Product Description

This wonderfully entertaining book also happens to be quite effective.

Everything any child will need to know about chess strategy and more is here in this book, which is well laid out and easy to follow.

Part of the fun factor for kids is that the book is replete with cartoon images of chess characters to help make the learning experience more exciting.

A bright and colorful cover, as well as the large workbook format and algebraic notation make this a book which will occupy your child's attention for many hours.

The flexible "perfect binding" makes it easy to turn the pages and have them stay in place.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #39242 in Books
• Published on: 2004-01
• Binding: Paperback
• 240 pages

About the Author
Jeff Coakley is a nationally rated Chess Master and onr of Canada`s leading coaches. He has been teaching chess to young people for 18 years, in Toronto and Halifax, as well as on the Internet. Many of his students have been national champions and competed successfully in international youth events. He is also the editor of Scholar`s Mate Magazine and an active organizer of children`s chess tournaments.

Customer Reviews

An ok book on tactical puzzles
There were plenty of chess puzzles to learn from. I found that the order that the puzzles were set up to work on could have been switched around for better learning purposes. I also found some mistakes in the solutions and some typos. I enjoyed "Winning Chess Tactics for Juniors" by Hays and "Winning Chess Traps" to be far more helpful books.

Chess Tactics
The main part of this book consists of 100 pages of exercises with nine diagrams on each page. Three diagrams are devoted to checkmate problems; three are win material type of problems; one is a defensive problem ("White to move and not lose"); one problem is more general; and one problem is an endgame problem. The solutions are in the back of the book and are very detailed. They often give not only the winning line, but also the reason why other moves don't work. As a chess coach, I've looked at a large number of books which teach tactics, IMO this is perhaps the best I've seen for students

Brilliant. Brilliant. Brilliant.
You will not find this book up at your local B&N bookstore.
Rather than be disappointed, I am actually glad. I feel that anyone who gets rewarded with a treasure like this ought to have looked around or taken a little effort to know of its existence before they laid their hands on it!!!


I can't stop gushing about how good Coakley's books are for players ramping up to an intermediate level and want to be absolutely sure they have no holes in their chess knowledge. (I'm about USCF 1579 at the time of writing this and I feel that the exercise positions in this book have so much to offer me.)

The delivery of exercises ( 9 per page ) and the quality of the answers at the back are very impressive. A tactics book that has non "find the mate or find the best move to win" positions is a rarity these days.

His Number 9 position on each page offers a wealth of instruction if you haven't seen those positions before. I've even started to document those in my own training notes, as positions that I should know COLD in order to be competitive at my level.

Overall, one of the finest tactics+non-tactics exercise books I've seen.