Chess: 5334 Problems, Combinations and Games

This book has been a valuable tool for improving my chess several years ago. I was playing and analyzing games with experienced players in an Egyptian café, a space where intricate wooden screens cast dappled shadows on the boards and the air was thick with the aroma of potent coffee and the distinctive click of backgammon games. Several of us studied a wide range of strategies from this book over several cups of mint tea, often interrupted by the (lively) debates of other patrons. This book is excellent for anyone wanting to advance their chess skills.

Very good product, I love the verity of challenges that it have

Great.

It is explicitly says in every page what is the puzzle, which makes is easier than some online websites. The puzzles are ranging from easy to hard which is very good when you want to see a progress.

The three Polgar sisters are all the evidence needed to demonstrate that practice makes perfect. All three sisters reached pinnacles of success in chess that few can aspire to. All because their father, the author of this book, trained them obsessively on every possible pattern in chess. Especially the checkmate, which is the focus of this book.I can tell you from my own experience playing competitive chess that even very capable players frequently miss winning opportunities because they are not sufficiently trained to identify and execute every possible checkmate permutation and combination.The reviewer who called it a pattern recognition masterpiece is exactly right. Once you understand the basic concepts, further development as a chess player comes down to recognizing winning patterns. The 1000+ pages in this book will provide hours, days, and years of pattern recognition practice to any aspiring chess player.I won't say, however, that this is the only book or training you need. This book needs to be supplemented with an understanding of opening patterns, middlegame tactics like forking, opposition, discovered attacks, double attacks, endgame strategies, and more which are adequately covered in many books including Jeremy Silman's "The Complete Book of Chess Strategy: Grandmaster Techniques from A to Z". These two books combined with all of the materials and videos available in the public domain represent a solid foundation for chess and will take you very far in terms of growing as an intermediate and advanced chess player.I do recommend the hardcopy version of this book for the sheer quality of the publication and pleasure of flipping through page after crisp page of high-quality puzzles as your confidence grows with each hour you spend with this encyclopedic treasure from Laszlo Polgar.Enjoy!Edit:All of what I said above is true of the first few chapters where the answers are sufficient to understand the puzzles. But once you get beyond those, the answers are in the form of the best move that doesn't lead to checkmate or capture or anything tangible. It is similar to looking at a chess engine's preferred best move and is often somewhat hard to understand WHY it is the best move. And the book offers no assistance in this respect. For this reason I must, with a heavy heart, downgrade the book from 5 stars to 4.Instead, I will recommend 1001 Chess Exercises by Masetti and Messa, which follows a similar format as Polgar but contains full solutions to the exercises at the end of the book.

I just recieved my 2nd copy of this famous chess tome: the first was falling apart after 3 1/2 years. But not from poor quality but from daily use over the last 12 months or so. It's a classic; the story goes that Lazlo put together this book based on the exercises he gave to his 3 daughters, all of whom hold master's titles. My advice is this: 1. He gives only white's 1st move as the answer, not all the moves as most other books do. 2. Some, not a lot, of the puzzles have more than one correct answer; at least in the Mate-in-2s as I've yet to get to the later ones. So check your answers closely, you both may be right. FWIW, Reddit seems to confirm this too. 3. They begin to get tougher around the #1470 and up level. There are so many problems that, especially if you are a novice, you should expect to hit several plateaus on the way; just step away for a day or two and re-try. You will improve and really none of them would stump a real expert. Hang in there! 4. Here's a clue for you: once you get above about #1500 you will hit a string of literally 100's of problems where giving a check on your 1st move is rarely, rarely correct. Almost any combination involving a check on move 1 can be discarded up front in favor of calculating other lines first. 5. Finally, many combinations involve a lone black king who would be in stalemate if black moved first; your job as white is to first release the mating net, allow black a move, then close the trap on move two. Good luck!

Everything is as advertised about this monster of a book, it's full of puzzles of various ratings, it alternates between white and black to move with a heavy emphasis on white being the main mover. There is something to look out for however, in some editions when looking for the answers, some editions will only give the first move of the solution in the hopes once it gets the ball moving you can figure out the rest. However if you arent as strong or would like to see the full line, you would have to get a different edition that gives the full answer to each puzzle. I personally like getting jist the one because that allows me to still try and figure out the rest but others may be better off seeing the full logic.

When I received this book to give as a gift I was surprised at how thick it was. My step son loves chess and he loved this book it has so many chess moves you’d never imagine there could be so many. Well put together book and perfect for any chess lover. Great value for the price.