Product Description

This giant collection, finally available in paperback, features enough chess challenges to keep even the most avid player occupied for a long, long time.

The biggest book of chess problems ever published is now available in a paperback edition, featuring more than five thousand fully diagrammed problems, games, and end games for players at all levels. Chapters are organized by problem type, and each problem, combination, and game is keyed to an easy-to-follow solution at the back of the book, so users— whether they are beginners or highly accomplished players—can learn as they go. In all, this volume is a most extensive and thorough chess reference, sure to help hone skills while providing hours of fun. The more affordable paperback edition will give players at all levels reason to rejoice.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #37277 in Books
• Published on: 2006-01-06
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 1104 pages

About the Author
László Polgár is a Hungarian chess teacher whose writing and strategies are respected and known worldwide. He coaches his daughters, the Polgár Sisters, who have won several world championships.

Bruce Pandolfini is perhaps the most experienced chess teacher in North America. He is the author of eighteen instructional chess books, and was portrayed by Ben Kingsley in the film Searching for Bobby Fischer.

Customer Reviews

More Problems caused by too many Problems!
This has got to have more chess problems than any other single chess book ever written. If you want want is lots and lots then this book cannot be beat.

But the very fact that this book is so massive creates problems of it's own. A simple question to start with: Do you have almost unlimited time (years and years) to go over about every problem, instructive and not so instructive? Or are you more interested in having well selected problems that are instructive and focus on the most common patterns you are going to come across in actual play?

This book, is loaded with what I call a lot of "filler" problems and a lot of material that is quickly tossed in without much thought toward making this book logically progress from one pattern to another. Simple grouping of "general" types of tactics and ideas is not going to make it.

This book deserves some credit just for being jamm packed. But I would rather suggest tactics/problem books with a more well thought out direction. For a beginner or just beyond that level Bruce Pandolfini's, "Beginning Chess: Over 300 Elementary Problems" and for an intermediate player, Emms "Ultimate Chess Puzzle Book" have condensed plenty of problems into what is more practical to learn.

Great piece cooperation manual!
I am a scholastic chess coach, teaching kids from how the pieces move all the way up to about 1500-rated. I now require every student to have his or her own copy of this book! This school year, my students (cumulatively) completed more than 5000 of these puzzles, some more than 500 individually.

Polgar doesn't have a lot of text here to read, just tons of puzzles, most of which are game-likely situations. One of the hardest things to teach students is often board vision and cooperation of pieces into attacks and mating attacks. Through repetition, this book helps players learn the patterns that will present them opportunities in their tournament games. My players that are serious about their improvement have, without exception, found that this book has bumped their ratings at least 200 points (some 400 points!) in less than a year!

As a coach, I have found that offering internal club recognition for completing puzzles such as these also improved club-wide interest. Additionally, many of the puzzles you find elsewhere, whether in a book or on-line, will have escape possibilities from the stated "mate-in-two" or other move numbers. Of the 5334 puzzles in this book, my students and I have only found ONE with such a problem!

I would not hesitate to give this book the highest possible review rating as a teaching manual - you don't need to re-write the book when Lazlo has already done it for you

Real Understanding
To become a virtuoso in anything, the key is practice. Scarlatti wrote piano studies that were challenging, taught the basics of music theory through the composition, and sounded beautiful at the same time. Not all of the puzzles in this book are beautiful, but then neither are the positions I sometimes seem to find myself in when playing a 1300+ player. The thing I noticed about these puzzles is that they are very carefully organized, showing you every way a particular piece can mate with just a pawn companion, for example. In other words, variations. I have found myself beginning to understand the power and limitations of the pieces and pawns in a much deeper way. My latest tournament games were 30 minute games lost only because my opponents were able to avoid the inevitable mate by playing for time instead of any real equality. I need to speed up my calculation a bit, but my tactics are sound. This book will remain within reach as long as I am playing competitve chess.