smullyan is considered one of America's most inventive
creators of logic puzzles. His many writings include What Is the Name of
This Book?, The Chess Mysteries of the Arabian Nights, The Lady or the
Tiger?, This Book Needs No Title, The Tao Is Silent, and, most recently,
Satan, Cantor, and Infinity. He is a professor of mathematical logic at
Indiana University.